By Bill Marx

The late Jiri Fiedler’s only book.

Fuse Critic Helen Epstein has written a moving article for the New York Times about the recent murder (at the age of 79) of one of the sources for her books, the indefatigable historian Jiri Fiedler. His wife Dagmar, 75, was also found dead in their Prague apartment. So far there are no suspects or motives for the killings.

“Working mostly alone, unpaid and anonymous for decades under Communism, and later as a researcher at the Jewish Museum in Prague,” Epstein writes, Fiedler “documented the history of Jews in the Czech lands and was a prolific and often unacknowledged contributor to reports, books, articles and museum exhibits.”

Fiedler’s was a life of quiet heroism dedicated to the indispensable task of keeping the past alive.