Steven Pressman

Steven Pressman is an American journalist, author of two books (Outrageous Betrayal and 50 Children), and director/producer of the documentary film 50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus.

Pressman was born in Los Angeles in 1955 and obtained an undergraduate degree in political science from the University of California at Berkeley. He has two adult children and lived in San Francisco with his wife, writer Liz Perle, who died in August 2015.

Writing

Throughout his career, Pressman has written for several publications including the San Francisco Daily Journal, California Lawyer, Daily Journal of Los Angeles, California, and the Columbia Journalism Review. He contributed an article on libel law in 1994, for the United States Department of State. In 1993, Pressman's Outrageous Betrayal was published by St. Martin's Press and Harper published his 50 Children in 2014.

Books

• Pressman, Steven (August 1993). Outrageous Betrayal: The Real Story of Werner Erhard from Est to Exile (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0312092962. 
• Pressman, Steven (April 2014). 50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany (First ed.). Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0062237477. 

Filmmaking

Pressman produced short videos for the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California. In 2010, he served as writer, director, and producer for the documentary film To Save a Life. The documentary, retitled 50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus, and shown on HBO in April 2013, tells the story of Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, a Jewish couple from Philadelphia who traveled to Nazi Germany in 1939 and, with the help of the B'rith Sholom fraternal organization, saved Jewish children in Vienna from likely death in the Holocaust by finding them new homes in Philadelphia. The heroic Krauses were the grandparents of Pressman's wife, and the film is based on the manuscript of a memoir left behind by Eleanor Kraus when she died in 1989.