Israel Unger was born in 1938 in Tarnow, Poland, and immigrated to Canada in 1951. He is Dean Emeritus of Science at the University of New Brunswick. Israel Unger was one of fifty Holocaust survivors to be honoured by the Government of Canada in 1998 in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He was the educational advisor for Atlantic Canada for the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.