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Jack A. Benaroya (July 11 1921 – May 11, 2012) was a noted philanthropist and prominent civic leader in Seattle, Washington. He supported cultural, educational, and medical groups, with his donations. He was a former director of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and the United Way of King County (Seattle).
 
The largest commercial real estate developer in the state of Washington, Benaroya established the family-owned Benaroya Company in 1956. In 1984, the company turned its focus to venture capital investments and philanthropic endeavors. Noted major donations include:
 Benaroya Hall, Seattle, Washington — facility for the Seattle Symphony; opened in 1998
 Benaroya Research Institute, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle; opened in 1999
 
Benaroya was a supporter of:
 Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International
 The University of Washington Medical Center
 Children's Hospital and Medical Center, Lakeside School
 The Jewish Federation and Council of Seattle
 
Benaroya was an early investor in Starbucks.
 
In the years before his death, Benaroya was slowed by Parkinson's disease. He died on May 11, 2012.

Vidal Sassoon, CBE (17 January 1928 – 9 May 2012) was a British hairdresser, credited with creating a simple geometric, "Bauhaus-inspired" hair style, also called the wedge bob. Due to the popularity of his styles, he was described as "a rock star, an artist, [and] a craftsman who 'changed the world with a pair of scissors.'"
 
His "wash and wear" philosophy liberated women from the "tyranny of the salon" and "revolutionised the art of hairstyling." Sassoon's styles became "emblematic of freedom and good health" and their popularity allowed him to open the first chain of worldwide hair styling salons, complemented by his hair-treatment products. He is also remembered for his television commercials in the 1980s. Vidal Sassoon: The Movie, a documentary film about his life, was released in 2010.

Early life
 
Sassoon was born in Hammersmith, London, and lived in Shepherds Bush. His parents were Jewish. His mother, Betty (Bellin), came from a family of immigrants from Ukraine, and his father, Nathan Sassoon, was from Thessaloniki, Greece. Sassoon had a younger brother, Ivor, who died from a heart attack at the age of 46. His father, a womaniser, left his family when Vidal was three years old.
 
Due to poverty as a single parent, his mother placed Sassoon and his younger brother in a Jewish orphanage, where they stayed for seven years until he was 11 when his mother remarried. His mother was only allowed to visit them once a month and was never allowed to take them out. He attended Essendine Road Primary School, a Christian school, before being evacuated due to WWII to Holt, Wiltshire. After his return to London he left school at the age of 14 and worked as a messenger before starting a hairdressing apprenticeship. In his youth, he was also a football player.
 
At the age of 17, although having been too young to serve in World War II, he became the youngest member of the 43 Group, a Jewish veterans' underground organisation. It broke up what it considered Fascist meetings in East London. The Telegraph refers to him as an "anti-fascist warrior-hairdresser" whose aim was to prevent Sir Oswald Mosley's movement from spreading "messages of hatred" in the period following World War II.
 
In 1948, at the age of 20, he joined the Haganah (which shortly afterwards became the Israeli Defence Forces) and fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which began after Israel achieved statehood. During an interview, he described the year he spent training with the Israelis as "the best year of my life," and recalled how he felt:
 
When you think of 2,000 years of being put down and suddenly you are a nation rising, it was a wonderful feeling. There were only 600,000 people defending the country against five armies, so everyone had something to do.

Full article here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidal_Sassoon

Maurice Bernard Sendak (June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012) was an American writer and illustrator of children's literature. He is best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, first published in 1963.

Early life
 
Sendak was born in Brooklyn, New York to Polish Jewish immigrant parents Sarah (née Schindler) and Philip Sendak, a dressmaker. Sendak described his childhood as a "terrible situation" because of his extended family dying in The Holocaust, which exposed him at an early age to death and the concept of mortality. His love of books began at an early age when he developed health problems and was confined to his bed. He decided to become an illustrator after viewing Walt Disney's film Fantasia at the age of twelve. One of his first professional commissions was to create window displays for the toy store F.A.O. Schwarz. His illustrations were first published in 1947 in a textbook titled Atomics for the Millions by Dr. Maxwell Leigh Eidinoff. He spent much of the 1950s illustrating children's books written by others before beginning to write his own stories.

Work

Sendak gained international acclaim after writing and illustrating Where the Wild Things Are. The book's depictions of fanged monsters concerned some parents when it was first published, as his characters were somewhat grotesque in appearance. Before Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak was best known for illustrating Else Holmelund Minarik's Little Bear series of books.

more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Sendak

Gideon Ezra (30 June 1937 – 17 May 2012) was an Israeli politician. He served as a member of the Knesset for Likud and Kadima between 1996 and 2012, and also held several ministerial portfolios.

Biography
 
Ezra was born in Jerusalem and served in the Israeli Defense Force between 1955 and 1958 in the Nahal. He studied geography and political Science at the University of Haifa. He worked for the Shin Bet from 1962 to 1995, After leaving the service, he became an advisor to then Minister of Internal Security Moshe Shahal.
 
Political career
 
Ezra was elected to the Knesset in the 1996 elections on the Likud list, and retained his seat in the 1999 and 2003 elections. After Ariel Sharon beat Ehud Barak in the 2001 election for Prime Minister, Ezra was appointed Deputy Minister of Internal Security. He was given his first full ministerial position after the 2003 elections when appointed Minister in the Ministry of the Prime Minister's Office. When Binyamin Elon was sacked as Minister of Tourism in July 2004, Ezra replaced him, initially as Acting Minister (the position was made permanent at the end of August). From September 2004 he also held the position of Acting Minister of Internal Security after Tzachi Hanegbi resigned in the face of corruption allegations. This ministerial post was also made permanent in November, and Ezra oversaw the evacuation of the Amona settlement in February 2006. In November 2005 he was attacked during a rally in Sderot against Israel's unilateral disengagement plan over his support for it.
 
In January 2005 he was replaced as Tourism Minister by Avraham Hirschson. When Sharon founded Kadima in late 2005, Ezra joined him, picking up the Environment Ministry portfolio from Labor's Shalom Simhon. After the 2006 elections he was appointed Minister of Environmental Protection by Ehud Olmert. In April 2007 he opposed plans to build a solar energy plant near Dimona to avoid harm to a nature reserve. He has also overseen the expansion of container deposit legislation to cover 1.5 litre bottles.
 
He retained his seat again in the 2009 elections, having been placed twelfth on the Kadima list. However, he lost his place in the cabinet as the Likud-led coalition formed the government. On 17 May 2012, aged 74, Ezra died of lung cancer after a two year battle with the disease. He was succeeded by Akram Hasson.

Arno Lustiger (May 7, 1924 – May 15, 2012) was a German historian and author of Jewish origin. He was the father of the author Gila Lustiger and cousin to Jean-Marie Lustiger, the late archbishop of Paris.

Life
 
Lustiger was born and grew up in Będzin in Upper Silesia. His father, David Lustiger, City Councillor of Bendzin, had a company making machines for the bread production. In 1939 the company was confiscated by the National Socialists. Though, David Lustiger stayed in the company as a worker. In the beginning of 1943 the Jewish population of Będzins was detained in the Będzin ghetto. The Lustiger family were able to hide in a cellar. In August 1943, the ghetto was closed and the population was deported to the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. A few days later, the family voluntarily went to a camp of forced workers in Annaberg, Silesia, in order to remain together as a family.
 
However, the family was torn apart. Lustiger was deported to concentration camp Ottmuth and later to Blechhammer, a subcamp of Auschwitz. Starting from January 21, 1945 Lustiger had to join the death march during the freezing winter towards the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia, as the Soviet troops were approaching. Only half of the 4.000 inmates survived the death march. Later he was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp and to the Langenstein-Zwieberge concentration camp near Halberstadt. There the expectancy of life was around three or four weeks.
 
In April 1945 Lustiger escaped during another death march, when the concentration camp was closed due to the approaching American troops. He was rescued by American soldiers and became a uniformed and armed translator of the US Army.

After 1945
 
Since the end of the second world war Lustiger had lived in Frankfurt and had built up a successful company for ladies' fashion. He had written articles about the German-Jewish history, the Spanish civil war, the Jewish resistance and the persecution of Jews by Joseph Stalin. From 2004 to 2006 he was visiting professor at the Fritz-Bauer-Institute in Frankfurt.
 
On January 27, 2005, Arno Lustiger held a speech in front of the German Bundestag together with Wolf Biermann. On September 10, 2006, his essay (printed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung) criticised Günter Grass's treatment of his Waffen-SS membership in his latest book.
 
On May 15, 2012, Lustiger died in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He was 88.

Roman Totenberg (January 1, 1911 - May 8, 2012) was a Polish-American violinist and educator.
 
He was the father of National Public Radio journalist Nina Totenberg. His wife, Melanie Shroder Totenberg (1917–1996), acted as business manager for her husband for 50 years.

Early life
 
Born in Łódź in a Jewish family, Totenberg was a child prodigy, studied with Michalowicz in Warsaw, and made his debut at the age of twelve as soloist with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra in 1923. He was also awarded the gold medal at the Chopin Conservatory/Warsaw and continued his studies with Carl Flesch in Berlin, where he won the International Mendelssohn Prize in 1931, and later with George Enescu and Pierre Monteux in Paris. He made both his British debut in London and his American debut in New York in 1935.

Professional life
 
Totenberg toured South America with Arthur Rubinstein, and gave joint recitals with Karol Szymanowski. He gave many concerts comprising the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas and all Brandenburg concertos. His diversified repertoire included more than thirty concerti. Among the many contemporary works he introduced are the Darius Milhaud Violin Concerto No. 2, the William Schuman Concerto, and the Krzysztof Penderecki Capriccio. He also premiered Paul Hindemith's Sonata in E (1935), the Samuel Barber Concerto (new version) and the Bohuslav Martinů Sonata, as well as giving the American premiere of Arthur Honegger's Sonate for violin solo. Under the patronage of the eminent violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Roman Totenberg along with pianist Adolph Baller and cellist Gabor Rejto formed the Alma Trio in 1942-43 at Menuhin's Alma estate in California.

More here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Totenberg