(Jewish Group) Fred Manasse, physicist, sculptor, voice for fellow Holocaust survivors, dies at 86
When Fred Manasse lit a candle last month at a Boston-area Yom Hashoah event in memory of one of the last survivors of the S.S. St. Louis, it was a highly personal gesture.
His own father had been a passenger on the St. Louis, the ill-fated liner crammed with hundreds of Jewish refugees that was denied entry in 1939 by the United States, Cuba and Canada and sent back to Nazi Germany. Of the 900-plus passengers, 254 would not survive the Holocaust, including Manasse’s father. His father, his mother and younger sister later perished in Nazi death camps.
Manasse himself was rescued as a young child on a Kindertransport, one of a number of rescue efforts arranged by the British government between 1938 and 1940. His older brother, also on the Kindertransport, survived.
Manasse went on to become a stalwart leader on behalf of Boston’s Holocaust survivors, and a man of many talents, accomplishments and interests. He died Friday, after being ill for several years. He was two months shy of his 87th birthday.
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