AP News, October 25th, 2007
Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich
GENEVA (AP) — Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, a Jewish religious philosopher who escaped the Nazis and later helped bridge the gap between Christians and Jews, has died. He was 86.
Ehrlich died Sunday at his home in Riehen, according to the family notice in Swiss newspapers.
The Berlin-born Ehrlich studied at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies, Rabbi Leo Baeck's rabbinical seminary, until the Nazis closed it in 1942. The Nazis forced him into labor until he was able to find shelter with a Berlin couple and was smuggled into Switzerland.
Ehrlich obtained his doctorate at Basel and later taught at universities in Switzerland and Germany. From 1961 to 1994, he was European director of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, founded in New York in 1843.
At the Second Vatican Council in 1965, he was adviser to German Cardinal Augustin Bea in preparing "Nostra Aetate," a key document on Roman Catholic-Jewish relations.
Ehrlich was the author of several books on Judaism and was credited by the Free University of Berlin with "influencing generations of scientists."
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Peter Hume
MECHANICVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — Peter Hume, a Canadian national wrestling champion in the 1970s who had a bit part in the movie "Meatballs," has died after he was stricken at his home. He was 54.
The 6-foot-6-inch Hume weighed more than 400 pounds when he died Tuesday, the Saratoga County coroner said. The corner did not elaborate on the cause of death.
Hume was the national university wrestling champion for the 1977-78 season in the super heavyweight division for Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. He also played football there.
Hume appeared in the 1979 Bill Murray comedy "Meatballs," which was filmed in Canada. He played a character called "The Stomach."
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R.B. Kitaj
LOS ANGELES (AP) — R.B. Kitaj, a key figure in the British Pop Art movement, has died. He was 74.
Kitaj died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles, said a director of New York's Marlborough Gallery, which was the official representative for Kitaj's works.
His death was reported as a possible suicide, but a cause of death was not given, pending results of toxicology tests, said Capt. Ed Winter of the Los Angeles County coroner's office.
Kitaj emerged in the 1960s along with contemporaries and friends such as David Hockney and Lucian Freud. He eschewed the wildly popular abstraction of the times. Instead, his works emphasized human figures and were full of cultural and historic allusions.
His 1970s work "If Not, Not," for example, contains a collage-like mass of images that include the guardhouse gate of the Auschwitz death camp and a portrayal of T.S. Eliot, whose poem "The Waste Land" inspired the painting.
Kitaj was elected as a Royal Academician of Britain's Royal Academy of Arts in 1991 — the first American to receive the honor since John Singer Sargent in the 1800s.
He also was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1995.
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Ursula Vaughan Williams
LONDON (AP) — Ursula Vaughan Williams, who wrote librettos for her composer husband Ralph Vaughan Williams and produced his biography, has died. She was 96.
Vaughan Williams died Tuesday in London, said Gwen Knighton of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, of which Vaughan Williams was president.
She published "RVW," a well-regarded biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, in 1964. She also wrote lyrics for "The Sons of Light", "Four Last Songs" and parts of "Hodie" and "Pilgrim's Progress," which he set to music, and produced five volumes of verse and three novels.
She married the composer in 1953. He died five years later.
