Deaths (Obituaries)

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      Christophe Deloire, Who Strove to Protect Journalists, Dies at 53

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      As the leader and spokesman for Reporters Without Borders, he rescued some, sought refuge for others and lobbied for pluralism in the press.Christophe Deloire, whose nonpartisan organization to protect journalists rescued dissidents from jail and championed a diversity of viewpoints in the profession around the world, died on Saturday in Paris. He was 53.The cause was complications of brain cancer, according to Reporters Without Borders, the media group for which he served as secretary general for the last 12 years.Mr. Deloire, who was himself a journalist and an author, lobbied publicly and labored behind the scenes to promote a free press in countries that muzzled journalists. He helped negotiate freedom for those who had been threatened with arrest, imprisoned or held hostage.Marina Ovsyannikova, a former Russian state journalist who fled her country with the help of Reporters Without Borders, at the group’s offices in Paris in 2023.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesIn 2023, Reporters Without Borders, known by its French initials R.S.F., coordinated the clandestine escape of Marina Ovsyannikova, a former Russian state TV journalist who incensed the Kremlin by storming a live news program in 2022 to denounce the invasion of Ukraine.Ms. Ovsyannikova was fined and forced to choose between prison and exile. Then, after another public protest, she was placed under house arrest pending a trial. On her lawyers’ advice, she fled Russia with her 11-year-old daughter, evading the authorities by switching cars several times before trudging through mud to cross the border and make her way to France.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Debby Lee Cohen, Who Helped Prune Plastic From Schools, Dies at 64

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      Her successful campaign against foam lunch trays in New York City led to similar city and statewide bans — and taught a group of fifth graders how to take on City Hall.As an artist who liked to play with scale, Debby Lee Cohen created monumental pieces, like the giant puppets she designed for Manhattan’s annual Village Halloween Parade, as well as miniatures, like the tiny forest she once made for a work by the interdisciplinary artist and compose Meredith Monk, with whom she often collaborated.A decade and a half ago, she became a plastic activist when she learned the scale of waste in New York City’s public schools.Her daughter Anna, then in second grade at a school in the East Village, had announced that she was boycotting lunch after seeing an exhibition on climate change at the Museum of Natural History that included a diorama of polar bears atop a mountain of what she recognized as her school’s lunch trays. It was then that Ms. Cohen learned that school lunches were served on foam trays — and that the city’s more than 1,800 public schools were using and throwing out at least 800,000 of them daily.Ms. Cohen, an artist, animator, performer, puppeteer and environmental activist whose campaign to eliminate foam trays from New York City’s public schools paved the way for similar bans in the city and state — and who taught students how to advocate for themselves at school and at City Hall — died on April 7 at her home in Manhattan. She was 64.The cause was colon cancer, said her sister, Ellie Cohen.The interdisciplinary artist and composer Meredith Monk, left, and Robert Een wearing costumes designed by Ms. Cohen in a performance of Ms. Monk’s “Facing North.” Ms. Monk and Ms. Cohen collaborated frequently.T. JunichiIn 2009, after her daughter’s school lunch boycott — which she solved in the short term by making her daughter’s lunches herself — Ms. Cohen looked for organizations that were dealing with the tray issue. There were none. But she found like-minded parents who were also working to reduce the staggering amount of plastic waste in their children’s schools, and they banded together to push for citywide action.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jean-Philippe Allard, Jazz Producer and Musicians’ Advocate, Dies at 67

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      He called himself a “professional listener,” and he tended to develop lifelong relationships with the artists he worked with.Jean-Philippe Allard, a French record executive and producer who helped revive the careers of jazz greats who had been all but forgotten in the United States, and who earned a reputation for uncommonly fierce advocacy on behalf of musicians, died on May 17 in Paris. He was 67.The music producer Brian Bacchus, a close friend and frequent collaborator, said Mr. Allard died in a hospital from cancer, which had returned after a long remission.Artists ranging from Abbey Lincoln to Juliette Gréco to Kenny Barron all said they had never worked with a more musician-friendly producer.“Regarding my work, I would always consider it as co-producing with the artist,” Mr. Allard told the music journalist Willard Jenkins in an interview in March. “Some producers are musicians or arrangers, like Teo Maceo or Larry Klein; others are engineers; some are professional listeners. I would fall in this last category: listening to the artist before the session, listening to the music during the session, and listening to the mixing engineer.”He tended to develop lifelong relationships with the artists he worked with. “His ear was always open to the artist, and he was always concerned about what was best for the artist,” the vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater said in an interview. “He saw me. He embraced me. He wasn’t afraid of me. He encouraged my independence. He encouraged me speaking out.”Mr. Allard, right, in the studio with the bassist Charlie Haden, one of the many prominent jazz musicians he worked with.Cheung Ching Ming, via PolyGram/UniversalWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sigmund Rolat, Who Used His Wealth to Memorialize Polish Jews, Dies at 93

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      A Holocaust survivor and a shipping financier, he returned to his home country, where his parents and brother perished, to help build a museum and other memorials.Sigmund Rolat, a Polish Holocaust survivor who tapped the wealth he accumulated as a businessman in the United States to support cultural projects in his homeland, most notably a museum devoted to the history of Jews in Poland that stands on the grounds of the Warsaw Ghetto, died on May 19 at his home in Alpine, N.J. He was 93.His son, Geoffrey, confirmed the death.Mr. Rolat believed that except for the dark chapter of World War II, with Nazi atrocities at concentration camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka in occupied Poland, the history of Polish Jewry was a mystery to most Jews, and most Americans. He donated millions of dollars to help build the interior and other elements of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened in 2014, and he became a major fund-raiser and an influential voice on its board.“I want the gate of our museum, and not the ‘Arbeit macht frei’ gate, to be the first gate that will be seen by Jews visiting Poland,” Mr. Rolat told Forbes magazine in 2014, referring to the cynical inscription (“Work sets you free”) that greeted inmates when they entered the main Auschwitz concentration camp.The Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews sits on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto. Mr. Rolat donated millions for its construction. It opened in 2014.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times“The Jews should first learn our shared history,” he added. “And then, of course, they should see Auschwitz, but with a better understanding of what happened there.”The main exhibition at the museum tells the story of Poland’s Jews over 1,000 years, from the Middle Ages to the present, using artifacts, paintings, replicas and interactive installations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jürgen Moltmann, Who Reconciled Religion With Suffering, Dies at 98

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      Considered one of the leading Christian theologians of the 20th century, he insisted that any established set of beliefs had to confront the implications of Auschwitz.Jürgen Moltmann, who drew on his searing experiences as a German soldier during World War II to construct transformative ideas about God, Jesus and salvation in a fallen world, making him one of the leading Protestant theologians of the 20th century, died on Monday at his home in Tübingen, in southwest Germany. He was 98.His daughter Anne-Ruth Moltmann-Willisch confirmed the death.Dr. Moltmann, who spent most of his career as a professor at the University of Tübingen, played a central role in Christianity’s struggle to come to grips with the Nazi era, insisting that any established set of beliefs had to confront the theological implications of Auschwitz.As a teenage conscript in the German Army, he barely escaped death during an Allied bombing raid on Hamburg in 1943. The horrors of the war led him to chart a path between those who insisted that faith was now meaningless and those who wanted a return to the doctrines of the past as if the Nazi era had never occurred.Though his work ranged widely, including ecological and feminist theology, he specialized in the branch of theology known as eschatology, which is concerned with the disposition of the soul after death and the end of the world, when Christians believe that Christ will return to earth.Dr. Moltmann outlined his eschatology, and established his reputation, with a trilogy of books, beginning with “The Theology of Hope” in 1964.“Theology of Hope” (1964), the first book in a trilogy, established Dr. Moltmann’s reputation.Fortress PressDr. Moltmann’s next work, “The Crucified God” (1972), tackled the question: Does God suffer, or, as the all-powerful being, is he incapable of experiencing pain and sorrow?Fortress PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Brother Marquis, Member of Rap Group 2 Live Crew, Dies

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      Born Mark Ross, he was a well-known member of the group, which fueled a debate about artistic freedom.Brother Marquis, the rapper and member of the hip-hop group 2 Live Crew, whose sexually explicit lyrics prompted a debate about race and artistic freedom in the 1980s and ’90s, has died.His death was announced on 2 Live Crew’s social media accounts on Monday night. The posts did not provide a cause or location of death.2 Live Crew was founded in 1984, and Brother Marquis, born Mark Ross, joined after the group moved from California to Miami. He became part of its most well-known lineup alongside Christopher Wong Won (Fresh Kid Ice); the group’s leader, Luther Campbell (Luke Skyywalker); and David Hobbs (Mr. Mixx).In 1990, a Florida court deemed their album “As Nasty as They Wanna Be” legally obscene — and therefore illegal to sell. It was the first album in U.S. history to have that distinction. That year, Mr. Ross, Mr. Wong Won and Mr. Campbell were arrested on misdemeanor obscenity charges over their performance at a nightclub after an undercover police officer made a recording of their show. They faced the prospect of a year in prison and fines of up to $1,000.During their obscenity trial, prosecutors argued that their song lyrics included graphic descriptions of sexual intercourse and simulations of “deviant sexual acts.” But 2 Live Crew’s lawyers said that the group’s performance had to be understood in the context of hip-hop, and that the lyrics “can have artistic value when you have an understanding, when you have them, in effect, decoded.” Mr. Ross, Mr. Wong Won and Mr. Campbell were acquitted. More

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      Larry Bensky, a Fixture of Left-Wing Radio, Is Dead at 87

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      A self-described activist-journalist, he was for many years the national affairs correspondent for the community-focused Pacifica network.Larry Bensky, a radio journalist whose reporting on major political events made him the signature voice of Pacifica Radio, a network of progressive, listener-supported stations, died on May 19 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 87.His wife, Susie Bluestone, said he died in home hospice care.Mr. Bensky’s gavel-to-gavel coverage of the congressional Iran-contra hearings of 1987 put the Pacifica network on the map, earning him a prestigious Polk Award for radio reporting.Mr. Bensky, who called himself an activist-journalist, brought leftist views to reporting — often on people and issues under-covered by other news outlets — which he hoped would, as he often put it, “stir things up.”That was hardly a fringe view in the progressive ethos of the Bay Area, where he was based, though he still managed to transgress the boundaries on a regular basis. The free-form rock station KSAN, the voice of Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, threw him off the air for interviewing workers who had been fired by one of the station’s sponsors.He was later dismissed from his longtime home, KPFA in Berkeley, for on-air criticism of decisions by the station’s owners, though he was reinstated after broadcasting over a pirate radio signal from the street outside. He was known to colleagues as cantankerous, but he was also so knowledgeable about history and politics that he could broadcast for hours without notes or a script.KPFA, founded by pacifists in 1949, was the nation’s first public radio station and the first to broadcast Allen Ginsberg reading his poem “Howl” and to open its airwaves to Patricia Hearst, who denounced her parents as “capitalist pigs” during her kidnapping.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U Tin Oo, Embattled Pro-Democracy Leader in Myanmar, Dies at 97

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      Once one of his country’s most powerful figures, he helped found its main opposition party. “I had to face up to the harm I did to people when I served in the army,” he said.U Tin Oo, a former Burmese armed forces chief and minister of defense who turned against his country’s repressive government to become a leader of the pro-democracy movement there, died on Saturday in Yangon, Myanmar. He was 97.His personal assistant, U Myint Oo, confirmed his death, in a hospital. He said that Mr. Tin Oo had a weak heart and died of kidney failure and pulmonary edema.Once one of the most powerful figures in what is now Myanmar, Mr. Tin Oo founded the National League for Democracy, the country’s main opposition party, with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi during a violent failed pro-democracy uprising in 1988.Three years later, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize while under house arrest. She is again in detention, and it was not clear whether she had been informed of Mr. Tin Oo’s death.Mr. Tin Oo stood with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi outside her home in Yangon in 1996.Stuart Isett/Associated Press“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would be deeply saddened to hear of his passing, as she has lost a trusted confidant,” Mr. Myint Oo said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More