Barbara Joy Gelleri
7/26/1937–4/15/2013
In San Francisco at age 75. Beloved wife of the late Murray Gelleri for 50 years; loving mother of Alex (Ursula) Gelleri, Lesa (Luis) Rosa and Evin (Debby) Gelleri; adoring grandmother (Nanny) of Jakob and Lukas Gelleri, Tyler and Haley Rosa and Hannah and Madelyn Gelleri; dear sister of Dini Freeman and sister-in-law Miriam (Mervyn) Cohn. Barbara leaves behind many family and friends.
Barbara was an avid tennis player and fan. She loved watching her children and grandchildren compete in various sports and activities. She adored her dog Lxxii. After a career as a tennis shop owner in San Rafael with her business partner Sera Lane and as a corporate event planner at Autodesk, Barbara volunteered at the Hebrew Free Loan Association in San Francisco. She will be dearly missed by many.
Memorial services were held on April 17 at Congregation Sherith Israel, followed by interment at Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery, San Rafael. In lieu of flowers, donations to the California Pacific Medical Center Foundation, Dr. Cobb’s Brain Cancer, Research, P.O. Box 7999, San Francisco, CA 94120, (415) 600-4400, would be kindly appreciated.
Robert M. Harlick
10/14/1930–4/13/2013
In San Francisco at age 82. Beloved husband of Phyllis Harlick for 54 years; loving father of Alison Oakley and Bruce Harlick and son-in-law Daniel Oakley; adoring grandfather of Katherine and Matt Oakley; dear brother-in-law, uncle, cousin and friend to many.
Robert was a native San Franciscan and a family lawyer for 56 years. He was a renaissance man who will be greatly missed by his family and friends.
Funeral services were held April 16 at Sinai Memorial Chapel, San Francisco, followed by interment at Eternal Home Cemetery, Colma. In lieu of flowers, donations to Hospice by the Bay, S.F., or the Harlick Fund at the Hebrew Free Loan Association, S.F., would be kindly appreciated.
Morris (Kibby) Kibrick, born 6/2/28, died peacefully in his sleep at home, surrounded by family, on 4/17/13.
He was predeceased by his wife of 46 years, Miriam Kibrick, who died on 9/2/2001. Kibby is survived by his daughters, Beth Berezovsky (Isaac) and Orit Riskin (Paul), as well as his four grandchildren, Hila Propp (Toby), Nir Berezovsky and Liana and Michael Riskin.
Funeral services were held on Thursday, 4/18/2013, at the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park Chapel, Colma. The family prefers memorial contributions be made to the Jewish National Fund memorial tree planting.
Hilde Korr
Succumbing to a lengthy series of large strokes, Hilde Korr (neé David) took her last breaths on March 28, 2013. She was laid to her eternal rest at the Home of Peace Cemetery in Oakland on her 92nd birthday, March 31, 2013, thus bringing to full cycle a long and rich life.
Hilde was born in the small (population 3,000) German town of Bickenbach-an-der-Bergstrasse, in the State of Hessen, where the family had lived for 200 years. Most of the extended family lived within a 20-mile radius. In 1923, her family moved to the nearby big city of Darmstadt, noted for its universities and a long history of a strong Jewish presence. The treasured Darmstadt Haggadah — housed in the Darmstadt University Library — is a 15th-century manuscript retelling of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt with hand-drawn illustrations. Little could the David family know that they too would soon be forced into their own exodus from Germany. (The family too would be dispersed across the globe.)
Hilde excelled in school and in sports. With the rise of National Socialism in Germany, Jewish students turned to Jewish sports clubs to be physically strong and compete. In Hessen, the religious Jewish organization Agudas Yisrael sponsored sports clubs for men and women.
Hilde’s generation was perhaps the last whose schooling required the memorization of some of the greatest — and often very lengthy — German poetry of the greatest poets ever to tread the noble soil of planet earth, primarily Goethe (author of “Faust”) and Schiller (author of “William Tell”).
Hilde was as steeped in the pinnacle of Western culture — from science to opera
— as well as with a strong, Jewish education. Her parents also instilled in her a love of nature and the joy of hiking. She passed all these joys on to her children.
As National Socialism strengthened its fascist hold on Germany, Hilde’s father opined that the German people would soon see the danger of the madman who was chancellor, and oust him. Sadly, that was not to be. In 1938, all Jews were expelled from public schools and universities — both as teachers and students. Hilde then completed her high school studies (equivalent to a junior college associate of arts degree in the USA) at the Jewish “Philantropin” in Frankfurt am Main and went on to study Chemistry at the Jewish University in Berlin, the only remaining university at which Jews could teach and study. Hilde continued her studies there even after the start of World War II on Sept. 1, 1939.
The day after the Nov. 9, 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, when hundreds of synagogues across Germany were set ablaze, Hilde’s father was imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp. At that time, German policy was still “simply” to force Jews to sell any businesses or property and leave the country. (The “Final Solution” to exterminate European Jews was adopted at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942.) Hilde’s mother, being a brilliant woman, used a ruse to get the police to release her husband, Friedrich, after a month’s internment, in order to sign papers to sell his business to an Aryan. (Friedrich never mentioned a word of the unspeakable horrors that befell him in Buchenwald.)
By early 1940, it was clear that it would not be safe to remain in Germany. Hilde’s mother (Rosa) took the train to the nearest U.S. Embassy, in Stuttgart, to apply for an immigration visa, the granting of which required two U.S. citizens to provide affidavits of their own economic stability, including all their assets, thus assuring that the applicant would not be an economic burden on the U.S.
Those who survived Europe of World War II all have miraculous stories of survival to relate. Two such miracles occurred for the David family.
Hilde’s mother returned to Stuttgart every two weeks to learn whether immigrant visas were approved for the family. Meanwhile, one had to book passage on a ship to the USA. Of course, boarding a ship required passengers to show proof that they would be allowed entry to the USA. Rosa had booked passage on the USS Washington, leaving from the Italian port of Genoa, in May 1940. A true miracle occurred when, just days before that ship’s departure, the family received the entry visas from the U.S. government.
Having affirmed that all taxes were paid, the German government gave the David family the required documents to leave the country, revoked their citizenship and allowed each of them to leave with 10 marks (less than 10 dollars in buying power) in cash.
Yet another miracle occurred when the family arrived at the Munich train station to transfer to a train bound southward for Italy. Hilde’s father, whose business had taken him across Germany, had wanted to show the family the beautiful city of Munich. As the family walked along the platform in Munich, Hilde’s mother heard a man seeming to mutter “HIAS” — the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Rosa approached the man and advised him of her circumstance. He told her that the border was going to be closed that very night, not to delay, and catch the very next train south to Italy. The family did so, made the connection, arrived safely in New York, and proceeded directly to Oakland, where a family member had moved in the late 1920s.
The David family arrived in Oakland in June 1940. After the U.S. entry into World War II, in December 1941, the David family, being from Germany, were labeled “enemy aliens.” (The U.S. government could not fathom that persecuted Jewish refugees would never support the German government of that era.) As “enemy aliens,” the family was subject to a strict curfew. (That issue was ultimately resolved; U.S. citizenship was granted in 1945.) Family members were able to get work. Hilde got a job as an analytical chemist at Pacific Labs in San Francisco.
Of the 73 years spent in Oakland, Hilde spent 68 years in the home the family purchased in 1943. She met her husband, Irving, in Oakland. After serving in the Pacific Theater with the U.S. Navy during World War II, Irving completed his pharmacy education at the University of Colorado and then returned to Oakland to marry Hilde in August 1948.
Both enjoyed music. Hilde played piano and Irving the trumpet. In the early years of their marriage, they enjoyed the live performances of the San Francisco Opera. The home was always filled with music, music, and more music. When not listening to or playing music, Hilde was always reading a new book.
For 40 years, the couple owned Park View Prescription pharmacy, across the street from Children’s Fairyland in Oakland.
In 1987, on the 50th anniversary of her high school graduation, Hilde, and many of her classmates who were still alive, were invited back to Darmstadt for a reunion. Having maintained contact with two non-Jewish German friends through the years, Hilde realized this would likely be the last opportunity to see them. Hilde and Irving traveled to Germany and enjoyed walking through the city where some very wonderful things had happened as a youth. Hilde was brought as a speaker to the very high school she had attended, to give the students a living lesson in history. (From 1946 until around 1990, German students were taught history up to 1939, when it simply “stopped” and then recommenced in 1946. The war years were simply obliterated from their education.) After Hilde’s brief talk to the class, one of the students asked: How could this horrific anti-Semitism have happened? Hilde responded succinctly: Ask your parents!
From her mother, Hilde developed a strong sense of the importance and strength of women. She was a “women’s libber” for decades before that term was coined. She enjoyed horseback riding in the Oakland hills. She and her husband imparted strength of character to their children, Fred and Sharon, who attended U.C. Berkeley. They knew they could accomplish anything they set out to do. Fred studied pharmacy and Sharon became a physician.
Hilde, the matriarch of a proud family, was among the last of “the survivors” of the 20th century’s worst nightmare. She survived the hellhole of Nazi Germany, was able to come to the USA and start a new life that blossomed with a beautiful family. She is — and will always be — missed. Hilde is survived by her husband of almost 65 years, Irving, her son Fred, and her daughter Sharon (husband Harvey and sons Eli, Ethan and Seth). Donations may be made to the teen programming fund at Beth Jacob Congregation, 3778 Park Blvd., Oakland CA 94610.
Barry J. Oberstein, M.D., died peacefully April 15 after a more than
two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. Beloved husband, father, grandfather, brother, doctor, and member of the community, Barry touched the lives of many people.
He began his medical career by serving his country honorably as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force. Throughout his nearly 50-year professional career, Barry was a talented and compassionate doctor who took enormous joy in practicing medicine in a traditional way: He “cared” for his patients in every sense of that word — eager to develop a real relationship with his patients, to help newcomers fit into the community, or to help in just about any way he could.
A devoted teacher, he took pride in training the next generation of physicians through his work with UCSF, as well as his ongoing mentoring of new doctors. Barry was an active participant in many medical ethics conferences, including chairing the Institute for Jewish Medical Ethics. He was very involved in the San Mateo County Medical Association and was a founding physician of the Mills Peninsula Division of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.
An active member of the Jewish community, Barry committed his energy in a wide range of capacities to Peninsula Temple Sholom, Jewish Community Federation, Peninsula Jewish Community Center and Chabad. He was a lifelong golfer, tennis and squash player and bike rider. He brought boundless energy to everything he did.
Most of all, he was an inspiration to his family and will be deeply missed by his wife (Sandy), children (Linda and Jeff), his son-in-law and daughter-in-law (Moshe and Sophie), grandchildren (Lily, Evan, Avi and Zev) and brother- and sister-in-law (Norman and Gita).
Services and interment were held on
April 16. Gifts in his memory may be made to Peninsula Temple Sholom (1655 Sebastian Drive, Burlingame, CA 94010), Peninsula Jewish Community Center (800 Foster City Blvd., Foster City, CA 94404), or the Mills-Peninsula Division of PAMF, c/o Mills-Peninsula Hospital Foundation (1501 Trousdale Drive, Burlingame, CA 94010).