MAX MICHELSON

MICHELSON, Max 92, passed away peacefully on Thursday, August 10th, 2017. Michelson was born and grew up in an extended family in Riga, Latvia, a comfortable life that was interrupted at the age of 15 by the Russian takeover of Latvia and the onset of World War II, which resulted in the seizure of the family's home and business. This was followed a year later by the German invasion and occupation of Latvia. Early in the Nazi \occupation, the family was forced to move to the Riga ghetto, but shortly afterwards the Nazis killed both of his parents. The ghetto was liquidated in 1943, and Michelson was sent to the Kaiserwald concentration camp near Riga. In 1944 he was transported to the Stutthof concentration camp and then to Magdeburg, a sub-camp of Buchenwald, where he remained until liberation by the Russians. After several months recovering in a Russian military hospital, with no immediate family members alive, Michelson made his way to the US zone of occupation where he worked odd jobs for the US army and was able to make contact with a surviving uncle in New York, Leo Michelson, who sponsored his immigration to the US. In January of 1947 Michelson sailed from Bremerhaven aboard the USS Ernie Pyle, moved in with his uncle, and set about rebuilding his life, enrolling in a YMCA evening high school ten days after arriving in New York, completing high school that summer and continuing his education at the City College of New York. In 1948, he married Julia Brooks, and after completing his degree in electrical engineering in 1951, they moved to the Boston area where he began to work at Raytheon as a radar systems engineer and their two sons were born Michelson remained at Raytheon throughout his professional career, taking on positions of increasing responsibility in many of the core Navy defense systems, including the SPS-49 surveillance radar, the Aegis missile control system, and later a weather radar used to protect airplanes by detecting wind shear at airports. He retired from Raytheon in 1990 as a consulting scientist and the technical director for radar and ship systems. During his career at Raytheon, he also pursued and obtained a PhD in physics from Boston University. As he became settled and successful in the United States, he increasingly involved himself in issues related to social justice and the security of Jewish community, as well began speaking at schools and colleges in order to educate the next generation about the Holocaust and ensure its memory. In 2001, the University of Colorado Press published his memoir of life in Riga and his experience in the Holocaust entitled City of Life, City of Death. A German edition was published several years later, and at the age of 89 he was invited and traveled to speak at the Holocaust museum in Berlin and to German students. A long-time Framingham resident, he and his wife, Julia, a social worker, were key individuals in the founding and growth of the MetroWest Jewish Family Service agency, where he served as president and on the board for many years, remaining active into the last year of his life. He was predeceased by his wife Julia and son Gregory. He is survived by his son David and daughter-in-law Yeonmi Ahn, his grandchildren Rebecca, Daniel and Anna, and the companion of his later years, Inge Baye. Services will be held at Temple Beth Am, 300 Pleasant St., Framingham on Sunday, August 13th at 11AM. Burial will follow at the Framingham-Natick Jewish Cemetery, 40 Fairview Ave., Natick. In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made to Jewish Family Services of MetroWest, 475 Franklin St., Suite 101, Framingham, MA 01702 or to Facing History and Ourselves, 16 Hurd Rd., Brookline, MA 02446.

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