Werner Reich was a 16-year-old imprisoned at Auschwitz, when he learned a card trick from Herbert Levin, a fellow inmate who sought to distract the young man from the horrors of the camp. That act of kindness and the instructions for the magic trick helped young Werner survive.

He survived Auschwitz, a death march, and a final few months of imprisonment at Mauthausen before U.S. Army troops liberated the camp on May 5, 1945. He never lost his love of magic, which had distracted him from where he was and what he saw. He would perform close-up tricks with cards and coins for the rest of his life. Mr. Reich died July 8 at his home in Smithtown, NY. He was 94.

“Mr. Reich never forgot Mr. Levin nor the gift of a simple card trick that provided a frightened boy with a momentary escape and a touch of humanity,” The New York Times said.

“It isn’t the value or the size of a gift that truly matters,” Mr. Reich said in a TED talk. “It’s how you hold it in your heart.”

Bruce Katz, who with his father started the Rockport Shoe Company in 1971 and established walking shoes as a vibrant footwear category, died on June 26 in Greenbrae, CA. He was 75.

In the late 1970s, Mr. Katz developed a comfortable, casual shoe that became the foundation of Rockport’s business. The company was a pioneer in the use of features like cushioned, removable orthotics (foot beds) to provide internal comfort and structure. In 1986, Reebok acquired the company for $118.5 million.

Then, 27 years away from the shoe business, he returned, starting the Samuel Hubbard Shoe Company, this time using more luxurious European leathers and advanced technology, with a continued emphasis on lightweight, casual comfort.

Bob Rafelson, an iconoclastic director and producer, was a central figure in the New Hollywood movement that jump-started American cinema in the 1960s. He died on July 23 at his home in Aspen, CO. He was 89.

Mr. Rafelson was best known for “Five Easy Pieces,” his 1970 movie about a classical pianist, played by Jack Nicholson, who spurns the bourgeois life to drift through California working as an oil rigger. Nominated for four Academy Awards, the film embodied the era’s anti-establishment mood and cemented Mr. Nicholson’s position as a Hollywood leading man.

Mr. Rafelson was also the man behind the success of “Easy Rider,” about road-tripping bikers who, as the tag line put it, “went looking for America and couldn’t find it anywhere.”

Even after he retired from moviemaking, he was often called upon to reminisce about the mythic days of the New Hollywood. In a 2010 video interview, Mr. Rafelson described his production company, BBS, as “a company that could go out and say, all right, now let’s get the maddest creatures we can find on the planet. They turned out to be some really first-grade wackos.”

The Shofar joins the membership in mourning the death of Charles Bogen, father of synagogue board member Nancy Torchio, on June 9, in Manhattan. He was 91. May the family be comforted by their many years of togetherness. Contributions to the shul in honor of Charles Bogen will be acknowledged to the family.

Morton L. Janklow, the New York literary agent who struck megadeals with publishers for best-selling authors, ghostwritten celebrities, several presidents, and a pope, and who influenced international book lists and the reading habits of millions for decades, died on May 25 at his home in Water Mill, NY. He was 91.

Mr. Janklow represented Barbara Taylor Bradford, Sidney Sheldon, Danielle Steel, Judith Krantz. His agency also represented Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan, as well as Pope John II, whose collection of essays, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, was published around the world in 1994. Representing moneymakers as well as literary talents, Janklow & Nesbit (his professional partner Lynn Nesbit), eventually established a client list of 1,100 novelists and nonfiction writers, including the winners of Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, Academy Awards and other accolades. Many were well-known politicians, entertainers, historians, journalists and leaders of the arts and sciences.

Margot Heuman was 14 when she and her family were deported to Theresienstadt in 1943, a Jewish transit ghetto for those who would be sent to the death camps. Her father died there. Her mother and younger sister would perish later in the camp at Stutthof. But Margot survived, she said, because she had fallen in love with a Viennese girl named Dita Neumann, and their relationship and caring for each other had kept them alive.

After Bergen-Belsen, the site of Dita and Margot’s final internment, was liberated in April 1945, Dita was sent to England and the Swedish Red Cross brought Margot to Stockholm, where she was cared for by a schoolteacher who had volunteered to take her in. In 1947, she moved to New York to reunite with her mother’s brother. She attended City College, and later married Charles Mendelson, an accountant. She died on May 11 at a hospital in Green Valley, Ariz. She was 94. She is survived by a son and a daughter, five grandchildren and one great-grandson.

She and Dita remained friends throughout their lives. Dita became a nurse and married a doctor in Canada. When she died of cancer in 2011, Ms. Heuman was at her side.

Robert Wallach, whose career as a trial lawyer in California was overshadowed by his connection to one of the biggest corruption scandals to hit Washington during the Reagan Administration, died on

May 15 at his home in Alameda, CA. He was 88.

From the moment he graduated at the top of his law school class from the University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Wallach was widely considered one of the best personal injury lawyers in California. Yet, in the early 1980s, he shuttered his practice and moved to Washington to become an unofficial adviser to Edwin Meese III, a friend since law school who had become a counselor to President Ronald Reagan.           Most of his work in Washington was pro bono, including advising a small defense contractor in the South Bronx called Wedtech. Mr. Wallach wasn’t the only Washington figure working with Wedtech. It later emerged that the company had poured huge sums into the coffers of politicians, lobbyists and former administration officials to win big Pentagon deals, often doctoring invoices to hide bribes. Wedtech soon had $250 million in contracts.

Mr. Wallach was convicted of fraud in 1989 and sentenced to six years in prison. The case was thrown out on appeal. He returned to the Bay area and began to rebuild his reputation. Over the course of his 58-year career, he took 283 cases to verdict and lost just 14 of them.