Emile Karafiol passed away at University of Chicago Hospital just after midnight on January 16, 2019 from multiple organ failure. He spent several days in the Cardiac ICU where he was visited by former students, legal colleagues, former clients and surrounded by family and friends. Emile was 83.
Emile was born on March 29, 1935 in Warsaw, Poland. He and his family fled persecution of the Jews in Europe and settled in Montreal, Canada. He came to the United States as an undergraduate. After earning an AB at Princeton (1955), he received a Ph.D. in European history from Cornell University (1965).
He taught history to undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Chicago until 1977. In 1969, he was awarded the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
“Emile's was one of the most original minds and personalities I have encountered. He was wonderfully learned in all kinds of ways quite apart from his field of history, with a range and breadth of interests that could be astonishing and often off the beaten path. I found him also the most loyal of friends and colleagues,” said Hanna Holburn Grey, longtime friend and former President of the University of Chicago.
In 1979, he received a law degree from the University of Chicago Law School and changed careers. He went to work at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis in their corporate law group. As a lawyer he specialized in representing institutional venture capital and private equity investors. He became a nationally-regarded expert in working with the SBA.
Emile was inspired by a visit to his cousin’s grave in the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery in 2004, to initiate a project to have every gravestone digitally photographed and indexed, and also to identify GPS coordinates where necessary as part of a master searchable database that would include the names, dates, and details inscribed on each gravestone. There are links to transcriptions and photographs of more than 100,000 gravestones.
He was an avid supporter of the arts. Additionally, on the Yiddish Book Center website, www.yiddishbookcenter.org, please feel free to view where Emile was interviewed about his life. (https://archive.org/details/EmileKarafiol14december2012YiddishBookCenter).
He is survived by his second wife, Virginia Robinson, his son Paul J. ("PJ") Karafiol and his stepsons William Justin Jacobs and Benjamin Robinson Jacobs, his daughter-in-law, Allison Bradley Clark, his grandchildren, Ari Ian Clark Karafiol, Jonah Clark Karafiol, and Helen Ramona Clark Karafiol, his “adopted” grandson Konrad Ross, his nephews and nieces, Mark and Diane Randolph and Rima and Stephen Maislin of Montreal, and their children and step-children, Andrew, Jill, Ryan, and Sean. He was preceded in death by his first wife and PJ's mother, Dorothy Ramona Thelander, his sister, Lydia Randolph (née Karafiol) and beloved brother-in-law, Gerald Randolph.
A Memorial Service will be held Saturday, February 16, 2019 at 11 am in Bond Chapel on the University of Chicago Campus, 1050 E. 59th St., Chicago, IL, 60637. A reception will follow.
No flowers please. The family requests that any memorial contributions be directed to one of the organizations that Emile supported: The Shriver Center for Poverty Law, The New Israel Fund, The Dorothy Thelander Fund University of Illinois (Specify fund 12770431), The Sousa Mendes Foundation, the Yiddish Book Center or Yivo Institute for Jewish research.
For info: Call Weinstein & Piser Funeral Home at 847-256-5700.
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