Molly Willner Furman, 85, teacher at Congregation Beth El
Molly Willner Furman survived World War II as a Polish Jew without falling into the hands of the Nazis, her family said.
Molly Willner Furman survived World War II as a Polish Jew without falling into the hands of the Nazis, her family said.
"In 1940 or so, she was taken by the Russians to Siberia with many others," her husband, Rabbi Isaac Furman, said.
During the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939-41, sections of Poland fell under the control of Soviet authorities.
"It was miserable weather, lack of food," and she lived in a barracks, her husband said. But she was with "a family of eight people together," all part of her family.
When the war ended her five-year exile, she made her way back west, reached the United States in 1950, and married in 1954.
On Friday, Feb. 19, Mrs. Furman, 85, a teacher from 1976 to 2009 at Congregation Beth El, in Cherry Hill and later in Voorhees, died of complications after a stroke at Lions Gate, a retirement community in Voorhees, where she had lived for the last four years.
Rabbi Aaron Krupnick, senior rabbi at Beth El for the last 25 years, said she taught there four days a week, in classes from 4 to 6 p.m. as well as at Sunday school.
"She was a very patient and loving teacher," Krupnick said. "Universally respected."
After they married, Rabbi Furman said, his wife "put me through school," at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, "where I got my bachelor's and ordination."
Mrs. Furman worked at a Manhattan dental supply company during the day, and in the evenings studied Jewish culture and Hebrew for an associate's degree at a school there that no longer exists.
Isaac Furman has been not only a longtime rabbi for Beth El but also a founder and former head of school of the Kellman Brown Academy in Voorhees.
A member of the Beth El Sisterhood, Mrs. Furman was a member of ORT America, the website for which states that as a Jewish organization, it "works to offer skills and training to some of the world's most impoverished communities."
Besides her husband, Mrs. Furman is survived by daughters Esther Miles and Phyllis Wagner, a brother, two sisters, six grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Services were Sunday, Feb. 21.
Donations may be sent to http://kellmanbrownacademy.org or http://bethelsnj.org.
Condolences may be offered to the family at plattmemorial@comcast.net.
610-313-8134 @WNaedele