Chaninah Maschler, Holocaust survivor who taught at Annapolis’ St. John’s College, dies

By Bart Barnes

Chaninah Maschler, a rabbi’s daughter who was born in Germany, survived the Holocaust by living under assumed names in Holland and taught for 22 years at St. John’s College in Annapolis, died Aug. 7 at her home in Annapolis. She was 82.

The cause was cancer, said a daughter, Toni Maschler.

At St. John’s, Mrs. Maschler taught subjects ranging from ancient Greek to Newtonian physics, the evolutionary and natural selection theories of Charles Darwin, and poetry. She was a tutor on the St. John’s faculty, a position similar to a professor at other colleges, with an added responsibility for mentoring students. She retired in 1998.

Chaninah Marienthal was born in Berlin on Oct. 13, 1931. At 3, she immigrated to the Netherlands with her mother to escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism.

In 1940, when the Netherlands was overrun by Nazi forces, she began living with other families under assumed names. She eventually spent five years with eight different Dutch families. Her father had divorced her mother years earlier and was living in the United States when World War II began.

Meanwhile, her mother and brother were active with the Dutch underground resistance and were subsequently captured by the Nazis and sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where her brother, Peter, died. Her mother survived Bergen-Belsen and was later reunited with her daughter.

They came to the United States in 1947 from the Netherlands, and Chaninah graduated from City College of New York in 1953. She received a fellowship for postgraduate study at Yale University, where in 1961 she earned a master’s degree in philosophy.

Mrs. Maschler taught at City College and Queens College in New York and at Pennsylvania State University before joining the St. John’s faculty in 1976. She had written articles on the works of Aristotle, Plato and Galileo.

In 1961, she married Henry Maschler, another German Jew who had survived the war in England. He died in 2004. Survivors include twin daughters, Toni Maschler of Alexandria and Rina Maschler of Philadelphia; and a granddaughter.

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