Liese Lee Berkowitz

Born in Hamburg, as a child she survived her father’s internment in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, a harrowing escape from the Nazis, the London Blitz, and a German submarine attack in the icy Atlantic off the coast of Nova Scotia. In the U.S., her family lived in Cincinnati, where she attended high school and college. Lee became a social worker in Chicago and rose to executive roles for Jewish Child & Family Services there and key volunteer roles for Jewish Family and Children’s Service of the Suncoast in Sarasota.

Lee’s life was marked by moral and physical courage, empathy, broad curiosity, a wry wit, gentle warmth - and, by her own telling, trauma borne of her childhood experiences. Her longevity, innate leadership, and storytelling skills cast her as the matriarch of a large extended family that stretched from Israel to Europe to Latin America and Australia, with U.S. branches from California to New Hampshire.

Survivors include her daughters, Dr. Catherine Wheeler of Longboat Key, FL, and Martha’s Vineyard, MA, and Susan Sisk of Asheville, NC, and four grandchildren. Her husband and brothers predeceased her.

Her remains will be cremated. Friends and family will celebrate Lee’s remarkable near-century of life at a gathering in Sarasota in November.

Liese Lee Haag was born in 1927, the youngest child of Max and Helen Haag. Max was the prosperous owner of a department store in Hamburg, but the family was forced to trade its wealth for their freedom after Kristallnacht. Eleven-year-old Lee fled with her family first to London, where they endured the Blitz, and then to America, where they nearly perished off the coast of Nova Scotia when a German submarine sank the Greek freighter on which they’d journeyed across the icy Atlantic in February 1942.

Rescued by the Canadian Navy, then detained for two weeks on suspicion of being enemy spies, the Haags finally reached America, where they settled in Cincinnati. Lee earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Cincinnati and a masters in social work from the University of Chicago.

She served in the Women’s Land Army during World War II, working in the fields to replace men who’d gone to war. Later, she was a prison matron in New York, worked at a Jewish summer camp in Wisconsin, and conducted family therapy.

For decades, she worked for Jewish Child & Family Services of Chicago. Her vocation was the resettlement of refugees, including Jews escaping the Soviet Union, Iran, and Egypt, along with Vietnamese who came to the U.S. after the fall of Saigon. She soaked up each family’s story as she connected them with social services, housing, job opportunities, and other assistance. Long after her retirement, taxi and Uber rides with immigrant drivers turned into interviews as she inquired into the circumstances that brought them to America.

As a single woman in Chicago and Evanston, IL, Lee was “Tante Liese” to her Haag nieces in Skokie, Judy (now Sandler, of Deerfield, IL), Karen (of Tampa, FL), and Pam (now Haag Schachter, of Concord, NH). When a close friend died, she became mother to Catherine and Susan.

She kept the cat box in the shower, had three cigarettes in various stages of being smoked at once, perilously drove a Chevy Corvair, loved playing Scrabble, and soaked herself in perfume on the theory that the scent would wear off on the train before she got to work. She perpetually chased the latest diet - an infatuation she shared with her eldest brother, Harold.

In her 50’s, Lee married Sidney Berkowitz, whose first wife had passed away and who had retired as executive director of JCFS in Chicago, where Lee had risen to become his deputy. In Sarasota, Sid helped establish JFCS of the Suncoast, and Lee served multiple periods as the agency’s interim executive. She established an innovative all-volunteer intake unit for the agency.

Lee and Sid lived at Pelican Cove in Vamo, where Lee remained after Sidney’s death in 2000. A year-round resident, she reveled in her community’s natural beauty and her friends’ company. Music was a lifelong passion, and she regularly attended the Sarasota Orchestra, La Musica, and a chamber music group at Pelican Cove. She was active in fundraising for residents who needed help paying homeowners’ association fees and staff members who worked tirelessly to clear damage and restore order after hurricanes.

Donations in Liese Lee Berkowitz’s memory can be made to JCFS Chicago, directed to HIAS Immigration & Citizenship services.