Wolf Blitzer

Wolf Isaac Blitzer (born March 22, 1948) is an American journalist, television news anchor, and author who has been a CNN reporter since 1990, and who currently serves as one of the principal anchors at the network. He is the host of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer since 2005; previously he served as the network's lead political anchor until 2021. Early life Blitzer was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany near Munich in 1948, during post-World War II Allied occupation the son of Cesia Blitzer (née Zylberfuden), a homemaker, and David Blitzer, a home builder. His parents were Polish Jewish refugees from German-occupied Poland who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp; his grandparents, two uncles, and two aunts on his father's side were all murdered there. His maternal grandparents were rounded up in Poland and sent to a labor camp to make ammunition for the German war effort, and later died of typhoid fever. Blitzer and his family immigrated to the United States under the provisions of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act. He was raised in Buffalo, New York, and graduated from Kenmore West Senior High School. He received a Bachelor of Arts in history from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1970. While there, he was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi. In 1972, he received a Master of Arts in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. While at Johns Hopkins, he studied abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he learned Hebrew. Blitzer has said he has frequently been asked about his name, which has been characterized as seemingly made for TV. He explained that his surname goes back for generations, and that "Wolf" is the same first name as that of his maternal grandfather. His middle name, Isaac, comes from his paternal grandfather.