Professor remembered as ‘real treasure’ by co-workers, friends

During his time at IU, professor Henry Fischel was responsible for helping start the Jewish Studies Program and the Department of Religious Studies. He also taught students about his experience in WWII Germany. \nFischel, 94, died March 18 at Meadowood Retirement Community \nin Bloomington.\n“He was a magnificent teacher,” said Stephen Katz, associate professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. “He loved his students. He marveled in the sake of learning. He knew something through and through.”\nIn 1913, Fischel was born into a Jewish family in Bonn, Germany, and was eventually taken to a concentration camp. When Fischel began teaching at IU in 1961, he taught a variety of subjects, but used his experiences from the Holocaust in his teachings. He stressed the idea that there is no such thing as a pure race.\n“He talked about his experiences, but they were only experiences,” Katz said. “Many Jews were killed in the streets of Germany. He knew Nazis were looking for him. He was in a club for Jewish students at his school. He was afraid of getting his fellow students in trouble, so he marched to the police station to turn himself in.”\nHe was eventually imprisoned in Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp in Germany. He got out of the concentration camp because of the intervention of the International Student Services which gave scholarships to students, including Fischel, to study abroad. The camp released Fischel to Scotland and he eventually became an ordained rabbi, Beth Shalom Rabbi Mira Wasserman said in Fischel’s eulogy.\nBecause of Nazi threat, he escaped to Canada where he continued his studies, and eventually arrived at IU.\n“He was a great scholar of Jewish studies,” Wasserman said. “He was a real treasure. It was unusual to have someone with his history and depth of knowledge.”\nIn 1970, Fischel worked alongside Andrew Mallor, an undergraduate at the time who is now a local attorney, to help form the Jewish Studies Program. They took surveys of students and faculty to see if there was a need for this program. The first meeting for the formation of this program took place in Fischel’s home library.\n“He was very passionate about everything he did,” Mallor said. “He was a great scholar. He had an interesting variety of things he was interested in and was the best at it. He was a renaissance man. I’m not sure we’ll have anyone else like him ever again.”\nFischel also wrote many books, including the “First Book of the Maccabees.”\n“He was one of the ones who categorized the formation of Jewish studies,” Katz said. “He was the one who was the nucleus in which many Jewish studies classes were formed before there was a program.”\nDuring his life, Fischel was very interested in music. He was trained as a classical pianist and grew up in the same city as Beethoven and used him as an influence, Katz said. He was a boxer, and loved IU basketball even though he never attended a game. He was interested in current events throughout his life. He was an avid reader and read the Indiana Daily Student and other papers constantly. As he began to lose his sight, he relied on the radio to provide news, Katz said.\n“He was always a gentleman,” Mallor said. “He always made people feel comfortable around him. He remembered everything. I never left Henry not asking about my wife and children and my parents. His mind was amazing.”