Raya Schapiro once said that she and her sister were ''sticks pulled
from the fire. Think of all the ones who were not.''
She was 5 years old and her sister Helga was 7 when they fled with an
uncle from Nazi-held Czechoslovakia. Their father, mother and baby
brother had escaped before them. The girls' grandmother and another
uncle stayed behind and were among the 6 million who perished in the
Holocaust.

Dr. Raya Czerner Schapiro, 73, died of ovarian cancer Sunday in
Advocate South Suburban Hospital.

A Chicago psychiatrist for nearly 50 years, Dr. Schapiro and her
sister Helga Weinberg told about their family's struggle in a 1991
book, Letters from Prague (Academy Chicago Publishers).

In Dr. Schapiro's eulogy during services Tuesday at Congregation
Rodfei Zedek, Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel noted that "the Torah portion for
this week, Ekev, is the one in which Moses repeats most frequently a
dual mandate to the Jewish people: 'Fear not and remember, do not
forget. ...' These were the watchwords of Raya's life."

Awoke to see Statue of Liberty
In addition to writing her book, Dr. Schapiro was active in the Yale
Video Archive project to videotape Holocaust survivors and their
stories so others do not forget, said her son Andrew Schapiro.
She filmed scores of survivors herself and refined the interview
process along psychological concepts, he said.

"My mother remembered coming over on the boat and being overwhelmed by
New York City," her son said. "They had been through hard times. She
remembered my aunt waking her very early in the morning so she could
see the Statue of Liberty."

Dr. Schapiro was born May 1, 1934. Her father, Max Czerner, had been a
Shell Oil executive in Prague when the Germans took over in 1939. He
managed to get exit visas for himself, his wife, Irma, and the baby,
Tom. The daughters and an uncle got out later after much wrangling
with authorities.

"But [another] uncle and her grandmother, who she loved so much, were
stuck there," her son said. The uncle was killed in the gas chambers
at the Auschwitz death camp. Her grandmother was killed at Treblinka.

The surviving Czerner family eventually settled in Hyde Park, where
she went to Ray School and Hyde Park High. Dr. Schapiro studied at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison and became one of the few women
graduates at the University of Illinois Medical School in the
mid-1950s.

She did her residency in psychiatry and was in the vanguard of those
who rejected Freudianism and accepted behavioral and biological
approaches to treatment, her son said.

She met and married Dr. Joseph Schapiro, a pediatrician, while he was
an intern at Michael Reese Hospital.

'Officially retired on June 1'
Dr. Raya Schapiro taught at Northwestern Medical School for several
years and was on the staff at Michael Reese from the 1960s until the
1980s. She had a private practice at the Garland Building, 111 N.
Wabash, for many years.
"She was still seeing patients until June," Andrew Schapiro said.
''She officially retired on June 1, but she had some follow-ups with
patients. She was really looking forward to retirement."

Dr. Schapiro was diagnosed with cancer last year, but she was given
chemotherapy, and the disease appeared to go into remission, her son
said. Then "she felt weak after playing tennis with her girlfriends"
several weeks ago, he said. "Until the final two weeks, she was very
much herself, then it went very fast."

Survivors also include her husband; her daughter, Tamar Schapiro; her
sister, Helga Weinberg; her brother, Dr. Thomas Czerner, and two
grandchildren.

BY LARRY FINLEY Staff Reporter
August 3, 2007