Otto Dov Kulka, a historian of the Holocaust at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, died Jan. 29 in Jerusalem. He was 87.

At age 31, he was the youngest survivor of Auschwitz to testify in 1964 in a trial of nearly two dozen former SS officers who had served at that extermination camp. He delivered a moving account of how Jewish inmates had sung Hebrew hymns before being loaded onto trucks that would convey them to the gas chambers. 

Before writing his memoir, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death: Reflections on Memory and Imagination, published in 2013, Professor Kulka had approached his research on the Holocaust in an impersonal way. The memoir gave him a new way to address the subject. He saw it as an effort to bridge what he called “two modes of knowing — historical scholarship and analysis on one side, reflective memory and the work of the imagination on the other.”

The memoir was honored with the Geschwister-Scholl Prize in Germany and the Jewish Quarterly Literary Wingate Prize in Britain.

The Shofar joins the membership in expressing condolences to long-time shul member Jesse Reece on the death of his mother, Evelyn Reece, who died on Feb. 2, in Virginia. She was 95. Funeral services were held on Feb. 10 at the Beth Moses Cemetery in North Babylon, NY. May the family be comforted by memories of times spent together, and the support of many friends in the shul family.

Walter Bernstein, whose career as a top film and television screenwriter was derailed by the McCarthy-era blacklist, and who decades later turned that experience into one of his best-known films, “The Front,” died Jan. 23 at his home in Manhattan. He was 101.

“I was still in Hollywood in 1947 during the Hollywood Ten,” Mr. Bernstein said, referring to the prosecution of writers, producers and directors who had appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refused to answer questions about their Communist affiliations.  No one took the hearings seriously at first, but they soon would. Mr. Bernstein was considered untouchable both in Hollywood and in New York.

Mr. Bernstein and other blacklisted writers were forced to work under assumed names for sympathetic filmmakers. It was during this period that Mr. Bernstein and his colleagues began the ruse of protecting their anonymity by sending stand-ins to represent them at meetings with producers, a ploy later dramatized in “The Front.”

Six decades after the fact, Mr. Bernstein voiced a warmly nostalgic view of the Red Scare period. “I look back on that period with some fondness in a way, in terms of the relationships and support and friendships,” he told The New York Times. “We helped each other during that period. And in a dog-eat-dog business, it was quite rare.”

Jamie Tarses, who became president of ABC Entertainment at age 32, the first woman to become a network’s top programmer, died Feb. 1 in Los Angeles. She was 56.

According to The New York Times, she “fizzled in epic fashion, brought down by corporate dysfunction, unvarnished sexism, self-sabotage, weaponized industry gossip, and scalding news media scrutiny.”

Ms. Tarses, who had worked at NBC, had a reputation for spotting hit shows, and shepherded “Mad About You,” “Frasier,” and “Friends.” Following various indiscretions and corporate squabbling, she resigned in 1999, leaving ABC with several hit shows, including “Dharma & Greg,” Aaron Sorkin’s “Sports Night,” and “The Practice,” a popular legal drama from David E. Kelley.

Sonny Fox, who as the host of the children’s television show “Wonderama” presided over a four-hour combination of fun and learning on Sunday mornings from 1959 to 1967, died on Jan. 24 in Encino, CA. He was 95.

The show, which was taped before an audience of about 50 youngsters, became a dazzling mixture of cartoons, spelling bees, games, contests, dramatizations and magic. Reportedly, kids waited years for tickets to attend the show. 

Later, he hosted “Let’s Take a Trip,” and briefly “The $64,000 Challenge,” which was his undoing. He inadvertently uttered either all or part of the name Michelangelo to a contestant on a critical question about art. He was ousted, but was never found guilty of any wrongdoing. The Times said. 

The impact of Mr. Fox’s time at “Wonderama” resonated for decades, in letters, emails and social media reminiscences from the grown-up children who had watched the show on TV.

Naomi Levine, who as executive director of the American Jewish Congress in the 1970s was the first woman to lead a major Jewish advocacy organization, and who later became instrumental in New York University’s expansion into a top-tier institution, died Jan. 14 at her home in West Palm Beach, FL. She was 97.

Ms. Levine joined the American Jewish Congress in the 1950s as a lawyer on its Commission on Law and Social Action. Often in partnership with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, she wrote briefs in decisive Supreme Court cases, including Brown v. Board of Education, which dismantled segregation in public schools, and Sweatt v. Painter, which successfully challenged the “separate but equal” doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson.

She served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress from 1972 to 1978, when she accepted a position at NYU. A decade-long $1 billion fundraising campaign begun in 1985 was hailed as one of the most ambitious ever in higher education. Over two decades, she raised more than $2 billion for the university and as much as $300 million a year toward the end of her tenure in 2001.

Ruth Dayan, the founder of Maskit, a fashion house that expressed her social justice ideals by employing the artistic traditions of Jewish immigrants and Arabs, died Feb. 5 at her home in Tel Aviv. The ex-wife of the Israeli soldier-statesman Moshe Dayan, she was 103.

Maskit had stores in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and sold Jewelry, housewares and textiles as well as modish clothing. You could find Maskit at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. There were collaborations with Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior.

“Maskit was an aesthetic melting pot,” said Tal Amit, director and curator of the Rose Archive at the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art in Ramat Gan, Israel. “It incorporated what Israel stood for, this mix of traditions and societies, and it all came together in one modern aesthetic.” The company closed in 1994.