Irving Franklin obm: hamakom yinachem etchem b’toch sha’ar evaylay Tzion v’Yerushalayim

Irving Franklin, of Beit Shemesh, formerly of Woodmere, passed away in Israel at the age of 94. His funeral will be Thursday, May 10th and he will be buried in New York beside his wife, Irma, who died in 2000.

He is survived by his two daughters, Liz Rich and Yosefa Krauss, their spouses, children and grandchildren. Franklin was a captain in the United States Air Force in World War II and an engineer, a graduate of Cooper Union. He went on Aliyah with the Krausses in July 2007 at the age of 90.

In November 1990, he was in the audience when Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League, was assassinated by El-Sayyid A. Nossair. Franklin grabbed the assassin who shot Franklin in the leg and escaped. Nossair was later captured but released and rearrested after he aided in the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. He is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of Kahane and conspiring to blowup New York landmarks.