Ita Adelstein was only 10 when her family began an odyssey through several countries as they fled from the Nazis.
She and her parents, brother and sister all survived and eventually came to Denver, where her father, Leopold Korn, operated Northwestern Engineering Co. from the late 1940s until the 1970s.
Adelstein died Feb. 9 in Los Angeles from the effects of Parkinson’s. She was 78.
Ita Adelstein was 10, her sister Marcia Robinson of Denver was 8 and their brother, the late Michael Korn, was 4 when they accompanied their parents out of Poland, said Robinson.
They went to Austria, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan and finally India, where they were able to get a ship to the United States. After almost a year, they landed Feb. 22, 1941, Robinson said.
They came to Ellis Island but were sent to Canada and had to re-enter from there, Robinson said.
Three members of her extended family died in the Holocaust, Robinson said.
Adelstein practiced graphoanalysis and often did public speaking.
“She sought to expand understanding of her faith, mindful of differences, focusing on commonalities,” said her son James Adelstein of Los Angeles. “She had a keen intellect.”
Ita Korn was born in Lodz, Poland, on Dec. 23, 1930. She married Stanford Adelstein in 1952 while they were both at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
She taught first grade in Boulder for one year.
In recent years, she divided her time between Los Angeles and Rapid City, S.D.
In addition to her son and sister, she is survived by two other sons: Daniel Adelstein and Jonathan Adelstein, both of Washington, D.C.; five grandchildren; her companion, Basil Anderman of Los Angeles; and Stanford Adelstein, from whom she was separated.
Contributions can be made to the University of Colorado Foundation, 225 E. 16th Ave., Suite 900, Denver, CO, 80203.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
Other Deaths
Konrad Dannenberg, 96, a German rocket scientist who was part of the Wernher von Braun team that helped put the first American astronauts on the moon, died Monday of natural causes at a Huntsville, Ala., rehabilitation center, said his wife, Jackie Dannenberg.
Dannenberg had a role in developing America’s key space rockets — the Redstone, Jupiter and Saturn V, which carried American astronauts to the moon in 1969. Once part of Hitler’s Nazi war machine, Dannenberg and von Braun team members were brought to the U.S. to compete against the Soviet Union for supremacy in space.
