Home Delivery

Concentration-camp survivor Oscar Schnapp dies

BY ANASTASIA ECONOMIDES | lidesk@newsday.com

April 27, 2008

Article tools

E-mail

Share
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Facebook
- Fark
- Google
- Newsvine
- Reddit
- Yahoo

Oscar Schnapp, a Wantagh resident who survived a Nazi concentration camp in Romania and spent several years in a camp for displaced persons in post-World War II Germany before coming to Canada and the United States, died Wednesday at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset. He was 65.

Schnapp, an optometrist for 38 years, worked with hundreds of clients at Ophthalmic Consultants of Long Island in Lynbrook over the past eight years. Over the course of his career, he also practiced in Manhattan, Deerfield Beach, Fla., and Montreal, said his son, Howard Schnapp of Mineola.

He died of heart complications, said his son, who is a freelance photographer for Newsday.

Born Sept. 3, 1942, in the Jewish ghetto of Chernowitz, Romania, Oscar Schnapp's parents, Verl and Albina, concealed him for four years in a concentration camp in Transnistria, said his daughter-in-law, Leslie Schnapp. Though frail, he learned to walk at around 3 to 4 years old.

Most of the Jews who were deported to camps in Transnistria, also known as the "Romanian Auschwitz," never returned. Schnapp and his family were among the 70,000 survivors who returned to Romania in 1945 only to find that they had lost their homes.

He spent the next several years in a displaced persons camp in Germany, his family said. There, he created a makeshift instrument out of a set of violin strings. An elderly man noticed his interest and began teaching him how to play violin.

In 1948, Schnapp and his family immigrated to Canada. He attended the Montreal Conservatory of Music and played violin in his first major concert at the age of 14. He earned write-ups from the Montreal Gazette and the Montreal Star, Leslie Schnapp said.

Schnapp went on to attend McGill University in Montreal for his bachelor's degree in ophthalmology and earned his doctoral degree in optometry from the University of Montreal.

His other creative hobbies included oil painting and reading. His collection of books included more than 2,000 titles.

Leslie Schnapp described him in one word: selfless.

"He always thought of his family, even before he passed," she said. "Always worried about [them] before himself."

In addition to his son and daughter-in-law, he is survived by his wife of 41 years, Sara, of Wantagh; daughter and son-in-law, Valerie and David Korngold of Wantagh; and grandsons, Jacob and Ryan Korngold.

Services were Thursday at Riverside Chapel in Great Neck, with burial in Cedar Park Cemetery in Paramus, N.J.

The family will sit shiva from 8 a.m. tomorrow until noon Friday. For more information, call 516-781-9221.

Get breaking news alerts!

Would you recommend this?

Rate it: