Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Jack Greenberg, civil rights attorney who defended MLK, dies at 91

Jack Greenberg, a prominent lawyer in the U.S. civil rights movement who once defended the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has died.

Greenberg had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, Deborah Cole Greenberg, according to The New York Times. He died Oct. 12 in Manhattan at 91.

The son of Jewish parents from Poland and Romania who immigrated to the United States, Greenberg was a pioneer in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and ‘70s who fought for equal rights for disenfranchised African Americans.

He was the last surviving member of a group of lawyers assembled by Thurgood Marshall who argued for voting rights, equal pay and access to schooling for African Americans.

Greenberg was one of seven lawyers who argued against segregated schools in Brown v. Board of Education, a case that led to the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling to end single-race public schools.

After Marshall was appointed to serve on the Supreme Court in 1961, he tapped Greenberg to lead the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Greenberg served in the role for more than 20 years. The appointment rankled some who wondered why Marshall had not chosen an African-American lawyer, the Times reported.

Greenberg also was involved in controversy with Jewish groups for his support of affirmative action. The Anti-Defamation League said the policy, which favors minorities for university admission and employment, discriminated against whites.

In 1963, he represented King when the civil rights leader was jailed in Birmingham, Ala., for protesting against segregation. President Barack Obama lauded Greenberg for his work that has changed education for future generations.

“Thanks to Jack Greenberg’s devotion to justice, millions of Americans have known the freedom to learn and work and vote and live in a country that more faithfully lives up to its founding principle of equality under the law,” a statement released by the White House said.

Greenberg was born in 1924 and grew up in Brooklyn and the Bronx boroughs of New York City. He earned undergraduate and law degrees from Columbia University, and served as the dean of its law school in 1989-93.

Greenberg said he wasn’t driven by his religion to fight for civil rights but more by his upbringing in the socialist Zionist movement of Jews who had immigrated from Eastern Europe.

“We were social activists,” he said. “Back then we’d call them socialists; now you’d call them liberals.”

—JTA News and Features

Phil Chess (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Phil Chess, pioneering blues and rock exec, who recorded Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, 95

Phil Chess, who co-founded the pioneering blues record label Chess Records with his brother Leonard, is dead at 95.

The famed executive and producer, who was in good health for his age, died overnight at his home in Tucson, Ariz., the Chicago Sun-Times reported on Oct. 19.
Chess, born Fiszel Czyz in Czestochowa, Poland, immigrated to Chicago with his Jewish family in 1928. He and his brother founded Chess Records — which would go on to sign blues and R&B artists such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Etta James and Buddy Guy — in 1950. The record label is often credited with making Chicago the epicenter of early blues rock and laying the groundwork for the rock music of the ’60s and ’70s.

“[N]ow you can take a walk down State Street today and see a portrait of Muddy [Waters] that’s 10 stories tall,” guitarist Buddy Guy told the Sun-Times on Oct. 19. “The Chess brothers had a lot to do with that. They started Chess Records and made Chicago what it is today — the blues capital of the world. I’ll always be grateful for that.”

The genesis of Chess Records was dramatized in the 2008 film “Cadillac Records,” which starred Beyonce and Adrian Brody.

Leonard Chess died in 1969 at age 52, a few months after Chess Records was sold to General Recorded Tape and three years before the label got its first Billboard-topping single (Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-a-Ling”). Phil Chess retired from the music industry shortly after.

The Chess brothers were inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1995, and Phil Chess won the Recording Academy’s Trustees Award in 2013.

—JTA News and Features

Lorraine Kugler Kramer

On May 26, Lorraine Kugler Kramer, of Silver Spring, beloved wife of the late Dr. Edward A. Kramer; loving and cherished mother of Kenneth Kramer, Bonnie (Ted) Chorvinsky, Janet (Richard) Cort and Steven (Karen) Kramer; adored grandmother of Joseph, Michael and Allison Chorvinsky, Jonathan and Adam Cort, Benjamin, Matthew and Joanna Kramer.

Lorraine Kugler Kramer was a lifelong member of Hadassah of the Washington area. She was an active member of the Jewish Residents of Leisure World. She played an active role in her late husband Edward A. Kramer’s veterinary practice, Alaska Avenue Animal Hospital and Colesville Veterinary Clinic. She was a kind, generous, positive and gracious humanitarian to all. She liked to read, travel and enjoyed her family. Contributions may be made to Foundation for Women’s Cancer, 230 W. Monroe St., Ste. 710, Chicago, IL 60606.

Leonard H. Teitelbaum

On Oct. 26, Leonard H. Teitelbaum, former Maryland state senator, of Silver Spring. Beloved husband of Marilyn Teitelbaum; devoted father of Mark (Judy) Teitelbaum; loving grandfather of Lisa (Aviad) Eden and Carol Teitelbaum; dear brother of Daniel (Marcia) Teitelbaum and Barbara (Richard) Goldman. Also survived by many loving nieces, nephews, family members and friends. Interment at Judean Memorial Gardens, Olney. Contributions may be made to Montgomery Hospice.

Arrangements by Torchinsky Hebrew Funeral Home.

Louis Irwin Cooper, 68

Dr. Louis Irwin Cooper, a retired Navy captain and pediatric hematologist-oncologist, died on Oct. 7 at his home in Silver Spring after a battle with pancreatic and liver cancer. He was 68 years old.

Cooper was the son of the late Sol and Rachel Cooper, oldest of their seven children and patriarch of his family. He was the beloved husband of 31 years of Laura Kaplan Cooper; devoted father of Steven (Yelena) Cooper of Boca Raton, Fla., Amy (Elad) Hakim, also of Boca Raton, and Erin (David) Stiebel of Southfield, Mich.; loving “Zaide” to nine grandchildren; cherished brother, uncle, great-uncle and friend to many.

Cooper grew up in Savannah, Ga., and dreamed of becoming a pediatrician, which he actualized at the Medical College of Georgia in 1973. During his senior year, he joined the Navy, doing his internship and pediatric residency at the National Naval Medical Center and his hematology-oncology fellowship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

During his 27 years of proud service to his country, Cooper was stationed in Bethesda, Charleston, S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., with short periods in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Millington, Tenn., Orlando, Fla. and Keflavik, Iceland. Upon retiring from the Navy, Cooper continued practicing pediatric hematology oncology at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, with Community Hematology-Oncology Practitioners, and general pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente.

He was recognized nearly annually in The Washingtonian as one of Washington’s top doctors and received accolades from his wisdom, expertise and professionalism.

He was a doctor’s doctor, modeling warmth and concern in his every interaction, investing in his patients and their families both in and out of the office and leaving a lasting impression on all who had the honor of meeting him, his family said. His walls displayed pictures sent to him by former patients, who are alive today due in large part to his care.

In an effort to share his knowledge, Cooper authored a book for new parents titled, “Dear Parents: When to Call the Doctor for your Infant or Toddler,” which he proudly inscribed and gave as gifts to new and veteran parents.
Despite his accomplishments, his family was his greatest source of pride. He reveled in every opportunity to be surrounded by his children and grandchildren, always teaching them, sharing his deep love for Jewish traditions and values and singing with them.

Cooper was a beloved member of his Jewish community, creating the warm, inviting atmosphere at his synagogue, the Silver Spring Jewish Center, as the quintessential southern gentleman whose traits all wanted to emulate. Cooper was a light to the world and though he will be missed terribly, his legacy and lessons will continue to a source of inspiration.

The interment was in Savannah. Remembrances may be sent to Silver Spring Jewish Center, 1401 Arcola Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20902.

Bernard J. Alpher

Bernard J. Alpher, 93, died Nov. 7. He was the cherished husband of 55 years to Penelope Alpher; loving father of David (Robin) Alpher and Alison Arrouet, adored grandfather of Daniel Alpher, devoted uncle to a niece and two nephews. Donations can be made to the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington, JSSA or a charity of choice.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Leonard Cohen, the Canadian singer-songwriter whose Jewish-infused work became a soundtrack for melancholy, has died. He was 82.

“It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist Leonard Cohen has passed away,” his Facebook page said late Thursday. “We have lost one of music’s most revered and prolific visionaries.”

It did not give a cause of death but said there would be a funeral in Los Angeles in coming days.

Cohen, a Montreal native born in 1934, was playing folk guitar by the time he was 15, when he learned the resistance song “The Partisan” while working at a camp from an older friend.

“We sang together every morning, going through ‘The People’s Song Book’ from cover to cover,” he recalled in his first “Best Of” compilation in 1975. “I developed the curious notion that the Nazis were overthrown by music.”

As a student at McGill University, he became part of Montreal’s burgeoning alternative art scene, one bursting with nervous energy at a time that tensions between Quebec’s French and English speakers were coming to the fore.

His influences included Irving Layton, the seminal Canadian Jewish poet who taught at McGill and, like Cohen, grappled with the tensions between the secular world and the temptations of faith.

Cohen began to publish poetry and then novels, and was noticed by the national Canadian press. Moving to New York in the late 1960s — his song “Chelsea Hotel” is about his stay and that notorious refuge for the inspired, the insane and the indigent — he began to put his words to music.

“Suzanne,” about the devastating platonic affair with a friend’s wife that was a factor in his leaving Montreal, was recorded by Judy Collins and became a hit, launching his career.

Cohen sang in his limited bass and wrote his songs so he could sing them. They would have been dirges but for their surprising lyrical turns and reckoning with joy in unexpected places.

In “Bird on the Wire,” one of his most covered songs, he recovers from a crippling guilt when he finds inspiration in a beggar, and then in a prostitute: “And a pretty woman, leaning in her darkened door/ She cried to me, ‘Hey why not ask for more?’”

Cohen embraced Buddhism but never stopped saying he was Jewish. His music more often than not dealt directly not just with his faith but with his Jewish people’s story.

His most famous song, covered hundreds of times, is “Hallelujah” – he has said its unpublished verses are endless, but in its recorded version is about the sacred anguish felt by King David as he contemplates the beauty of the forbidden Bathsheba.

Cohen’s version, released in 1984, did well in Europe (in a video on German TV he is backed by a children’s choir hiding behind a faux Greek set). John Cale recorded a piano-driven version for a Cohen tribute album in 1991. Jeff Buckley heard that version and used it as the basis for his own six-minute cover, reinterpreting on his guitar the arpeggios Cale had used to accompany the song.

Running longer than six minutes, Buckley’s version became the go-to song in the late 1990s for extended TV show montages depicting trauma and melancholy. Cale’s version was used in “Shrek” in 2001, and that did it: The song became inevitable.

“First We Take Manhattan,” recorded in the late 1980s when Cohen was living much of his time in Europe, plumbs the anger of a modern Jew traveling through a postwar consumerist Europe that has become adept at ignoring its Jewish ghosts:

I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those.

Cohen was droll, but also reverent: Each of his explanations of his songs on 1975’s “Best Of” is sardonic except for one, for “Who by Fire.”

“This is based on a prayer recited on the Day of Atonement,” was all he wrote.

Cohen, in his 70s in the late 2000s, again began to tour and record; a manager had bilked him of much of his fortune. He released his final album, “You Want It Darker,” last month.

He often toured Israel, and he expressed his love for the country — Cohen toured for troops in the 1973 Yom Kippur War — but he also expressed sadness at the militarism he encountered there. Under pressure from the boycott Israel movement to cancel a 2009 concert, he instead donated its  proceeds — much needed by him — to a group that advances dialogue between Palestinians and Jews.

Tickets to the stadium at Ramat Gan sold out in minutes. His Israeli fans embraced him that September night, and he returned the love, sprinkling the concert with Hebrew and readings from scripture and ending it with the priestly blessing.

In August he wrote an emotional letter to his former girlfriend and muse Marianne Ihlen, who died in late July, suggesting he, too, was ready to embrace his death.

Last month, in a profile of Cohen in The New Yorker, Bob Dylan compared his fellow singer-songwriter to Irving Berlin — linking three iconic Jewish musicians in one poignant assessment.

Cohen is survived by a son and a daughter.

—JTA News and Features

Yaffa Eliach, pioneering Holocaust historian, dies at 79

Yaffa Eliach, a prominent historian of the Holocaust who opened the first center for Holocaust studies in the United States, has died.

Eliach, a Holocaust survivor, died Nov. 9 at 79, The Jewish Press reported.

In 1974, she opened the Center for Holocaust Studies in Brooklyn. It later merged with the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.

Eliach created the “Tower of Life,” or “Tower of Faces” exhibit for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The three-story exhibit features 1,500 photographs from Eishyshok, her Lithuanian birthplace near Vilna, showing life there before the war. Nearly all of the village’s 3,500 Jewish inhabitants were killed during World War II, according to The New York Times.

Eliach also published several books about the Holocaust.

Following the war, she fled to prestate Israel in 1946. Several family members had been killed in the war.
In 1954, she moved to the United States with her husband, David Eliach, and studied at Brooklyn College and the City College of New York. In 1969, she started working at Brooklyn College, teaching Jewish studies. n

—JTA News and Features

Calvin Cooper

On Oct. 27, Calvin Cooper, loving husband of Starr Nathanson Cooper died after a long, hard-fought battle with cancer. He is survived by two sons, Kevin and Andy Cooper. He was a very special “Pop” to Jack Cooper. He was a beloved brother-in-law of Shelley Pleet and the late A. Bernard Pleet. He was loved by many close friends. A memorial Service was held in Florida. Contributions can be made to Memorial Foundation Urologic Oncology Division, 3329 Johnson St., Hollywood, Fla. 33021

Ruth Gruber Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Ruth Gruber, an American journalist who escorted 1,000 Jewish Holocaust refugees from Europe to the United States, has died. She was 105.

Gruber died Nov. 18 in her Manhattan home, The Washington Post reported.

She was known for her 1944 journey from Italy to New York aboard a ship carrying refugees from concentration camps.

Despite the risk of sailing on waters patrolled by German submarines, then-Interior Secretary Harold Ickes appointed Gruber to travel with the refugees to “hold their hand,” as she recalled him telling her in “Inside of Time,” a book she wrote about that journey.

Aboard the ship, the refugees, some of them too old to walk, called Gruber, then 32, “Mother Ruth,” according to the Post’s obituary of her. Fluent in German and Yiddish, she organized English lessons, cared for the seasick and taught at least one refugee her first English song — “You Are My Sunshine” — the Boston Globe reported.

Together they made the two-week journey without attack, and the refugees arrived in the United States “safe beyond their most roseate dreams,” according to a New York Times account at the time.

Until the end of her life, Gruber remained convinced that the United States could have saved many more refugees.

Gruber worked as a photographer and reporter for the New York Herald Tribune in 1947, when she became the first Western journalist to visit the Soviet Arctic and the gulag.

In 1947, she watched as a ship carrying 4,000 Holocaust survivors and displaced persons was turned away from Palestine. She photographed and later chronicled those events in a book that Leon Uris used to write his best-selling novel “Exodus.”

In her 70s, she was the only foreign correspondent to observe Operation Moses, the airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel during famine.

Gruber, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants who settled in Brooklyn, graduated from high school at 15 and from New York University at 18. After earning a master’s degree in German literature, she went to Germany and, at age 20, earned a doctorate from the University of Cologne with a dissertation on the author Virginia Woolf. The New York Times reported at the time that she was the youngest German doctor of philosophy.

—JTA News and Features

Ruth C. Boorstein

On Nov. 17, Ruth C. Boorstein died peacefully in her home in Kensington Park. Beloved wife of the late Edward Boorstein; loving mother of Eli (Sally Hausman) Nadel and Susan (Gary) Tabach; loving grandmother of Jennifer (Matthew) Gerst, Michelle (Arden) Farhi, Alyssa (Norman) Chao, Gabrielle Nadel and Tori Nadel; loving great-grandmother of Daniel Gerst and Ethan Gerst; loving stepmother of Sharon (Robert Walter) Evans, Steven Boorstein, David Boorstein, Nancy Stevens; loving stepgrandmother of Bryan (Kim Ziesemer) Boorstein, Ben (Jeanette) Boorstein, Brandon Evans, Morgan Stevens, Dylan Stevens, Hannah Boorstein and Isaask Boorstein; loving daughter of the late Sadie Taetle Contract Kaplan and Eli Contract; cherished cousin, sister-in-law and friend to many. Donations may be made to the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Online Services or a charity of choice.

Rabbi Ben Zion Shenker, a composer and singer of Chasidic niggunim, or melodies, died on Nov. 20 in Brooklyn, the New York Times reported.

Mordechai Wincorn wrote in Hamodia: “Thousands of Jewish families welcome Shabbos with his ‘Eishes Chayil’ and sing his ‘Mizmor l’Dovid’ shortly before they bid it farewell. Few chasunos go by without dancing to his ‘Yassis Alayich.’”

Niggunim are Jewish tunes or melodies sung by groups and often feature repetitive sounds like “ai” or “bim.”
Born in 1925 in Brooklyn, Shenker was the son of Polish immigrants Mordechai and Miriam Shenker. He fell in love with music at an early age, and at 12 joined a synagogue choir led by Joshua Samuel Weisser [Pilderwasser], who helped found and lead the Cantors-Ministers Cultural Organization.

Weisser later featured Shenker as a soloist on a Yiddish-language radio program.

Shenker became passionate about niggunim after meeting Rabbi Saul Taub, the rebbe of the Polish Modzitzer chasidic dynasty, and a group of Chasidim who had survived the Holocaust.

In a YouTube video produced by the Yiddish Book Center, Shenker recalled, as a teenager, surprising Taub with his ability to read musical notes.

“He was flabbergasted, a kid that young knew how to read music,” he said in the video.

Shenker became the rebbe’s musical secretary.

“Anything he composed, I used to notate,” Shenker said in an interview on NPR in 2013, the New York Times reported. “And he used to sing for me things that he had in mind.”

In 1956, Shenker recorded niggunim on his record label, Neginah.

“In their separate ways, Shenker and [Shlomo] Carlebach were the two most important conduits for preserving and spreading a nearly-lost European musical tradition, and served as models for countless performers and composers of Hasidic music,” Cantor Sam Weiss wrote on Klezmer Shack.

Shenker eventually produced and recorded more than 10 collections of niggunim.

Shenker’s wife, Dina Lustig, died three years ago. He is survived by his daughters Esther Reifman, Adele Newmark and Broche Weinberger; a brother, Rabbi Chaim Boruch Shenker; a sister Rose Glasner, 23 grandchildren; and more than 90 great-grandchildren, the New York Times reported.

—Justin Katz

Andrew Sachs. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Andrew Sachs, who became famous through his clumsy persona of Manuel in the British comedy “Fawlty Towers,” died on Nov. 23 at a care facility near his home in London from vascular dementia, the New York Times reported. He was 86.
The show, created by actors John Cleese and Connie Booth, was centered on hotel owner Basil Fawlty (Cleese), his wife Sybil (Prunella Scales), chambermaid Polly Sherman (Booth) and waiter Manuel.

The incessantly confused Manuel was particularly beloved fans of the show for continually asking “¿Qué?” when confronted by his boss, Basil.

“The idea that one could constantly have misunderstandings between Basil and Manuel was a terribly simple one, but it worked well and of course it could happen at any point,” Sachs told the BBC, NPR reported.
Andreas Siegfried Sachs was born April 7, 1930, in Berlin to Katharina (nee Schrott-Fiecht), who was Catholic, and Hans Emil Sachs, who was Jewish.

The family moved to London in 1938 to avoid Nazi persecution.

Sachs had a successful career in acting with appearances in British soap opera “Coronation Street,” the television mini-series “Going Postal” (2010) and film “Quartet” (2012).

Cleese tweeted about Sachs on Dec. 1, saying he was a “kind man and a truly great farceur. I first saw him in “Habeas Corpus” on stage in 1973. I could not have found a better Manuel.”

Cleese described his working relationship with Sachs to the Guardian, saying it was like “playing tennis with someone who is exactly as good as you are.”

“And you play with them every week, sometimes he wins and sometimes you win, but somehow there is a rapport. It comes from the very deepest part of ourselves. We never had to work at it, it all happened so easily,” NPR reported.

British television personality Piers Morgan tweeted: “Very sad to hear about [Andrew Sachs] — a true comedy legend & great actor. Thinking of you [John Sachs] & all the family. RIP.

He is survived by his wife, Melody Lang; her sons, whom he adopted, Bill and John; daughter Katie Bailie; sister Barbara Sachs; four grandchildren and brother, Tom.

—Justin Katz

Adolf Burger
Photo via the Wikimedia Commons.

Adolf Burger, last of ‘Hitler’s counterfeiters,’ dies at 99

PRAGUE — Adolf Burger, a Holocaust survivor who was forced by the Nazis to counterfeit British banknotes during World War II, has died in Prague at 99, his family said.

Burger, a native of Slovakia, was a typographer by profession. He was arrested in 1942 for producing false baptism records for Jews scheduled for transports to Nazi extermination camps and deported to Auschwitz.

The date of his death was Dec. 6, The New York Times reported.

In 1944, Burger was selected to take part in Operation Bernhard, a Nazi effort to destabilize the British economy by flooding the country with forged pound banknotes. He was moved to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp,where he worked in a special section of the camp devoted to the counterfeiting operation.

“I thought somehow I would survive Auschwitz, but was sure I was a dead man in Sachsenhausen. The Nazis planned to kill us so we would never tell anyone what they were doing,” Burger recounted in 2008.

He was liberated by the U.S. Army in May 1945.

After the war, Burger settled in Prague. His memoirs, titled “Number 64401 Speaks,” were first published in 1945. He later rewrote his story, which was released in 1983 under the title “The Commando of Counterfeiters.” The Austrian-German film “The Counterfeiters,” based on Burger’s memoirs, won the 2007 Academy Award for best foreign language film.
—JTA News and Features

Henry Heimlich, inventor of maneuver to save choking victims, dies at 96

Henry Heimlich, who invented the life-saving technique to save choking victims, has died.

Heimlich died on Dec. 17 at a hospital in Cincinnati at the age of 96 from complications of a massive heart attack he suffered on Dec. 12.

Heimlich used the maneuver named after him in May to save a fellow resident at a Cincinnati retirement home where he lived, reportedly the first time he had used it to save a person’s life.

Heimlich published an article about the maneuver, using abdominal thrusts, in 1974. Prior to that, rescue guidelines called for blows to the back to dislodge the airway blockages. Heimlich believed this could further entrench the blockage. He said his maneuver has saved over 100,000 lives, according to The Washington Post.

In 1962, Heimlich invented the chest drainage flutter valve, which was also called the Heimlich valve.

In the 1980s and 1990s he was an advocate of malaria therapy, the deliberate infection of a person with benign malaria in order to defeat diseases such as cancer, disease and AIDS, saying the high fever associated with malaria would stimulate the body’s immune system. The therapy’s efficacy has never been proven.

He was born in Wilmington, Del., to Mary Epstein and Philip Heimlich. His paternal grandparents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants, and his maternal grandparents were Russian Jews.

He was married to Jane Murray, daughter of ballroom-dancing businessman Arthur Murray, who predeceased him. The couple had four children.

—JTA News and Features

Judith Klein

Judith Klein, 91, died peacefully at home after a short illness on Dec. 13.

Klein was born in Berlin to Heinrich and Irmgard Veit Simon on June 14, 1925. Following Kristallnacht, she found refuge in the United Kingdom under the Kinderstransport program. She married, at age 18, Henry Weill with whom she had three children, Michael, Margaret and David. That marriage ended in divorce. She began studying for a bachelor’s degree in economic history at the London School of Economics where she met her future husband, Thomas Klein. They married in June 1958 and moved to Silver Spring in 1959. They had two children, Richard and Edward.

Klein earned a master’s degree in economics from American University and then worked as a researcher with William Parker, of Yale, on a Ford Foundation-financed study of changing agricultural productivity in the antebellum South. She then worked for Robert Nathan Associates and later as an adjunct professor of economics at the University of Maryland. Her hobby was knitting, creating artistic designs as well as beautiful sweaters and socks. She was a charter member of the Museum for Women in the Arts and of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Klein is survived by her husband, Thomas; children Michael, Margaret and Edward (Melissa); grandchildren Stephen, Courtney (Christopher Doi), Melanie (Pascal Chautard) and Zachary; and great-grandchildren Meredith and Amelia.

Contributions may be sent to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW, Washington, DC, 20024 or to the National Museum for Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 20005.

Pauline Berliner

Pauline Berliner, 96, died on Dec. 11 in Boca Raton, Fla. She was born in Lublin, Poland, in 1920. She came to the United States as an infant because her father was fleeing from the Russian round-ups. The family settled in the Bronx, N.Y. She spoke only Yiddish until she entered kindergarten. In 1936, at age 16, she graduated from James Monroe High School and started a long and successful career.

Before World War II, Berliner and her husband, Jerry, moved to Washington where she worked and he enlisted in the Army. After the war, they started their own export business, putting Harmon Kardon and other American manufacturers on the map internationally. She traveled around the world by herself, meeting with business leaders in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

The couple moved their business and home to Boca Raton, Fla., to take care of her parents. Pauline Berliner lived in Florida for more than three decades, volunteering for many organizations after she retired.
Berliner is survived by her sons Mitchell Berliner (Debbie) and Guy Berliner (Bonnie), six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

British pop star George Michael, who had Jewish roots, dies at 53

British pop singer George Michael, who disclosed a decade ago that he had Jewish roots, died unexpectedly at the age of 53.

Michael died at his home in England of heart failure, his publicist said. His family asked for privacy during this time.

Michael first achieved fame as one of two members of the popular 80s band WHAM! before beginning his solo career, where he was known for his catchy dance tunes and provocative lyrics.

In a June 2008 interview, Michael told the Los Angeles Times that his maternal grandmother was Jewish but married a non-Jewish man and raised her children with no knowledge of their Jewish background due to her fear during the period of World War II.

“She thought if they didn’t know that their mother was Jewish, they wouldn’t be at risk,” Michael told the newspaper. His mother attended convent school, losing any shred of memory of her mother’s Jewishness.

He acknowledged his homosexuality in 1998 after being arrested for public lewdness in Los Angeles, where he attempted to pick up a man in a public bathroom.

His first solo album, 1987’s “Faith,” sold more 20 million copies, and he had several hit singles including “I Want Your Sex,”  “Father Figure,” “One More Try,” and “Praying For Time.”

He was named Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou when he was born in 1963 in London to Greek Cypriot parents.
Police said in a statement that the death was “unexplained but not suspicious,” and his publicist said he had not been ill.

—JTA News and Features

Theodore Harold Morse

Theodore Harold Morse, 86, passed away peacefully on Dec. 21, in Centreville, Md.

Morse grew up in Brockton, Mass. After graduating high school, earning a certificate as a radio technician and serving in the Army, he moved to Washington, where he was a member of the board of directors and a counter man at Atlantic Plumbing Supply Co. He later bought Hampton Aquarium Inc. in Landover (1982-1993). After retiring and moving to Chester, Md. he helped the community as a driver for the Jewish Social Services Agency in Rockville. In addition to his family, his great passions were his dogs and sports. He was an avid fan of the Redskins (62 years) Capitals (42 years) the Washington Senators/Nationals and the Boston Braves.

Morse is survived by his spouse of 53 years, Sandra (Jacobs) Morse of Chester; his daughter, Anita (Morse) Silverman (Chuck) of Christiansburg, Va.; his son, Leonard B. Morse of Silver Spring; his brother, Jack (Jo) Morse of Palm Spring Gardens, Fla.; his brother-in-law, Malcolm Jacobs (Maxine) of Columbia; his granddaughters, Alexis and Victoria Silverman of Christiansburg, Va.; his nieces, Sallie Brantley-Morse, Tracey (Morse) McDonnel and Elisha (Jacobs) Anderson and nephew, Marc Jacobs. Morse was preceded in death by his parents, Anne and Bernard Morse.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Alzheimer’s Association or Children National Medical Center.

Online condolences may be made at www.fhnfuneralhome.com.

Rabbi Lionel Blue, the first openly gay British rabbi, dies at 86

Rabbi Lionel Blue, the first openly gay British rabbi and a popular on-air personality, has died.

Blue, a broadcaster on BBC Radio 4’s “Thought for the Day” show for 30 years, died Dec. 19 at 86. He had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for many years. His funeral was held Dec. 20.

He served as European director of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.

Blue, the son of a tailor and a grandson of Russian immigrants, was evacuated from London during World War II. He would live with 16 different families on the British countryside.

As a young man he had a nervous breakdown while serving in the armed forces when he realized that he was gay. Blue underwent years of psychoanalysis to deal with it.

After flirting with Christianity, Blue turned back to Judaism and was ordained a Reform rabbi in 1960. He was the first British rabbi to come out as gay, in 1980, and supported groups such as the World Congress of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Jews.

“Lionel was a wonderful and inspirational man who spoke with such wisdom and humor, and whose words reached out far beyond the Jewish community,” his synagogue, Bei Klal Yisrael, wrote in a Facebook post announcing his death.

—JTA News and Features

Ex-POW featured in Hillary Clinton campaign ads dies

Joel Sollender, a World War II prisoner of war who appeared in television ads for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, has died.

The cause of his death on Dec. 27 was congestive heart failure, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Dec. 29. Sollender, who was Jewish, was 92.

“He had a great patriotic feeling about this country and the war affected him in many profound ways,” his widow, Dorothy, told the Union-Tribune in a phone interview from the couple’s home in Poway, Calif. “Here was this smart-ass Jewish intellectual from New York City who became friends in the Army with a Missouri farmer, an Indian bootlegger. He just got along with everyone because he was a person for every man and he truly loved America.”

Sollender told the Union-Tribune in November that he was irked by presidential candidate Donald Trump’s remarks during a Republican primary event last year in Ames, Iowa, mocking Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and a POW during the Vietnam War. Trump said the former Navy pilot wasn’t “a war hero because he was captured.”

Reports of Sollender’s anger reached Clinton election headquarters in Brooklyn, and a camera team taped him soon afterword for two ads. A 30-second spot showed Sollender and other veterans reacting strongly to a string of Trump comments about the military. An 80-second ad featured Sollender alone, crying in his home as he reflected on his POW experience that was “70 years ago, and yesterday.”

Both ads debuted on Sept. 16 — National Prisoners of War Remembrance Day — and played in heavy rotation in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other battleground states.

“He was devastated that Trump won and worried about the future of the country,” Dorothy Sollender said.
Born in Manhattan, Sollender was pulled away from City College of New York by World War II. He was recruited into the 346th Regiment of the Army’s 87th Infantry Division.

He was captured on Dec. 11, 1944, in France and imprisoned in Stalag 3A near Luckenwalde, Germany, according to military records kept by the National Archives.

His decorations included a Bronze Star for valor, the Combat Infantryman Badge and a Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster.

After the war, Sollender finished his studies at New York University, majoring in business administration. He became an executive in the textile industry before retiring in 1992. The Sollenders had two children, one of

whom died in a car accident in 2002.
Besides his wife, Sollender is survived by a son,  Jonathan Lee Sollender, and six grandchildren, two of whom serve in the military.

—JTA News and Features

Nat Hentoff, left, with his son Nick.
Photo via Twitter.

Nat Hentoff, journalist, author, music critic and social activist, dies at 91

Nat Hentoff, who wrote about civil liberties and jazz for The Village Voice for 50 years and also wrote for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, DownBeat magazine and other publications, has died.

Nathan Irving Hentoff — who grew up in the Roxbury section of what he once called the “pervasively anti-Semitic city” of Boston — died Jan. 7 at the age of 91. His son Nick announced his death in a tweet: “Sad to report the death of my father #NatHentoff tonight at the age of 91. He died surrounded by family listening to Billie Holiday.”

Hentoff was the author of more than 30 books, including novels and young adult and nonfiction books, many dealing with the Constitution and free speech.

He was a jazz critic in New York in the 1950s and went on to write books about musicians and the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s. He also became an activist, marching against the Vietnam War and for civil rights.

Hentoff was born in Boston to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. The New York Times reported that he tried to rebel at the age of 12 by publicly eating a salami sandwich on Yom Kippur as people walked by him on the way to synagogue, which angered his father and his neighbors. He said later that he did it to know how it felt to be an outcast, calling the experience “enjoyable.”

He attended Boston’s Latin School, and graduated with honors from Northeastern University in 1946. In 1950, he was a Fulbright fellow at the Sorbonne in Paris.

In 2013, a biographical film about Hentoff, titled “The Pleasures of Being Out of Step,” spotlighted his career as a jazz critic and as a first amendment advocate.

He once told an interviewer how jazz intersected with his career as a defender of the Bill of Rights. “I’ll leave you with this — every once in a while writing about my day job I get so down I have to stop,” he said. “I literally stop and put on a recording, and then that sound, that feeling, that passion for life gets me up and shouting again and I can go back to grim stuff of what’s happening in the rest of the world.”

Hentoff was liberal when it came to civil liberties but conservative when it came to issues such as abortion, which he opposed.

He was married three times, and considered himself an atheist.

—JTA News and Features

Zygmunt Bauman, Polish-Jewish sociologist

WARSAW — Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish-Jewish sociologist and philosopher who authored more than 50 books, has died.

Bauman, who wrote on subjects ranging from the fluidity of identity in the modern world to consumerism, died Jan. 9 at his home in Leeds, England. He was 91.

His work focused on the outcasts and the marginalized, and dealt with modernity and globalization.
Bauman believed that the genocide of the Holocaust and totalitarian systems were unnatural but the logical consequence of modernity. They were the culmination of the idea of progress and purity which, according to Bauman, were of crucial importance for the dynamics of modernity.

Bauman was born in 1925, in Poznan, to a family of poor Polish Jews. After the outbreak of World War II he fled with his parents to the Soviet Union. In 1944 he joined the Polish army; he fought in the Battle of Berlin the following year.

In the years 1945 to 1953, Bauman served as an officer in a Stalinist-era military organization, the Internal Security Corps, a communist counterespionage organization. He acknowledged in 2006 that he worked for the organization but only in a desk job, though others who worked for the corps reportedly killed resisters to the regime.

He was viewed by many in Poland as an enemy of the country and in 2013 was booed off the stage during a debate in Wroclaw, after which he never returned to the country.

Following World War II, Bauman studied philosophy at the University of Warsaw. As a member of the philosophy faculty at the university, he taught Marxism. After October 1956 he became one of the first sociology scholars in Poland.

As a result of the communist regime’s anti-Semitic campaign, in March 1968 he was fired from the University of Warsaw, where he was head of the Department of General Sociology. He was forced to leave Poland.

From 1969 to 1971 he lectured at universities in Tel Aviv and Haifa. In 1971 he moved to the United Kingdom, where he became involved with the University of Leeds, becoming head of the sociology department until his retirement in 1990.

In recent years he became an outspoken critic of Israel’s government for its treatment of the Palestinians.
In his recent book “Strangers at Our Door” he analyzed the refugee crisis, the panic it caused and the narrative built around it by politicians and the media.

In a 2009 interview, Bauman was optimistic about the Jews’ place in the Diaspora and the possibilities for societies to embrace pluralism.

“Now, however, it looks like that diasporic context of our living will not go away — it will be there forever, so learning how to live with strangers day in, day out without abandoning my own strangeness is high on the agenda,” he said. “You are a stranger, I am a stranger, we all remain strangers, and nevertheless we can like or even love each other.”

—JTA News and Features

Jerome Boden

Jerome Boden died Dec. 29 after a battle with cancer.
Boden was a consummate family man. His dedication to his wife of 56 years and his children, grandchildren and extended family formed the nucleus of his life.

Boden received an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, master’s degree in industrial engineering and statistics and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering. He spent his working career at Western Electric, Martin Marietta and the Coast Guard.

His hobbies included playing the trumpet and listening to jazz, dancing, playing chess and listening to audiobooks. However, all his activities were a distant second to his love for and commitment to his family.
He is survived by his wife, Sue; his four children, Robin (Rich Skolnik), Barry (Rachel Gafni), Steven (Karen) and Louise (Zac Tolin); eight grandchildren and his brother, Arthur. He will be remembered by all the people whose lives he touched as an extremely gentle, humble and giving individual.

Donations may be made to Tikvat Israel Congregation and the Maryland State Library for the Blind. Arrangements by Sagel Bloomfield Danzansky Goldberg Funeral Care.

Milton Eisner

Milton Eisner, 68, of McLean, died Nov. 11 of esophageal cancer. He was the son of Max and Beatrice Eisner.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University, a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from Michigan State University.

He is survived by a sister, Diane Eisner Korman; a son, Jason Eisner; two daughters, Suzanne Eisner Quersher and Gail A. Eisner Fisher; grandsons Alexander and Barrett; granddaughters Lily, Haley and Jasmine; nephew Benjamin Korman and niece Miriam Korman.

Herbert Heldman

Herbert Heldman, 87, of Rockville, died Dec. 31.

He was the son of Esther and Samuel Heldman. He earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University and a master’s degree in economics from Columbia University.

Heldman ran economic consulting firms for 40 years, and helped colleges plan their expansions and banks identify areas to open new branches. He served in the Army from 1954 to 1955.

He was president of the board of trustees of the former Walden School in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a facilitator of the men’s club at the Bender Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville.

He is survived by two sons, Paul Heldman of Gaithersburg and Andreas Heldman of Naples, Fla.; daughter-in-law Jewel Bradstreet Heldman of Gaithersburg; daughter-in-law Kathy Roubekas Heldman of Naples; two grandsons, Max Heldman of Gaithersburg and Dylan Heldman of Dallas; a granddaughter, Emily Heldman Wolinsky, and grandson-in-law, Charley Wolinsky of Port Chester, N.Y.; and nieces and nephews.

Matt Redman

Matt Redman, 67, of Los Angeles, died Dec. 12.

He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree from Temple University.

He was co-founder of the AIDS Project Los Angeles and a relentless voice on the board of directors for more than 30 years.

He is survived by a brother, Brian Redman, and sister-in-law, Debbie Redman, of Potomac; and nieces Rachel Redman Levin and Samantha Redman of New York.

Nelson Milton Terry

Nelson Milton Terry, 76, of Washington, died Dec. 2.

He was the son of Olive C. H. Arnold and Godwin Terry.

He immigrated to the United States and settled in Washington where he continued his trade in upholstery, tailoring and interior design. He was a passionate community organizer and activist for social justice in the city.

Later in life, he worked as a small business owner and successful entrepreneur.
He is survived by his wife, Paula Terry, children, grandchildren, loving friends and family.

Miriam Goldberg, editor and publisher, dies, at 100

Miriam Harris Goldberg, the editor and publisher of the Intermountain Jewish News in Denver since 1972, has died. She was 100.

Goldberg, a charter inductee of the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame who was honored frequently by the Jewish and general community for her stewardship of the weekly newspaper, died Jan 8.

Goldberg began working at the Intermountain Jewish News, or IJN, in 1966, alongside her husband, Max, who had served as publisher since 1943. Upon his death in 1972, she took over leadership of the newspaper. The couple had been married 36 years.

She increased IJN’s advertising and subscription bases, as well as its editorial scope, the newspaper said in its obituary. She added innovations including a “Very Important Women” issue in 1974, followed by other special theme issues, Washington and Jerusalem bureaus, and electronic reception of news content.

Along with the Women’s Hall of Fame recognition, Goldberg was honored by the Colorado Press Women and the National Federation of Press Women. During her tenure, the IJN became one of the most awarded newspapers in the American Jewish Press Association, or AJPA.

She was a vice president of the AJPA and served on the boards of the Colorado Press Association and the Better Business Bureau. Goldberg was a life member of the Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization and National Council of Jewish Women. She also was a supporter of many charitable organizations.

Goldberg is succeeded as editor and publisher by her son, Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, who has served for the past 26 years as executive editor. Her granddaughter Shana Goldberg is assistant publisher.
Goldberg attended Lindenwood College in St. Louis.

She is survived by four children, 16 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren.

—JTA News and Features

Judge Lawrence S. Margolis

Judge Lawrence S. Margolis, of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, died Jan. 18. The cause of death was acute cardiovascular illness. He was 81.

In 1971, he was appointed a magistrate-judge for U.S. District Court in Washington.  In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Margolis to the Court of Federal Claims, where he served as an active judge for 31 years and remained on recall through 2016.

Margolis was a member of Philadelphia’s Central High School Hall of Fame, and a Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award winner from both Drexel University and George Washington University Law School, where he was instrumental in saving the night school. He held leadership positions at the Washington Rotary Club and Rotary International, the American Bar Association, the DC Bar, the University Club and many other organizations. His extraordinary service to Rotary earned him “Rotarian of the Decade.”

He was a humanitarian and active volunteer at many local entities, including Center for Inspired Teaching, the Inspired Teaching Demonstration Public Charter School, Theodore Roosevelt High School, Washington Civic Opera and Rotaract, and often sat as a Moot Court Judge for law students at a number of universities. He was a frequent speaker on the law, both in the United States and abroad.

Margolis was the son of the late Reuben and Mollie Margolis, and is survived by his wife, Doris; their children, Paul and Jennifer Margolis, Aleta Margolis and Michael Brodsky and grandchildren Isabel and Mira Margolis Brodsky.
Donations may be made to the Rotary Foundation of Washington, D.C., Central High School in Philadelphia, or Center for Inspired Teaching. n

Jacques Roumani

Jacques Roumani, 72, of Potomac, died Dec. 11.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University and graduate degrees from Princeton University.
Roumani worked at the World Bank in Washington for 15 years, one of which was from Iran, the Truman Institute, Hebrew University, Bar-Ilan University, Inter-American Development Bank and the University of Maryland.

He received a Fulbright award, the MacArthur Foundation Middle East Peace research award, a World Bank Sabbatical Award, and was the author of numerous publications about Muslims and Jews in Libya.
Roumani was the son of the late Joseph and Elisa Roumani. He is survived by his wife, Judith; daughter, Elisa Septimus; son, David Roumani; grandson, Ace Septimus; sister, Vivienne Roumani-Denn; brothers, Elia Roumani and Maurice Roumani.

Fred Buff, 95, was passenger on SS St. Louis

Fred Buff, 95, of Rockville, died Jan. 9 of complications from pneumonia. He was born in 1921 in Krumbach, Germany. He and his wife of 72 years, Lotte, lived in Paramus, N.J., from 1950 until moving to Maryland in 2014 to be closer to family.

He was an avid and award-winning gardener, tennis player and lover of classical music. The couple traveled the world and filled many albums with Buff’s photos.

Buff boarded the SS St. Louis in 1939 and was on the ill-fated voyage from Germany to Cuba. Upon revocation of the passengers’ visas, the ship, with more than 900 Jewish emigres, was turned away from Cuba and the United States and returned to Europe. Four European countries took in the passengers and Buff disembarked in Brussels. In 1940, he emigrated to New York. In his 80s, Buff spent countless hours speaking to middle and high school students bearing witness to the Holocaust. He translated and published his diary “Riding the Storm Waves.”

A veteran of the Navy (1944-46), Buff served in the Pacific Fleet. He married Lotte Neuburger in 1945 before Buff was sent overseas.

He became an executive at the General Foam Corp. which was eventually sold to Tenneco. In 1969, he was appointed president and general manager of Tenneco’s Foam and Plastics Division. Retiring in 1977, Buff began an entrepreneurial second career as founder of Tek-Pac, which later merged into Mercury Foam. He continued as general manager of Tek-Pac into his late 70s.

Buff was a graduate of the Harvard Advanced Management Program (1969).

The couple were charter members of the Jewish Community Center of Paramus, where he served as president from 1974 to 1976 and founder of the board of governors. In addition, he was a member of the Jewish War Veterans, a supporter of the Jewish federation and a fervent supporter of the State of Israel.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by children Gary (Leni), Janice Balin (Robert) and Alan (Pat); grandchildren Jason, David, Daniel, Michael, Andrew, Joel and Noah; and six great-grandchildren. He is predeceased by his sister, Anne Krantz.

Bernice “Bun” Erdrich

Bernice “Bun” Erdrich died on Jan. 25, surrounded by many saddened friends.

She is survived by her husband of 63 years, Howard; her loving sister, Myrna Rogoff; beloved son, Stewart; beautiful and caring daughter-in-law, Ilene; special grandchildren Brandon, Molly, Gillian, Max, Alli and Jillian and many nieces and nephews who all looked at her for loving guidance and encouragement. She was predeceased by her daughter, Gayle Tucker, of loving memory.

She lived an active and meaningful life. She could never sit still. First as a Sunday school teacher involved with Head Start, 30 years as a lecturer for Weight Watchers and was assistant to the director of CALCIO postal workers’ union health plan.

She never neglected her family, being there for their needs, advice and care. Her least enjoyable activity was cooking. She will be sorely missed by Howard, family members and friends. Contributions may be made to Congregation B’nai Tzedek, 10621 South Glen Road, Potomac, MD 20854. Arrangements by Sagel Bloomfield Danzansky Goldberg Funeral Care.

Charlotte Sorkine Noshpitz

Charlotte Sorkine Noshpitz, 91, of Washington, died Jan. 12.

She was born in Paris on Feb. 15, 1925. Her mother was born in Braila, Romania, and her father in Rogachev (now Belarus).

She served in the French Resistance during World War II, saved the lives of hundreds of children by taking them to the Swiss border where they were taken to safety. She also saved the lives of adult men who escaped via the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain. She also took part in the liberation of Paris.

Noshpitz was eventually offered the opportunity to come to the United States to study mental health treatment centers and new therapeutic disciplines, and to aid a group of French doctors planning to build a treatment center outside Paris, modeled on the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kan. She boarded the Ile de France and headed toward New York.

She is survived by her son, Claude Noshpitz, and grandchildren Jonathan Cummings and Samuel Joseph Dowd. She is predeceased by her husband, Joseph Noshpitz.

David Schwartz

David Schwartz, of Albany, N.Y., died at the Albany Stratton VA Medical Center on Jan. 23. He was 92.

He was a native and lifelong resident of Washington and moved to the Albany area more than 15 years ago.

Schwartz joined the Marine Corps during World War II, rising to the rank of staff sergeant while serving in the Pacific Theater. After returning home from the war, he became a small business owner and prided himself on his fairness to his customers and employees.

Schwartz was the devoted husband of his wife of 64 years, Florence, who died in 2014.

He is survived by his sister, Pauline Toporek, and brother, Stanley Schwartz. He was the proud father of Stephen Schwartz of Wheaton; Eric (Ellen) Schwartz of Albany, and Gayle Ann (Michael) Pocalyko of Virginia Beach, Va. His beloved grandchildren are Joshua and Aaron Schwartz and Carlyn and Graig Pocalyko.

An avid fan of jazz music, Schwartz was known for his stories about the musicians, recreating concerts from various recordings, and his vast collection of jazz albums. He also was a passionate sports fan and was especially loyal to Washington teams. Schwartz was a voracious reader of detective novels and newspapers. He loved to tell jokes and funny stories, and he was known for his infectious smile and southern gentleman’s demeanor.

Donations can be made to the Albany Stratton VA Medical Center, 113 Holland Ave., Albany, NY 12208, Attention: Voluntary Services.

Mayer Abramowitz, rabbi to Miami’s Cuban exiles, dies at 97

Rabbi Mayer Abramowitz, who opened the doors of his Miami Beach synagogue to waves of Cuban exiles beginning in the early 1960s, died Feb 2. at his home in Miami Beach. He was 97.

Abramowitz, longtime leader of Temple Menorah, ministered to hundreds of Jews who arrived in the United States as part of Operation Pedro Pan, a mass exodus of more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban minors from 1960 to 1962.

Cuban exiles continued to call Temple Menorah their spiritual home over the years, earning Abramowitz the title “the father of the Cuban Jewish community.”

“Rabbi Abramowitz was so well known in our Cuban exile community because he tried hard to build bridges between different groups,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) told the Miami Herald. “He was especially helpful in the tough early years when so many Cuban refugees were coming over and we were so unfamiliar with how to find a job, get help for the elderly, or feed young children. The faith community, as always, really helped so many Cuban refugees. And Rabbi Abramowitz set the tone for others like him to emulate his kindness. A real mensch.”

Abramowitz was born in Jerusalem on Dec. 13, 1919, and arrived in New York in 1928. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Yeshiva University and rabbinical ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1944, according to the Herald. As a chaplain and first lieutenant in the Army stationed in Europe, he served Schlachtensee-Templhof, a displaced persons camp in Berlin, where he met his future wife, Rachel, a Holocaust survivor. He was also active in the Bricha, the underground effort that helped Holocaust survivors escape post-World War II Europe and go to Palestine.

After his military service, Abramowitz served as chief emigration officer for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Italy. In 1951 he and Rachel moved to Miami, where he would become rabbi at

Temple Menorah and serve for 45 years, retiring at 2009 at age 90.

Abramowitz credited an early trip to Cuba to his lifelong interest in the beleaguered island nation and its people.

“I don’t know who took me to Cuba because I never took a vacation, but it was probably God,” Abramowitz told the Miami Herald when he retired.

Abramowitz is survived by his wife, children Dahlia Oppenheimer, David Abramowitz and Reena Greenberg, 11 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren.

—JTA News and Features

Carolyn Kate “Kitty” Futrovsky Strauss

Carolyn Kate “Kitty” Futrovsky Strauss, of Bethesda, died Jan. 19. She was 86.

She held leadership roles in the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington and Jewish Council on Aging, where she was honored as a life member. She was also awarded the Rosalie and Leon Gerber JCA Distinguished Service Award and the Jewish Social Services Agency George Pikser Award.

She was a longtime, dedicated supporter of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and worked to create the exhibit “Remember the Children” and the Wall of Tiles display done by children.

She was also vice president of the Washington Performing Arts Society.

Strauss loved to cook and was known for making apple toffee, chocolate and rum bundt cakes which she delivered all around town to brighten people’s day.

Strauss was the daughter of Benjamin Futrovsky and Eva Chidakel. A daughter, Evalyn Strauss Luban, died in 2003; her husband, Martin, died in 2004.

She is survived by two children, Steven Strauss (Linda) of Bethesda and Beth Strauss Bonita of Olney, and four grandsons.

Jules Sauer, ‘Gemstone Hunter,’ dies at 95

RIO DE JANEIRO — Jules Sauer, a refugee from Nazi Europe who became one of the world’s leading gemstone and jewelry authorities, has died.

Sauer, who was nicknamed “Gemstone Hunter” after discovering Brazil’s first emerald mine in 1963, died Feb 1, in that country. He was 95.

After finding the mine, German and English experts refused to recognize the stones as emeralds until Sauer turned to the Gemological Institute of America for a verdict. He was vindicated and earned the new moniker, according to the website Metropoles.

“Gemstones are a one-time harvest,” he used to say.

In 1966, his high-end company Amsterdam Sauer was the first South American jeweler to win the Diamonds International Award, the most prestigious recognition in international jewelry. The Amsterdam Sauer Museum, in Rio, exhibits the largest private collection of precious gems in Latin America.

In 1939, the 18-year-old Frenchman fled the Nazis, first to Portugal and then to Brazil, where he would establish his firm. He opened his first store in 1956 beside the legendary Copacabana Palace hotel in Rio.

“I went to school until the day Hitler invaded Belgium on May 10, 1940,” Sauer told the Person’s Museum project. “I lived at my uncle’s house in Anvers, but that day my uncle was in England and I was alone. I had two bikes; I got the best and I left. Goodbye Belgium. I went to Lisbon by bicycle.”

Israel’s honorary consul, Osias Wurman, called Sauer “a pioneer in teaching gemstone faceting in Brazil.”

“He educated hundreds of young people in this noble profession, he just wanted to teach them a profession,” Wurman said. “He was a humanist with touches of a philosopher.”

Sauer’s late wife, Zilda, was president emeritus of the Women’s International Zionist Organization in Brazil.

—JTA News and Features

Photo via screenshot of Vimeo

Chaim Ferster, survivor of 8 Nazi camps, dies at 94

Chaim Ferster, a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor who spent time in eight concentration camps, has died.

Ferster died Feb. 6, in Manchester, England, from pneumonia and a kidney infection, surrounded by his three sons and other family members, the BBC reported. He was 94.

He was born in Sosnowiec, Poland, in an Orthodox Jewish family. In 1943, the Nazis forced him to leave his home, and he spent time in concentration camps in Germany and Poland, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
Ferster, his sister Manya and a cousin were the only members of their family to survive the Holocaust. Manya is now 92.

After World War II, Ferster moved to England, where he found work repairing sewing machines. He later set up “a series of successful businesses,” according to the BBC.

Ferster lectured about the Holocaust in schools and colleges.

“His greatest fear was that people would forget the horrors of the Holocaust,” his son Stuart told the BBC.

On Feb. 6, the Greater Manchester Police shared a video of Ferster playing the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah,” on the violin during a Jan. 27 visit to its headquarters on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

—JTA News and Features

Literary critic Tzvetan Todorov, who studied moral aspects of the Holocaust, dies

Tvetan Todorov, a Bulgaria-born literary theorist who wrote about moral issues during the Holocaust, has died.

Todorov died Feb. 7, in Paris from multiple system atrophy, a progressive brain disorder, according to media reports. He was 77.

Todorov published a number of studies about the Holocaust. In “Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps,” first published in 1991, he suggested that despite the inhumanity of the conditions faced by prisoners of the Nazis, they did not succumb to an all-out war for survival but were actually capable of acts of generosity and help for one another.

“The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria’s Jews Survived the Holocaust,” published in 2001, argued that that motivations for the rescue of Bulgarian Jewry were more morally complex than many had imagined.

Todorov, a Sofia native, fled the communist regime for France when he was 24, becoming a French citizen in 1973.

—JTA News and Features

Theresienstadt chorus member and Holocaust survivor Edgar Krasa dies at 95

Edgar Krasa, a Holocaust survivor who sang in the Theresienstadt concentration camp’s chorus, died Feb. 7.

His death was confirmed by a spokesperson for the Defiant Requiem Foundation, which performs the music created by inmates at Theresienstadt (also known as Terezin). Krasa, who had moved to Boston with his family in the 1960s, was 95.

The Theresienstadt chorus was led by the Czech-born composer Rafael Schachter, who was Krasa’s bunkmate. In June 1944, the chorus performed Verdi’s “Requiem” before an audience that included high-ranking Nazi officials and a small number of representatives from the Danish Red Cross and the International Red Cross.

“Edgar provided living testimony to the extraordinary events that unfolded in Rafael Schachter’s choir at Terezin,” said Murry Sidlin, the foundation’s president and creative director. “He was my first teacher and we owe a great deal to him. We will miss him terribly and his indomitable spirit lives on in each of us and inspires our work every day.”

Krasa, a native of Czechoslovakia, was sent with his family from their home in Prague to Thereseinstadt, where the young Krasa worked as a cook. He also survived Auschwitz, slave labor and a death march.

In the 1950s, after multiple attempts to flee Prague, he and his late wife, Hannah, also a survivor of Theresienstadt, made their way to Israel, where they lived for about a decade. Krasa established the new nation’s first culinary school.

In Boston, Krasa served as the food services director for the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center.
Krasa and other surviving members of the chorus were interviewed in the 2012 documentary “Defiant Requiem.”

An April 2015 performance of “Defiant Requiem” led by Sidlin at Boston’s Symphony Hall was dedicated to Krasa and his wife, who had died only two weeks earlier. Krasa was in the audience as his sons and grandson joined the Orchestra of Terezin Remembrance and the acclaimed Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

—JTA News and Features