Rabbi Eli Fishman grew up as a yeshiva student in Rachov, near Lublin, Poland. He attended the Mechina of Yachal (the preparatory school for Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin) and from the fall of 1938 he was accepted to the famed Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin. The outbreak of WWII on September 1, 1939, tore him from his studies. Separated from his family, he endured the work camps Goscieradow, Budzyn (part of Majdanek), and Ostrovtso, before being sent to Auschwitz and the death march through Germany to Dachau, where he was liberated by the American army.

Ordained by Chief Rabbi of Germany Rabbi Samuel A. Snieg, Rabbi Fishman became the assistant to the chief rabbi and was involved in the work of renewing Jewish life in postwar Germany. In 1950, Rabbi Fishman immigrated to the United States under the sponsorship of Dean Samuel Sar at Yeshiva University. He assumed his first American pulpit in Newark, New Jersey, and was active in his rabbinic mission as a pulpit rabbi for over fifty years. He continues to serve as president of the Judaic Heritage Foundation. He has lived in Freehold, New Jersey, for the past thirty-five years with his wife Eileen. They have four children, nine grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.