Obituary of Selig Oscar Wassner

Selig O. Wassner, 96, died on December 2.  Born in Jawarow, Poland, he was deported with his family to Kazakhstan in

1940.  From 1943 until 1946, he served in the Soviet army.  In 1946, along

with his family, he registered as a displaced person and was encamped in

Dieburg, Germany.  As a displaced person, he was granted a scholarship to

Heidelberg University, from which he received the degree of interpreter in

German and Russian.  In 1949 he was granted a displaced-person scholarship

by Albright College and was graduated in 1951 with a bachelor of arts degree with a

Spanish major and a German minor.  In December 1951 he married Annabel

Sanders, a fellow student.  The Wassners moved to Teaneck in 1956 with their

first two children.

After working as an export traffic manager for more than 20 years, he

established himself as a fulltime free-lance translator in 1973.  Prior to

that, he had translated numerous short stories from various languages,

several of which were published in a periodical called "Short Story

International" and one in Esquire Magazine.  In 1968 Frederick Fell, Inc.

published a collection of his Russian translations under the title,

"Treasury of Russian Short Stories 1900 to 1966."  Grove Press paid him a

finder's fee for bringing Mikhail Bulgakov's novel, "The Master and

Margarita" to their attention.

An avid chess player, he won nine trophies in local tournaments between 1971

and 1986.  Then he gave up chess for Scrabble.  He established Scrabble Club

251 in Teaneck.  As director of the Scrabble club he conducted tournaments

at various venues throughout Bergen County.

He is survived by his wife, Annabel, daughter, Natalie, and son, Frank, of

Teaneck, son Jesse and his wife Linda, of Bogota.  His firstborn son,

Jacob, died in 1973.  He also leaves two granddaugters, Karen, of Bogota,

and Jaclyn, of Teaneck, and a great grandson, Gray Lawson of Teaneck, a sister, Ruth Althschuler, of Orlando, Florida, two

nieces, Sharon Abramson and Marla Priceman, also of Florida, five

grandnieces, four great-grandnieces, and five great-grandnephews.

Anyone who wishes to do so may make a donation in his memory to Albright

College, Reading, PA.

The funeral service will take place on Wednesday, December 5 at 11:00 a.m. at Temple Sinai of Bergen  County , 1 Engle Street in Tenafly.