Jack Slomovic, a benefactor and founding Board member of Shalhevet, passed away on Oct. 16, after battling cancer. He was 86 years old. A Holocaust survivor, he was also a prominent Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist who was instrumental in getting Shalhevet on its feet in its early years.

His support of the school is honored with an award named for him, the Renee and Jack Slomovic Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Shalhevet Community, which is given to a graduating senior every June.  He also served on the Shalhevet board for more than a decade.

In a telephone interview, Dr. Jerry Friedman, founder and head-of-school emeritus, said Mr. Slomovic oversaw the renovation of the school when it moved from the Jewish Community Center to its present location, which had been a hospital.

“I asked Jack if he could oversee that and he said sure, right away, because that’s the kind of guy he was,” Dr. Friedman said. “This was a busy man and it took his time and energy. He did everything he could, because he loved Shalhevet.”

Dr. Friedman said Mr. Slomovic’s donations also provided scholarships and funds to hire teachers in the early days. Later he served as a trustee as the Jim Joseph Foundation, which provides Jewish high school scholarships to upper-middle-income families at Shalhevet at other schools.  Mr. Slomovic was also Jim Joseph’s brother-in-law.

Another relative of Mr. Slomovic was his cousin Elie Wiesel, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The two were interned together at Buna, a labor camp near Auschwitz, where many of their relatives including Mr. Slomovic’s mother and sisters were gassed.  Mr. Slomovic’s recollections of their stealing food for one another are recorded in various interviews and in a video recording, and they stayed in touch over the years.

In 1986, he told the Los Angeles Times that he had a different reaction than most people to Night, Wiesel’s famous novel about his time in the camps.

“It doesn’t impress you that much because if you lived there, you know how it was,” Mr. Slomovic said in that interview. “Nothing, including Elie, can put it on paper the way it actually was because it happened to me and because it was so terrible.

“If you read the story, you imagine how it was. If I read it, I remember how it was.”

Mrs. Esther Feder, a former president of the Shalhevet Board who knew Dr. Slomovic for more than 20 years, described him as “the most generous and insightful man.”

“His views about Jewish education were terribly enlightened for a man of his generation,” Mrs. Feder said.

Mr. Slomovic was president of Jack Slomovic Investments and also was a leader of Beth Jacob Congregation, which he also served as president.

According to CNSnews.com, Mr. Slomovic was born in 1925 in a small village called Solotvino, presently located in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains, in the Ukraine. The small salt-mining shtetl was occupied by the Nazis in 1944, and all the Jews, including Dr. Slomovic, were ordered to live in a ghetto. Deportation to Auschwitz followed. He survived the next year at the death camp, along with his father, brother, and his cousin, the Nobel laureate Eli Wiesel. Together they faced daily hunger, death marches, and the constant fear of imminent death.

“People can’t imagine the situation and how hungry people were,” Dr. Slomovic said in the Times article. “If the food was clean or unclean, cooked or uncooked, you ate it.”

In a video interview on the Jim Joseph Foundation website, he described emigrating to Israel after being liberated from Theresienstadt and being quickly sent to the front lines of Latrun, the bloodiest battle of Israel’s war for Independence. Out of 150 men who fought in the battle, he was one of just 15 who survived.

He later immigrated to the United States to reunite with remaining members of his family.  With only a sixth-grade education but determined to make the American Dream his reality, he worked as a day laborer and night watchman to make ends meet. Within a few years, he was running his own electrical supply store, and by 1986 the L.A Times crowned Dr. Slomovic a “Westside real estate developer.”
Jack Slomovic is survived his wife Renee, his son David, daughter Sharon, grandchildren, and by the entire Shalhevet community.

Staff writer Eden Braunstein contributed to this article.