Born in 1937 to a Hassidic family in Belgium, Paldiel and his family fled via France to Switzerland to escape the Nazis.

After the war the family settled in Brooklyn, where Paldiel attended Brooklyn College. He served in the U.S. Army, and later received his doctorate in Holocaust studies from Temple University in Philadelphia. Since 1982, Paldiel has served as the director of the Righteous Among the Nations Program at the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem, where he investigated thousands of cases of non-Jews who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, including such famous names as Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, Jan Karski, and Varian Fry. Saving the Jews is his third published book on the subject of Righteous Gentiles. Paldiel lectures widely in Israel, Europe, and the United States.