OBITUARIES
WHAT IS P'TACH?
Parents for Torah for All Children.
"P'TACH," is a national non-profit
organization which provides secular and
Jewish education for children with learning
disabilities who are enrolled in our schools.
Before P'TACH existed, the doors of
almost all day schools were indeed closed
to children with all levels of learning
disabilities, and the parents of these special
children were often frustrated by a
community that failed to recognize the need
for providing special educational programs
in our schools. Now, through P'TACH, the
doors of our schools are "OPEN" to all
our children.
Media Tycoon Robert Maxwell
Dies Suspiciously In The Atlantic
New York (JTA) — Media
tycoon Robert Maxwell was
found dead last Tuesday
night, when his body was re-
covered in the Atlantic
Ocean, off the Canary
Islands, near Spain. He was
68.
Mr. Maxwell, the press
baron whose passion was ac-
quiring newspapers around
the world, had been cruising
on his yacht, the Lady
Ghislaine, following a round
of business meetings.
His death followed recent
allegations in the media that
he had ties to the Mossad,
Israel's foreign intelligence
service.
Mr. Maxwell was party to
a libel suit filed two weeks
ago against American au-
thor Seymour Hersh, whose
new book, The Samson Op-
tion, claims an editor of one
of Mr. Maxwell's papers
spied for Israel and helped
arrange the sale of Israeli
arms to Iran and other coun-
tries.
The editor, Nicholas
Davies, was fired last week
from his position as foreign
editor of the Daily Mirror, a
leading British tabloid, after
photographs surfaced plac-
ing him in Ohio where, Mr.
Hersh alleged, he had been
on an arms-buying trip.
Mr. Maxwell, a British
subject, was a Czechoslovak
Jew born Jan Lodvik Hoch
in 1923 in a small village in
Slovakia, to a poor family.
During the war, he served in
the French underground and
British army. His mother
died in Auschwitz; his father
was arrested by the Germans
and was never heard from
again.
Mr. Maxwell was awarded
a British medal for valor in
fighting the Germans during
World War II.
After the war, Mr. Max-
well founded Pergamon
Press, which published
magazines dealing with
scientific issues. He went on
to build a newspaper com-
pany listed as one of the top
10 communications busi-
nesses in the world. In 1984,
he bought Mirror Group
Newspapers, in Britain.
His Maxwell Communica-
tions Corp., which owns the
U.S. publisher Macmillan as
well as the Berlitz language
schools, was reported to be
heavily in debt.
Earlier this year, Mr.
Maxwell rescued the New
York tabloid Daily News
from certain death. Last
Robert Maxwell
August, he gained total con-
trol of Ma'ariv, Israel's
second-largest circulation
daily, after buying 50 per-
cent of the Israeli paper in
1990. This past March, he
launched a Russian-
language paper, Vremya, in
Israel.
Another of Mr. Maxwell's
publications, the English-
language European, was
sponsoring a meeting of the
International Association of
Jewish Lawyers in Brussels
at the time his body was
found.
Mr. Maxwell was promi-
nent in many Jewish causes.
He was honorary president
of the State of Israel Bonds
Organization for the United
Kingdom and was seen fre-
quently at dinners for
various Jewish groups. He
was scheduled to be honored
by the Zionist Organization
of America on Nov. 23.
Mr. Maxwell stepped in
when a Lubavitch organiza-
tion, Lishkas Ezras Achim,
provided an airlift for 196
Jewish children from the
area around Chernobyl, the
site of a 1986 nuclear acci-
dent. Mr. Maxwell provided
his own plane to airlift the
crew members needed to
complete the mission after
problems resulting from the
Persian Gulf War prevented
the swift transportation of
the ailing children to Israel.
Although he was a mem-
ber of the Labor Party in
Britain and once served as a
Labor member of Parlia-
ment, Mr. Maxwell formed
close ties to Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir of
Likud.
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The Michigan branch, P'TACH of
Michigan, Inc., was founded in May of
1979 by a group of parents, lay people and
professionals in fields related to special
education. Our main objective is to provide
special education for learning disabled
children with the goal of mainstreaming
them into regular classrooms whenever
possible. Today, P'TACH has grown to
serve over twenty children in its two
programs. Unfortunately, due to a lack of
financial resources, children are currently
on a waiting list to enter P'TACH's
programs.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
P'TACH of Mich., Inc.
25311 Ronald Court
Oak Park, Michigan, 48237
(313) 399-6281
All donations are tax deductible
..."Who shall live and who shall die"...
- Musaf Service High Holidays -
KRISTALLNACHT
An unforgettable Night
November 9-10, 1938
Broadway Producer
Joseph Papp
Born in 1921 to a Yiddish-
speaking family in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn,
Joseph Papirofsky may not
have seemed the most likely
candidate to transform
American theater.
But Mr. Papp, who died
last week from prostate
cancer, did just that by
creating the New York
Shakespeare Festival, pro-
ducing A Chorus Line and
Hair, and invigorating
Yiddish theater in New
York.
His productions at the
New York Shakespeare Fes-
tival Public Theater earned
28 Tony Awards, three
Pulitzer Prizes, and almost
every other drama award.
His productions have in-
cluded some of the most pop-
ular plays and musicals in
recent decades, while others,
like Larry Kramer's The
Normal Heart, about AIDS,
were groundbreaking. A
Chorus Line, which grossed
almost $150 million dollars
in its 15-year-run, gave Mr.
Papp the financial freedom
to strike out in uncharted
territory.
Risk-taking and innova-
tion were a central part of
Mr. Papp's philosophy of
theater. In 1956, he began
presenting Shakespeare
productions at Central Park
to bring the Bard free to the
people of New York. These
programs also gave Mr.
Papp the opportunity to
employ black and Hispanic
actors.
Mr. Papp was often at log-
gerheads with the theater
and political establishment.
After working with a radical
theater project in California,
he was called to testify
before the House Committee
on Un-American Activities.
Young Israel of Southfield
27705 LAHSER ROAD • SOUTHFIELD, MICHIGAN 48034
Holocaust Memorial Plaque Dedication
November 10, 1991
10:30 a.m.
An Event For You and Your Family
358-0154
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HEBREW
), MEMORIAL
CHAPEL
. . . WITH GOOD TASTE
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MARK E. KLINGER
ROBERT H. BODZIN
RABBI BORUCH E. LEVIN
543-1622
SERVING ALL CEMETERIES
Executive Director, H.B.S.
Funeral Directors
(313) 626-9050
29594 Orchard Lk. Rd.
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Providing service to the entire
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dignity and compassion.
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