Jerome M. Hauer, who as the first director of the Office of Emergency Management oversaw New York City’s response to floods, manhole explosions, mold outbreaks, building collapses, water main breaks, blackouts, hurricanes, sink holes, downed trees, terrorist threats, vermin, and the uncertain digital impact on computer networks of Y2K at the turn of the millennium, died on August 11 at his home in Alexandria, VA. He was 71. Reportedly, Mr. Hauer would visit the sites [...]

David Rowland, a lawyer who secured the recovery of hundreds of looted artworks for the heirs of Jewish collectors who had been persecuted by the Nazis, challenging some of the world’s leading museums in doing so, died on August 15 at his home in Manhattan. He was 67. Among Mr. Rowland’s high profile successes was the 2006 recovery of “Berlin Street Scene,” a 1913 painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, from the Brucke Museum in Berlin. [...]

Edith Grossman, whose acclaimed translations of Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes raised the profile of the often-overlooked role of the translator, died on Sept. 4 at her home in Manhattan. She was 87. Dr. Grossman dedicated herself to translating Latin American and Spanish authors. Her technique helped make her one of the most sought-after translators of the genre. She gave English language readers [...]

Shabtai Shavit, who as director in the 1990s of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, helped to broker a peace agreement with Jordan, oversaw the assassinations of Islamic terrorists, and navigated the global fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Sept. 5during a vacation in Italy. He was 84. While the Mossad was credited with, and criticized for, numerous clandestine operations, Mr. Shavit and the agency were widely praised for their role in [...]

Howard Safir, who presided over diminishing rates of violent crime as New York City’s police commissioner in the late 1990s, but who was severely criticized for not acknowledging racial sensibilities after the deaths of Black men by his officers, died on Sept. 11 in Annapolis, MD. He was 81. Murders, the most closely watched crime category, fell impressively on Mr. Safir’s watch — down from 1,177 in 1995 when he took over, to 673 when [...]

Peter C. Newman, a maverick journalist and historian who skewered the political establishment in Canada, to which he had fled as a boy from Nazi-occupied Europe, died on Sept. 7 in Belleville, Ontario. He was 94. In a long and prolific career, Mr. Newman had stints as editor of the Toronto-based Maclean’s magazine and of The Toronto Star while churning out nearly three dozen books, some delving into the inner sanctums of four Canadian prime [...]

Eva Fahidi, a Holocaust survivor who late in life began speaking out and writing about her experiences, as well as expressing them in dance, died on Sept. 11 in Budapest. She was 97. After the war ended in 1945, Ms. Fahidi kept her experiences at Birkenau largely to herself for more than a half-century. Then, in 2003, on the anniversary of the day when she last saw her family members, she visited the Birkenau site [...]

Bobby Schiffman, who guided the Apollo Theater in Harlem through the cultural and musical changes of the 1960s and early ‘70s, cementing its place as a world-renowned showcase for Black music and entertainment, died on Sept. 6 at his home in Boynton Beach, FL. He was 94. In 1961, Mr. Schiffman inherited the storied Apollo Theater on West 125th Street in Manhattan from his father, Frank Schiffman. During the younger Mr. Schiffman’s tenure, the Apollo [...]

Sarah Wunch, a civil liberties lawyer who championed citizen protections on issues of race, gender and free speech, and helped persuade New York’s highest court to declare that men could be prosecuted for raping their wives, died on August 17 at her home in Brookline, MA. She was 75. As deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts for almost three decades, Ms. Wunsch brought innovative challenges before the courts, aimed at [...]