Susan Fessler Obituary
Susan Haas Fessler, known as Susie to her friends, Booboo to her grandchildren and Shoshana from her years in Israel, died peacefully in her home on December 3rd, following a long illness. She was 94. Though she spent most of her adult life in NY, she always considered Israel to be her real home.
Susie had a wry sense of humor, understated but hilarious nonetheless, and was able to charm the heck out of pretty much everyone she met. Unless she didn't like you, in which case she didn't pretend to care, and if she offended you, all the better. But that was rare.
Susie was born in Trier, Germany in 1927 and in the early-mid Thirties, escaped Nazi Germany after her neighbor, who worked in the Nazi regime, tipped off her father and told the family they needed to flee the country that very evening. After arriving in Tel-Aviv in 1934, Susie lived and grew up in Israel from age 7, circa 1934, until 1952. She met her husband, Frederic Fessler at a party in Tel-Aviv; They married soon after, in 1948, - the same year Palestine became Israel.
Less than a year after giving birth to her first daughter, Emma in 1951, Susie, Fred and their infant daughter moved to the United States in 1952. Eventually, with the help of their friends from Israel, Susi and Aron Friedmann, they found their way to Kew Gardens, Queens. In 1956, Susie gave birth to her second daughter, Laurie, and the family would spend the next several decades in Kew Gardens.
There was a joke in her family that Susie, and only Susie, could sit in her kitchen and the jobs would come to her via phone - she was an expert networker before the phrase was even coined. Of the many jobs she had while raising two children in Kew Gardens, her favorite was being a tour guide and interpreter for German study groups visiting the United States. Her favorite tour group was a European Philharmonic orchestra, and one of her least favorite work experiences was leading a group through a series of nursing homes, where she held a perfumed handkerchief to her nose.
In the early Nineties, Susie and her husband Fred moved from Queens to Somers, New York, in Westchester, where both her daughters and her four grandchildren lived. After Fred's death in 2002, Susie continued to travel, socialize, spend time with her family, and work as a volunteer well into her Eighties.
Susie suffered many traumas throughout her life, particularly in her childhood, but losing her youngest daughter, Laurie, who died tragically at the age of 58 in 2015, was too much to bear. Susie never recovered from the loss of Laurie: It was, as she put it, "a bridge I cannot cross."
Susie spent her final years in Connecticut, where she made new friends and developed close, loving relationships with her caregivers in her later years.
Despite leaving Germany at such a young age, Susie remained fluent in German and could speak, write and read the language her whole life. She remained fluent in Hebrew, her English was flawless, and she could even get by in French after studying it only for a semester in high school. She put her skill for languages to good use throughout her life as she traveled the world, on her own, with her family, and as a tour guide. Travel was one of the great joys of her life.
She is survived by her daughter Emma; her sons-in law Dan and Stuart; and her beloved grandchildren Jillian, Tim, Anna Claire and Jonathan.
Susie was amazingly smart, deeply loving, endlessly witty, and uproariously funny until her final days. She will be greatly missed.
