Human Rights & Holocaust Art

John Klier

1944-2007

John Klier was an American historian. He was Professor, Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, University College, London, England. In 2004 he organized my guest presentation at that department, with a student audience. At the time of my presentation he was out-of-town, so another faculty member introduced me.
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 Born December 13, 1944, in Pennsylvania, he was raised in a  Catholic family. According to an obit in the UCL website, he attended Notre Dame University, South Bend, Indiana where he received a B.A. and an M.A. in History. 

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As an academic he specialized in Russian Jewish history. He did his  graduate degree studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana. As I had lived in Champaign - Urbana when I was a freshman college student, we exchanged thoughts about central Illinois weather and about Champaign-Urbana being the “Armpit of the nation,” as students in Champaign-Urbana referred to the adjoining towns when I lived there, 1972-74.  

Sadly, he passed from cancer, age 62, in 2007.  

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Before he left this world, he completed the manuscript of
Southern Storms: Russians, Jews and the Crisis of 1881-2, to be published by Cambridge University Press.  

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A University College London website page includes a photo: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uclhwww/hjs/staff/john-k.htm 

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To open an obituary published in The Guardian UK, 26 October 2007, type
John Klier obituary The Guardian UK in a search engine, e.g. Google or Yahoo  

Bob Royce

October 26, 1923 - February 14, 2020

Bob had a long and extraordinary life, including spending years on ships in the U.S. Merchant Marines before, during and after the Second World War. That he survived was itself a miracle as the US Merchant marine had the highest fatality rate of any branch of the US Armed Forces (and it wasn't until decades later that Congress belatedly passed legislation making Merchant Marines veterans).

I recall his mentioning that nearly everyone smoked on ship. He never smoked. Decades later he lost a lung, which offers a sound lesson on the dangers of exposure to secondary tobacco smoke.
On ships he was a radio operator, which, equivalent to being an officer, had a great perk of a private sleeping compartment.

He served on ships throughout the north and south Atlantic, around the Caribbean, and in the Pacific, around Alaska, the US west coast and all the way to India. 

Bob was blessed with his first spouse Millie, 2 sons, a granddaughter. An article, in the Bainbridge Island Review, about a book of poems penned by Bob’s late wife Millie, who passed on in 2007.

After Millie passed he was blessed to connect with Beverley West, an acquaintance from the Quaker Center in Winslow, Bainbridge Island. Beverley and Bob eventually lived together and she became his live-in girlfriend (never mind he once told me that “fellows my age don’t have ‘girlfriends,’ ” ho hum, hah!).

Chaplain Gary Friedman, Seattle

IN memoriam, Chaplain Gary Friedman, Seattle



It’s August 23, 2017. I'm saddened to just learn this afternoon that Gary Friedman, who was director of Jewish Prison Services International (headquartered out of his Seattle apartment), left this world on February 9, 2016. Chaplain Friedman was also the Chaplain for Jewish inmates for the Washington state Department of Corrections.



Chaplain did great work on behalf of Jewish inmates. While we didn't eye-to-eye on some things (as to be expected among Jewish people, on issues ranging from cigarettes - he was an addicted cigarette smoker – and he rejected the consensus of rabbis of almost all denominations, including Orthodox ones - the Lubavitcher Hasidim may be the sole holdout - that smoking is completely "trayf,” as in forbidden), I respected him and his work, and he respected me for my interest in volunteering to help the marginalized, and prisoners are among those who are greatly marginalized in American society. 


While many of us who volunteered were not Orthodox, e.g. with the group programs a colleague and I organized for group holiday programs, he was very accepting of those of us who volunteered to do tzedakah (volunteer community aid) with Jewish prisoners yet who were not religiously engaged as he (as he was Orthodox). He himself attended services and meals with with Lubavitcher Hasidim in Seattle and elsewhere. 



To his credit, he was accepting of Jewish inmates who had either a scant or no Jewish anything when they were growing up. 
He also accepted Jewish prisoners who had a Jewish father but not a Jewish mother (and were thus not considered Jewish by the Orthodox, as the Orthodox only accept matrilinear descent for defining being Jewish).

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I knew very little about him personally other than his strong belief in God and in observing the Jewish sabbath, eating kosher foods, observing Jewish holidays and in his interest to assist Jewish inmates, wherever and anywhere. He was reportedly born at Swedish Hospital, Seattle, 1944 and was raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. He once told me me that his mom was in Vancouver. And he had told me he had been incarcerated himself, in a Federal prison, in California.

According to Deacon John Tomandl (see the attached url of an article, below, from the Correctional Chaplains group)
Gary had served in the U.S. Army, including at bases in Europe.

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After a Jewish inmate wrote me, via snail mail; the inmate had read a news article about my art and education work published in the late Jewish Transcript newspaper, I made my first visit to a prison, accompanied by now retired Seattle -area rabbi Jim Mirel, and his wife, Julie, who is a cantor, to attend a Passover program at a prison at the Monroe Correctional center in Washington state. Chaplain Friedman attended with us. That first visit led to my doing prison visits over a number of years. Gary was really pleased with that. Between around 1995 or ‘96 and 2006 I did twice-monthly prison visits with Jewish inmates in Washington state prisons.


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For a few years after 2006 I co-led a once-a-year program at major holidays like Chanukah or Pesach (Passover). Gary always joined us for the large group holiday programs at the prisons; and he always spoke to us, as a group, before we all entered the prison, where we had to check our belts, ID’s, wallets, purses, etc. in lockers before proceeding into the inside of the prison.

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During my first year of prison visits, a congregant from a Seattle congregation, Bet Alef went with me; he drove. Later I enlisted the congregational community of Eitz Or, the Renewal denomination synagogue in Seattle, for our large group visits. At least one non- Jewish friend joined us at one program. Several Jewish students attending the University of Wash students who were active at the local Hillel (Jewish student) Center joined us, too.

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During one visit, attended by Chaplain Friedman, I presented a Holocuast and tolerance education slide class to a multi-background (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Native American, African-American) audience of inmates. A Christian colleague, now- retired campus pastor Brooke Rolston, attended with us and he joined me during the Q&A phase of the program following my slide class (which focused on the art of late survivor Israel Bernbaum and my wings series drawings).

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As I wrote in letters-to-the-editor published in the late Jewish Transcript newspaper, Seattle; and in the late Forward newspaper, New York City (now a magazine) Jewish prisoners face numerous hurdles which Christian inmates, especially white inmates, do not face and contend with.
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Along with Jewish inmates, other minority prisoners, e.g. African-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Native Americans, and others face great challenges in prisons which white Christian inmates do not have to endure. Most prisons are located in rural towns in states around the US. At state prisons, politically conservative, evangelical and proselytizing Christian chaplains have enormous political muscle in all manner of operations for prisoners re: the use of chapel space for worship, for shelf space of religious books, of foods and faith-based services and the practice of religious observances.

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Even getting basics like Kosher or Halal food for Jewish and Muslim inmates who seek it is a major battle. 
Having a Chanukah menorah (lamp) in a chapel for lighting candles at Chanukah can be a major hurdle.
There is often scant to no interest by state prison officials in assisting. Chaplain Friedman fought long and hard for inmates. And he did so with the experience of he himself having been a prisoner. Likewise, arranging for chapel space for Jewish inmates to meet (with or without volunteers from the outside, as we did) is challenging; whereas there is never any difficulty in arranging worship and meeting and singing spaces for those inmates who profess Christianity as their faith and interest.

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I'm sure that Muslim inmates have the same problems as to Jewish ones, and I recall hearing that Chaplain Friedman worked on behalf of getting kosher foods, which can be eaten by Muslim inmates who eat halal, which is the Islamic counterpart to kosher.
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May Gary Friedman’s memory be blessed.

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An obit of Gary with blurbs penned by several chaplains:

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A 1999 online article about Gary and Jewish Prison Services International

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A 2003 article penned by Chaplain Friedman, published in the JPSI website

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A 2010 article about Jewish prisoners; Chaplain Friedman is mentioned

Dan Bar-On

October 3, 1938 - SEPTEMBER 4, 2008

I met Dan Bar-On on attending his workshop at the Third International Conference on the Holocaust and Education, held at Yad Vashem's International Schoool for Holocaust Education, Jerusalem, April 8-11, 2002. 

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The conference was titled 'The Legacy of Holocaust Survivors.'
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Dan was born  October 3, 1938 in Haifa. He left this world on September 4, 2008 in Tel Aviv. He was a husband, father and grandfather. His widow was Tammy Bar-On, see In Memoriam I penned about her.  

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His 2002 conference workshop was titled:
From the Holocaust to Current Ethnic Conflicts - The TRT Group Experience.
(TRT: To Reflect and Trust).  

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I was really impressed and moved by his workshop. He was a real innovator, having brought together people of enormously disparate backgrounds together in healing and reflection workshops, e.g. adult children of Jewish Holocaust survivors and adult children of Nazi war criminals; peoples from opposing sides of the Northern Ireland conflict; South Africans per apartheid, etc.
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His books included, among others, these titles:
Fear and Hope: Three Generations of the Holocaust. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press 1995. ISBN 978-0674295223; Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press 1989. ISBN 0-674-52185-4; Tell Your Life Story: Creating Dialogue among Jews and Germans, Israelis and Palestinians. Budapest: Central European University Press 2006.  ISBN 978-963-7326-70-7
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This is an excerpt from the one-page description of his workshop in the hardcopy 74- page booklet which conference attendees including workshop facilitators received:
"The present study describes a new phase of the TRT group that brought together, in the framework of a workshop, professionals from South Africa, Northern Ireland, Israel and the Palestinian Authority who work with victims and victimizers in current conflicts."
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Professor Dan Bar-On taught in the Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
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At the conference I gave him a linocut print as a gift as I was so moved by his workshop. He gave me a copy of the book "Bridging the Gap: Story Telling as a Way to Work through Political and Collective Hostilities." Published by Hamburg: Edition Körber-Stiftung, 2000. ISBN 3-89684-030-4. He was the editor, which includes a chapter he penned.  
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May his memory be blessed, written by AKS, February 17, 2023

Barbara Segan 1919 - 2019

The artists' mother, June 1995, at the reception of the exhibit 'From There to Here: Eight Jewish Artists from the Pacific Northwest,' at the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, Washington, D.C., 1995. On the wall behind her: Under the Wings 20: Rubinsztajn. A mime artist, he hailed from a village in the province around Warsaw. Imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto, he was murdered at the Nazi's Treblinka mass murder - extermination - death camp, 1942.

Please click this hyperlink to watch a video which includes the artists mother age 98, when she attended a power-point presentation by her son in 2017.

A bio blurb of his mother penned by her son Akiva Kenny Segan, May 2020.

Barbara Segan was born at the Society for the Lying- In Hospital, a maternity hospital, located in the Stuyvesant Square neighborhood of Manhattan.

Her parents were Harry & Sarah Graff. Harry was born Herschl Barshewsky. He was raised in the village of Gryniewkze, near Bialystok in northeast Poland. Harry had several siblings, one of whom, Liebl, had married a Jewish woman from Lithuania and they had moved to Berlin. Liebl [see OHA 2004: Spieglemann’ing my luftmensch Life) and Hindl had 2 children, a boy and a girl, born 1920’s. I assume they were poor as Liebl sold clothing out of their apartment in Berlin. All four perished during the years of the Third Reich.

Harry’s mother, Zlata Barshewsky,  lived in the Jewish Home for the Aged in Bialsytok in the 1920’s, 1930’s and was still alive during the time of the Nazi occupation of Poland, 1939. Harry, who never saw his mother again after he left Poland around 1903, had corresponded with his mother from the time he left Poland  until sometime after the Nazi occupation when mails ceased.

Barbara’s mother was born Surceij (pronounced sir-kay) and raised in Bobroisk, a city in what is now Belorussia. I don’t know where Harry and Sarah met.
They lived in London, ca. 1903 – 1905, where Harry worked for someone named Graff. Whey they arrived in America, he used the surname Graff as his newly adopted name.

Harry and Sarah had three children: Rosa, born (I think in) 1907; Al, born 1912; and Barbara. Rosa died of cancer in 1970; she was survived by her husband and two sons. Al passed on a few months shy of his 100th birthday, 2012. He had fallen outside and with a broken  hip, he succumbed. He was survived by one of their two sons, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Graff family moved to Englewood, New Jersey when Barbara was very young. Harry owned and ran  a dry cleaners shop in Englewood.  He also volunteered as a secretary-treasurer of a Workmen’s Circle chapter in the Bronx. The Workmen’s Circle, still in existence, is an organization that was founded by politically liberal, social justice oriented, ( i.e. democratic socialists;  anti-Communist and anti-Fascist) Jewish immigrants to the U.S. from eastern Europe.

Harry and Sarah were readers of the Forverts, a Jewish daily newspaper, now still in publication in an English language magazine, Forward. (Formerly The Forward). The Forverts editor over the early  decades of the 20th century  was the famous novelist Abraham Cahan (born 1860, Belorus; d. NYC, 1951).

Harry was an amateur composer. Sarah wrote poetry. During her old age, after Harry had passed on, summer 1968, Sarah lived in the Workmen’s Circle Home for the Aged in the Bronx, N.Y.

During her first years there she was active in building cultural activities, including reciting poetry in the community room or auditorium. Sarah passed on at age 98 or 99 in 1981.  

When Barbara was around ten years of age, she and her mother, my grandma Sarah, took a ride as the passengers on a plane ride over Atlantic City, New Jersey  and the Atlantic Ocean. My mom told me this true-to-life story several times.  She said her mom was adventurous and they were in an open cockpit seated behind the pilot. I assume they all, including the pilot,  wore goggles. This always makes me think of the Snoopy dog character in the “Peanuts” cartoon comic strip which  I began reading when I was a  boy. Peanuts was syndicated in newpapers around the U.S. from 1950 to 2000.

Both my mom and her brother Al had pet chickens when they were growing up. I wrote an article about a famous family story, true-to-life, of grandma’s accidentally having killed Al’s pet chicken, Toddle, when Al was around 12 years of age, and unbeknownst to the family, they all ate Toddle one evening.

My article on this sad yet amusing family tale was published in the late Jewish Transcript newspaper of Seattle and Washington state.
I read the article outloud to the guests and my mom at her 80th birthday party, held in a restaurant in W. Palm Beach in 1999. I will look for the article, type it in full and add the text of it to this website.  

Barbara graduated Dwight Morrow High School, June 24, 1937. She was the first in her family to attend college. She received a B.A. with a major in English and a minor in Art History from New York University, 1941. After graduation, she was turned down from at least one job as she was Jewish. She found employment during the war years doing drafting at the offices of Todd Shipyards in New York City.

Barbara June Graff met Meyer Samuel Segan in 1942; they married in January 1943.  They first lived in a bedbug-infested apartment in the west side of Manhattan. Later they moved to an apartment building in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. In late 1950 they moved to eastern Queens, in the neighborhood of where Floral Park, New Hyde Park, Bellerose and Glen Oaks converge. (There is a Floral Park and a New Hyde Park, Queens, NYC; and a Floral Park and New Hyde Park, Nassau County, confounding and confusing visitors).

Her best friend over decades, who Barbara met in the mid 1950’s, was  a child refugee who escaped Nazi Berlin in the 1930’s.  They’d met at Temple Sholom, a Reform synagogue in Floral Park, Queens.

In the 1970’s Barbara and Meyer were also members of Temple Beth Shalom, of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

In the mid 1960’s, anticipating her younger son (Akiva) would be out-of-the-roost after high school, she began graduate school studies at St Johns University, in Queens, NY, with the goal of becoming a librarian.  She was the only Jewish student in the graduate MLS program. She received an M.L.S. degree and  worked for many years as a librarian at the Queensboro Public Library System, retiring in 1988.

During the course of her life, she had a life-long love affair with the movies.
And at least ‘til her early 90’s, she was a book reader, too. I recall she enjoyed reading mysteries.

In her pre-and post-retirement years she folk danced, both with her husband and later, after he passed in 1995, with other folk dancers who resided at the retirement community in West Palm Beach, Florida, where she lived between 1988 and 2010.

In her retirement and old age years she watched a lot of tv.  I recall she liked the original “Law & Order” series, which premiered in 1990. She watched new ER episodes faithfully, every week, even while her husband of fifty years was in his final decline, late 1994 to early February 1995. Later she was a fan of the tv shows “House” and “Monk.”
 

She spent the last decade of her life in a retirement - old folks residence building in Brookline, near Boston, Massachusetts.  Among movies she loved to see, when seen on tv, were old song and dance musicals.  

She was survived by two sons; a daughter-in-law; three grandsons; a great-granddaughter; a niece; seven nephews; great-nephews & great-nieces.

Jerusalem railway station w/ baked Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) gefiltes bathed in garlic and horseradish

Art: Begun 2007; completed 2017
Media: Ink, colored pencil, gouache
Paper size: 20 7/8 in. H x 30 1/4  W
Framed: 29.5 inches H x 39 ¾ W

Transcription of the ink writing, lower left of the drawing:
“While sketching from the terrace of the Scottish Guesthouse in the Jerusalem sun-blessed heat, I was faint from hunger, and probably dehydrated, too, and I began hallucinating my lunch: Baked Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) gefiltes, bathed in garlic and horseradish / postscript © 2017 Segan”

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Transcription of the ink writing at lower right:
“Drawn from the roof at Scottish Guesthouse, next to Tower room, towards Jerusalem’s Old Railway station, shabbot morning May 17, 2007 © Segan”

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The railway station is near the German Colony district and the Scottish Guesthouse. When Segan drew it in 2007 it was not in use and in serious disrepair. It has since been renovated as an arts and cinema center, now called The First Station.