Born September 20, 1927   |   Vienna, Austria

Died July 1, 2013   |   Calgary, Canada

Herbert always said, “It is important to ensure a fair justice system. When the legal system is no longer respected or perceived to be fair, the door opens to fascism.”

Herbert loved singing in a boys’ choir. When he was seven years old, his father Alfred succumbed to tuberculosis. When he was 11, his mother Marie made the agonizing decision to send him to safety in England, hoping she would reunite with him there. Herbert thus became one of 10,000 Jewish children rescued from Nazi-occupied Europe on the Kindertransport. Herbert was educated at Stoatley Rough—a boarding school for Jewish refugee children funded by British Quakers. When he was 17, his sponsor withdrew support. Forced to leave the school, Herbert received permission to enlist in the British Army but was disqualified as a parachutist when he broke his arm on his last training run. 

After the war, Herbert served at a checkpoint and did translation work in British-occupied Germany on the border of the Soviet zone. His mother had been murdered by the Nazis in the Stutthof concentration camp. Because his German surname limited his prospects, Herbert chose a new one. He earned his law degree at the University of London and did postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics. Herbert met his wife Bridget while singing in a choir, and they immigrated to Canada in 1962, settling in Red Deer, Alberta. There, Herbert built a thriving legal practice, served as an alderman (1970–1977) and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1978. The father of three children—Christine, Helen and Paul—Herbert later doted on two grandchildren. Curmudgeonly, but always with a twinkle, Herbert loved his bird and cat menagerie, reading and listening to Beethoven and Viennese Operettas, and whistling or singing wherever he went. At his request, Herbert’s family arranged for his cremation and asked a rabbi to say Kaddish for him when he passed away, just weeks after his retirement.