Kurt JONASSOHN

On Saturday, December 3, the obituary for the late Kurt
Jonassohn was published with the wrong photograph.
The Montreal Gazette wishes to apologize sincerely to
the family and friends of the deceased for this error.
KURT JONASSOHN
1920 - 2011
Kurt's family sadly announces his death, peacefully on Thursday, December 1 2011 in Montreal. Kurt was a devoted father and father-in- law of Frieda and Joe Faerstein and Jody. Loving grandfather of Sarah and Michelle Faerstein, Jake and Jesse Jonassohn. Generations of students whom he taught at Concordia University from 1961 to 1996 will remember with fondness and great respect their professor whose mission was to teach them how to think clearly, logically, and honestly about the social world.
Born in Cologne, Germany on August 31, 1920, Kurt was predeceased by his parents Frieda and Richard who perished in the Holocaust. Just before the war his late brother Shlomo passed the necessary exams to immigrate to Palestine. Kurt failed the exams because of poor eyesight, but his strenuous efforts to leave Germany met success when the owner of a clothing company where he apprenticed opened in England. After England declared war on Germany Kurt was interned, and then again in Canada from 1942-43, the British and Canadian governments failing to make a distinction between enemy combatants and those persecuted by the Nazis. But "nothing could be very painful after Germany," Kurt wrote forty years later: "on the contrary, I always considered myself one of the lucky ones."
Kurt was eventually released to work in a war industry in Montreal, and after the war returned to the clothing industry as a cutter. While taking evening courses at Sir George Williams University the die was cast: studying "turned out to be more fun than cutting and that's how I got into academia." He graduated from SGWU in 1953, earned the MA at McGill University in 1955, and proceeded to the University of Chicago for doctoral studies. From 1959-61 he worked as research sociologist at R.C.A.F. HQ in Ottawa, before joining the Department of Sociology at SGWU where he became Full Professor in 1972. He retired in 1989 but his love for teaching prompted him to continue part-time until 1996. Kurt was a born researcher: his intellectual curiosity, his scorn for untested home truths, and his love of the scholarly life drove his academic career. With David Kirk he published sociological studies of adoption; he published in the area of research methods; and he co-edited and contributed many articles to the International Sociological Association Bulletin, an organization that he served for nearly twenty years. Kurt's enduring scholarly legacy rests on his contribution to the development of a new field-the Sociology of Genocide-and dates from the moment when his biographical history dramatically intersected with his sociological calling. This happened during a pilgrimage to Auschwitz in 1969. For the rest of his life Kurt thought, researched, taught, and wrote about genocide.
It is the supreme measure of the man that his vision of the problem began but was not constrained by the Holocaust which had claimed both his parents, his relatives and friends, and forced him to become a refugee. As he put it shortly before his death: "if there has been one aim in my work it has been to find the key to the prevention of future genocides. Although I have thought several times that I was getting close, on further reading and thinking, I was always disappointed. It was not only that my ideas changed but also that they were falsified by events." Kurt presented and published more than 40 papers and articles on genocide, and his last book review in 2008.
In 1978, with Frank Chalk, Kurt developed a courseâ€""The History and Sociology of Genocide from Ancient Times to the Present"â€"which they team-taught until Kurt's retirement. Together they presented numerous papers, wrote articles and published The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (1990). In 1986 Kurt and Frank co- founded the Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies which they co- directed until Kurt's retirement. With Mervin Butovsky, Kurt collected the memoirs of 48 Holocaust Survivors ( migs.concordia.ca/ HolocaustMemoirAbstracts.htm).
For many years Kurt lived on the 23rd floor of a small condominium overlooking Montreal, the city that he loved. From there he continued meeting every Saturday morning for breakfast with his best friend, the sociologist Hubert Guindon. Their loyalty to each other staggered their friends who knew that they did not share the same views on many thingsâ€"most notably nationalismâ€"but if they argued no one ever knew. Hubert's death in 2002 came as a blow to Kurt. Kurt always said what he thought, challenging ideas and actions that did not meet his standards. The crustiness served as cover for a man who had suffered and survived a great deal, yet maintained a generous heart, and loved deeply. How dearly he was loved is revealed in his granddaughter Sarah's high school leaving project which she did on the life of her grandfather. Kurt put his impressive intellectual capacities to work for a more humane world, and he will be greatly missed.
Funeral and burial took place on Sunday, December 4. Shiva at 101 Harwood Gate, Beaconsfield QC, H9W 3A5, on Monday and Tuesday from 6 to 9 p.m.
Donations in Kurt's memory may be made to the "Jonassohn Family Foundation" c/o the Jewish General Hospital Foundation, (514) 340-8251 or to the "Jonassohn Genocide Collection" at Concordia University, 514-848-2424 ext 3884. Arrangements entrusted to Paperman & Sons.