obituaries

Obituaries from page 65

GAIL WASSER, 71, of West Bloomfield, died Feb.

16, 2012.
She fought valiantly and without complaint for
20 years.
Mrs. Wasser is survived by her husband of 51
years, Laurence Wasser; son, Eric Wasser of East
Lansing; brother, Henry Katz; sister-in-law and
brother-in-law, Judy and Ted Gottlieb. Mrs. Wasser
is also survived by loving family and a world of
friends.
Contributions may be made to National Kidney
Foundation, 1169 Oak Valley Drive, Ann Arbor,
MI 48108, www.nkfm.org; or St. John's Hospice,
37650 Garfield Road, Clinton Township, MI 48046,
www.stjohn.org/foundation; or Jewish Senior
Life of Metropolitan Detroit, 6710 W. Maple
Road, West Bloomfield, MI 48322, www.jslmi.org .
Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel.

Obituary Charges

The processing fee for obituaries is: $90 for
up to 150 words; $180 for 151-300 words,
etc. A photo counts as 30 words. There is
no charge for a Holocaust survivor icon.
The JN reserves the right to edit wording
to conform to its style considerations. For
information, have your funeral director call
the JN or you may call Sy Manello, editorial
assistant, at (248) 351-5147 or email him at
smanello@renmedia.us .

Survivor And Artist

Alan D. Abbey

JTA

R

oman Halter, who turned
his experiences during the
Holocaust as a slave laborer,
death camp survivor and death march
escapee into searing art, died in
London on Jan. 30, 2012, at age 85.
In the years after his career as an
architect, Halter created paintings and
stained glass works that drew signifi-
cant attention. He designed the gates of
Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memo-
rial and museum. Some of his work
was featured at Britain's leading Tate
Gallery in 2006. The museum wrote at
the time:
"Halter fused his own memories
with images from art history to pro-
duce works that are, at once, both
highly personal and of universal
significance. In the painting Shlomo,
for example, the anguished body
of the crucified Christ known from
Renaissance painting comes to rep-
resent the body of Halter's brother,

hanged for bringing bread
in from outside the camp
for his colleagues and
himself"
Halter was born in the
Polish town of Chodecz. He
Roman Halter
was 12 when World War II
started. The publisher of
his 2007 autobiography,
Roman's Journey, said:
and buried him in the ghetto at age 12.
"Roman Halter is an optimistic and
He was sent via Auschwitz and Stutthof
boisterous schoolboy in 1939 when he
concentration camps to slave labor in
and his family gather behind net cur-
Dresden in 1944 where he survived
tains to watch the Volksdeutsch neigh-
the city's firebombing by the Allies in
bors of their small town in western
February 1945.
Poland greeting the arrival of Hitler's
He also escaped from a Nazi death
armies with kisses and swastika flags.
march. A brief return to his hometown
"Within days, the family home has
after the war turned up only four
been seized, and 12-year-old Roman
survivors from the town's 800 Jews.
becomes a slave of the local SS chief
He then moved to Britain. One article
and, returning from an errand, silently
asserted that his time among the beau-
witnesses his Jewish classmates being
tiful buildings of Dresden inspired him
bayoneted to death by soldiers at the
to become an architect, despite the
edge of town."
conditions under which he suffered
His family was sent to the Lodz
there.
ghetto. One by one, family members
His wife and three children, two of
died there. He dug his father's grave
whom live in Israel, survive him.

Irr

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66 February 23 * 2012

THE IRA KAUFMAN CHAPEL

18325 W. Nine Mile Road Southfield, MI 48075

Bringing Together Family, Faith & Community

248.569.0020 • Irakaufman.com

Obituaries

