Claire Golomb, who fled to Holland with her family to escape the Nazis and who later became a renowned child psychologist, died July 26 in Boston. She was 95.

Her work focused on children’s art, make-believe play, story construction, and the role of gender in those pursuits. “Being master of an imaginary universe empowers the child, gives expression to often vaguely understood feelings, provides compensation for feeling helpless or powerless, and joy for having invented a world on its own,” she said in an interview in connection with the publication of her book, “The Creation of Imaginary Worlds.”

Of her chosen field, she said, “The events of the Holocaust and its effect on my family and my community no doubt influenced my decision to choose a career of service, a desire to improve upon the world in some ways,” she said. She was a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts for more than 40 years.

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 of catastrophes, sift through piles of rubble for a brick or other remnant, then bring it back to his office as a solemn reminder that his mission was to prepare for the worst in a world of what-ifs.

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. In 2020, he secured the return of 200 prints and drawings by Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch and Marc Chagall, among other artists, from the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland. Following the return of “Berlin Street Scene,” Ronald Lauder, an heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune, purchased the painting for $38 million.

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 access to the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Carlos Fuentes, Laura Esquivel and others. Her many honors and awards included the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation; the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Civil Merit awarded by King Felipe VI of Spain.

One day, while she was immersed in translating Don Quixote, the phone rang. It was Mr. Gardia Marquez, sounding like a jealous husband. “I hear you’re two-timing me with Cervantes,” he said.

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 bringing Israel and Jordan to the table to sign a treaty in 1994, ending a state of war between the two countries that had existed between the two countries since 1948, when Israel was founded.

Mr. Shavit worked for the Mossad for 32 years, including seven as director under three prime ministers — Shamir, Rabin and Netanyahu.

After retiring from the Mossad in 1996, Mr. Shavit became chief executive of Maccabi Health Care Services, one of the country’s largest health maintenance organizations. He also worked for gas and security companies, advised the Knesset, and chaired an organization that awarded scholarships to veterans.

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 he left office in 2,000. However, the deaths of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, and Amadou Diallo, from Guinea, at the hands of his officers largely eclipsed his accomplishments.

Throughout his time as commissioner, Mr. Safir was unapologetic about his hard-nosed tactics and his barely concealed disdain for civil libertarian critics. “People ask me about civil rights,” he said in 1998. “Well, the No 1 civil right in my book is the right to be free from crime.”

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 ministers, the Canadian-based Bronfman liquor dynasty, and the Canadian media mogul Conrad Black.

He also wrote a history of the Hudson’s Bay Company, a three-volume dissection of “The Canadian Establishment” (1975), and a memoir that began with his family’s escape from Europe under fire from a dive bomber.

His energies hardly waned in his later years. “There’s a sticker on my computer that reads: “We do not stop playing because we are old. We grow old because we stop playing.”