Erica Jesselson (Pappenheim), 86

Kind Erica Jesselson, a major Judaica collector and a co-founder of Manhattan's Yeshiva University Museum, died on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at her home in the Bronx, as reported by The New York Times and other sources. From Dennis Hevesi's obituary in the Times:

Born Erica Pappenheim in Vienna on March 1, 1922, Mrs. Jesselson was a daughter of Adolph and Paula Pappenheim. When World War II broke out, she and her sister, Lucy, were among 10,000 Jewish children evacuated to England on Kindertransport trains. In 1940, they were reunited with their parents, who had escaped to the United States and found a home in Brooklyn.

Erica Jesselson purchased the First Nuremberg Haggadah at auction for more than $1,000,000 in 2001; she donated the rare manuscript to the Israel Museum. With her husband Ludwig, she had also purchased and contributed the Trent Manuscript and other important artifacts to the Yeshiva University Museum.

The Yeshiva University's obituary mentions many more of the couple's achievements, including the financing of a synagogue at the Haifa Technion, the founding of a religious school for girls in Jerusalem, the endowment of a chair of mathematics at The Hebrew University, the endowment of a program for rabbinic scholarship at Bar-Ilan University, and the planning and building of Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek hospital, for which Erica Jesselson served as national president of the American Friends of Shaare Zedek Hospital. Jesselson, who was highly involved with Yeshiva University, a vice chairman of the Center for Jewish History, and a co-founder of PEJE (Partnership in Excellence in Jewish Education), also served on the International Board of Bar-Ilan University and the boards of the Haifa Technion, the Israel Museum, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and the UJA Federation of New York.

Erica Jesselson is survived by her sister, Lucy Lang, as well as three sons and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

FRED SPIRA, 83

The New York Times (September 14, 2007) reports the passing of Kind Fred Spira.

Sigfried Franz Spira was born in Vienna on Aug. 7, 1924, the only child of Hans and Paula Back Spira. After emigrating to the United States, he changed his name to S. Franklin Spira, but he preferred to be called Fred....

Mr. Spira’s father, a Jew, had been a banker in Vienna. When the bank failed in 1929, he and a Christian friend opened a camera store. As the Nazis made inroads into Austrian politics even before they invaded, 14-year-old Franz Spira was barred from attending high school. He began working in the camera store — but only in the back, out of sight with his father.

In 1939 he boarded a Kindertransport, one of the trains that rescued Jewish children by taking them out of the country. He was sent to England. Then, joined by his father in May 1940, he arrived in New York. His mother arrived later that year.

In the United States, Spira and his father remained in the photography business, creating the very successful Spiratone company. He became "a photo historian and collector of photographic gadgets who is credited with helping standardize modern camera equipment and making it accessible to amateurs."

A 1979 article in Popular Photography credited Spira with the popularity of equipment including the fish-eye lens, lenses that can be switched from one camera to another, and a system of interchangeable lens mounts: "What [Henry] Ford did to our economy and culture with the concepts behind the Model A and Model T, Spira has done to photography with his accessory lenses, close-up attachments and processing machines."

Spira created an extensive photography collection and co-authored the book The History of Photography as Seen Through the Spira Collection.

Spira is survived by his wife Marilyn and their sons Greg and Jonathan.