When newlyweds Norbert and Arlene Schloss moved from Los Angeles to San Diego in 1952, they found four synagogues serving the small Jewish community, but no Jewish mortuary.
Arlene and Norbert Schloss at Norbert's 80th birthday party. In 1939, at age 11, Mr. Schloss fled Nazi Germany with his family. In 1952, he and his wife settled in San Diego, where he spent most of his career in the insurance business.
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A quarter-century later, Mr. Schloss saw a growing need for Jewish burial services and he co-founded Am Israel Mortuary in 1977. After three decades of operation, the small mortuary on El Cajon Boulevard remains the only one in San Diego County dedicated to Jewish burials.
For many years an important figure in San Diego's Jewish community, Mr. Schloss, known as Bert, died Dec. 29 at his home in San Carlos. He was 80 and had been suffering from lung cancer.
Mr. Schloss spent most of his career in the insurance business, retiring in 1993 from his own firm to work full time at the mortuary.
“Years ago, we never thought we'd be in this business,” said Arlene Schloss, his widow.
Friends and family describe Mr. Schloss as an outgoing man with a warm smile who made friends wherever he went. They say he loved his religion and his community and together with his wife gave quietly and generously.
“If someone had a need, he'd be the first person to reach into his pocket to help them,” said Rabbi Yonah Fradkin, San Diego director of Chabad, a Jewish social service agency. If someone needed family, “he and Arlene would be the surrogate grandparents.”
Among the organizations benefiting from their generosity was the Chabad Hebrew Academy in Scripps Ranch, where students today pray at the Schloss Family Synagogue.
He was also passionate about the Chargers, the Padres, the San Diego Opera and the Old Globe Theatre, said Arlene, his wife of 55 years. In his later years, he worked as a volunteer for the California Highway Patrol.
“He related to everybody, no matter how old you were or what generation,” said his son, Neil Schloss, treasurer and vice president of Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Mich.
Mr. Schloss was born in Nuremberg, Germany, on June 21, 1927, to Edmund and Selma Schloss. His father sold textiles. As a boy, Mr. Schloss attended a Jewish day school in the city.
In 1938, the Nazis destroyed Nuremberg's synagogue as they targeted Jews in a campaign known as Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, but Mr. Schloss' family was spared. Mr. Schloss' father risked his life as a member of the Hevrah Kadishah, a Jewish burial society that ensured that victims received a proper burial, said Anne Schloss Stern, Mr. Schloss' sister, who lives in Santa Monica.
Mr. Schloss was 11 in March 1939 when his family left for the United States, sailing to New York City on the Aquitania. The family settled in Los Angeles, where Mr. Schloss' father first worked mowing lawns and washing dishes. He soon found employment as the shamas, or administrator, at Temple Beth El.
Mr. Schloss' parents loved their adopted country, placing a “God Bless America” sign outside their home. Mr. Schloss graduated in 1945 from Hollywood High School and enlisted in the U.S. Navy for the final months of World War II.
In Sept. 1951, he met his wife, Arlene, who had been working in Los Angeles as a secretary for a friend's father, and they were engaged two weeks later, marrying in June 1952. Shortly afterward, they moved to San Diego.
While studying for his insurance license, Mr. Schloss worked as a men's clothing salesman and at The Locker Club, a locker rental business catering to military personnel who wanted to shed their uniforms while off base.
In 1982, with partner Ingrid Van Moppes, he started SCF Insurance Services, which continues to operate in La Mesa. He started the mortuary with partner Irving Krantz, less as a business enterprise than to provide a service to fellow Jews, his son said.
“It's considered the greatest good deed that one can do, to take care of the burial of the dead,” Rabbi Fradkin said. “There's no one to thank you. You're doing it simply because it's the right thing to do.”
Mr. Schloss was buried Dec. 30 at the Olam Haemes Lawn of El Camino Memorial Park in Sorrento Valley. Besides his wife, son and sister, he is survived by daughter Bonnie Jones of Moreno Valley and two granddaughters.
