A few weeks before he died, Harry Thalheimer organized an 87th birthday party for himself. He mailed invitations to his friends and family, and when the guests arrived, he served them a homemade brunch he had prepared.

Harry Thalheimer

Harry Thalheimer died Oct. 26 in his Foster City home.

He was born in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1922. When he was 15 years old, he was sent to Buchenwald with his parents, Joseph and Frieda, and two younger sisters.

All but his youngest sister, who later died in Auschwitz, were released after six weeks thanks to an affidavit filed by American Jews who offered to sponsor the family’s immigration to the United States.

“My dad was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home … I think the Holocaust caused my dad to lose faith for many years, though later in life he came back to his Judaism,” Judy said.

Joseph, Frieda and two of their children arrived in New York on Dec. 2, 1939. They moved to San Francisco shortly thereafter.

Harry met his wife, Ursula, at a singles dance at Congre-gation Emanu-El. They married in 1955 and lived in the Sunset District for many years, and were members of congregations B’nai Emunah and Beth Israel–Judea. Ursula Thalheimer died in 2001.

Harry had trained as a cook in Germany, and served as a cook in the U.S. Army during World War II. One of his first jobs in San Francisco was as an elevator boy at the Concordia-Argonaut Club. He went on to own and operate the Downtown Delicatessen on Market Street and Sutter’s Gold Delicatessen on Sutter Street.

“He loved to bake, especially in his retired years, and he’d make fruit cakes, cookies, little tarts and macaroons and he’d send them to relatives for the Jewish holidays,” Judy recalled. “Everybody still talks about how they miss getting Harry’s packages in the mail.”

Harry retired from the restaurant business in the late 1970s, when his eyesight began to fail him. He stayed busy volunteering in a neighborhood school and with children at a battered women’s shelter. He often baked for the children.

He twice returned to his German hometown to see the reconstruction and dedication of his childhood synagogue, which was destroyed during Kristallnacht and rebuilt in 1988.

Harry became blind as he aged, but he didn’t let that stop him from learning and talking about his passions — sports, history and politics. He spent hours on the telephone listening to the National Federation of the Blind’s Newsline, which daily records stories from major American newspapers.

Volunteers periodically visited him to read aloud magazines and newspapers; one person typed Harry’s memoirs as he dictated his life story. The 50-page “journal,” as Harry titled it, is dedicated to his two grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held 2:30 p.m. Nov. 22 at Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo. The family asks that donations be made to LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired of San Francisco, 214 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA 94102 or to the Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School, 800 Foster City Blvd., Foster City, CA  94404.