obituaries

Obituaries from page 72

Irving Cohen, Maitre D' Of
Concord Hotel In Catskills
New York (JTA) — Irving Cohen, the mai-
tre d' at the popular Concord Hotel in the
Catskills for 50 years, died in Florida at 95.
Cohen, who started working as a waiter
at the Concord in the late 1930s and stayed
there until the resort shut down in 1988,
died Oct. 1, 2012, at his home in Boca
Raton, the New York Times reported.
-- He was known at the hotel as "King
Cupid" for being the unofficial match-
maker. Many Jewish guests came to the
Concord year after year to find a suitable
spouse, and Cohen devised a seating sys-
tem using a pegboard and colorful pins
to place girls and boys next to each other,
according to the Boca Raton News.
"The dining room was the place to meet
other people, and for many it was the main
attraction," he told Boca Life in 1999. The
paper described him as a warm, endearing
personality with a quick wit who intro-
duced some 10,000 couples to each other,
resulting in more than 100 marriages.
The Concord was a hotspot for Jewish
guests after the turn of the 20th cen-
tury. The Catskills, in upstate New York,

became known as the Borscht Belt after
many Jewish residents settled in New York
City and built guesthouses, inns and hotels
as getaways.
Cohen was born in 1917 on the Lower
East Side of Manhattan. He worked as bus-
boy at Grossinger's, another Catskills hotel
resort, after graduating from the area's
Seward Park High School, according to the

Times.

Security Is Up In France After
Blanks Are Fired At Synagogue
(JNS.org) France is boosting security at
Jewish religious sites after blank bullets
were fired on a synagogue west of Paris,
Israel Hayom.
French President Francois Hollande
met Oct. 7 with leaders of the country's
Jewish community and pledged to fight
extremism and anti-Semitism "with the
greatest firmness." He said that authorities
will increase security at Jewish religious
sites so they won't be subject to the kind
of attack that targeted a synagogue in the
Paris suburb of Argenteuil on Oct. 6.
A representative of the synagogue says
the building was targeted with about eight

blank bullets and services were canceled.
The representative, who spoke on condi-
tion of anonymity because a police investi-
gation is under way, said no one was hurt
in the incident.
The attack on the synagogue came hours
after police carried out raids across France
against suspected Islamist cells. According
to preliminary witness statements, the
shots came from a car which slowed down
as it approached the synagogue, before
accelerating and fleeing the scene.
"A person ... heard a bang and saw
flashes. They fired blanks; there were no
impact signs from the bullets:' a witness
told police.
Board of Jewish Communities in Val-
d'Oise Chairman Moshe Cohen-Sabban
told Le Parisien, "This was an act that was
more against the Jewish community. This
is very worrying."

Human Rights Watch
Condemns Hamas Abuses
(JNS.org ) Human Rights Watch has
released a 43-page report titled "Abusive
System" in which it accuses Hamas, the
internationally labeled terrorist group

which governs the Gaza Strip, of cor-
ruption and human rights abuses such
as arbitrary arrests, torture and unfair
trials.
Gaza's "criminal justice system reeks
of injustice, routinely violates detainees'
rights, and grants impunity to abusive
security services ... Hamas should stop
the kinds of abuses that Egyptians, Syrians
and others in the region have risked their
lives to bring to an end," said Joe Stork,
the deputy Middle East director of Human
Rights Watch, according to the New York

Times.
The report detailed seven alleged abuse
cases. In one case, Abdel Karim Shrair
was arrested in July 2008 and executed by
firing squad in May 2011. Shrair's lawyers
say he was tortured for three weeks. The
Human Rights Watch report finished with
a call to cease all capital punishment in
Gaza and all prosecutions of civilians in
military courts.
Hamas representatives called the report
politically charged and said the group
has fired or disciplined 120 employees
for abusing prisoners. They also tried to
transfer blame to Israel.

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October 11 • 2012

Obituaries