Obituaries

December 15, 1922 – June 10, 2021. Mauricette Pauline Levine (nee Schneider) passed on June 10, 2021 at age 98 in Thousand Oaks, CA. She was born on December 15, 1922 in Cherbourg, Normandy, France. Mauricette’s father, David Schneider (RIP), immigrated to France from Poland and her mother, Bertha Schneider (nee Blumenfeld) (RIP), immigrated from Romania. Her older brother, Raymond (RIP), was a research physician and colonel in the French Army during World War II, and was recipient of the Legion of Honor medal personally awarded to him by then-President Charles de Gaulle.
Mauricette was an accomplished classical pianist, having studied at a young age at the Conservatoire de Paris. She was a survivor of the Holocaust, and lost many of her relatives to the concentration camps. She was able to survive by hiding for many months in a mental asylum run by a convent, pretending to be both Catholic and a patient. Her parents miraculously survived without hiding. Mauricette gave recorded testimony of her experience as part of Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Project.
Mauricette met her husband of 65 years, Milton Levine (RIP), in Cherbourg sometime after the Allied Invasion. Mauricette played piano for troops at the local USO. Milton was Sergeant First Class of an engineering platoon that built bridges for Patton’s army through France and Germany. His platoon was involved in liberating one of the concentration camps. After the war, they were wed in a large synagogue in Paris. Milton was regional field director of the Red Cross in Normandy for a while before he and Mauricette moved to the Pittsburgh, PA neighborhood of Squirrel Hill.
After moving to the U.S., Mauricette tried to have her parents immigrate also, but faced quota-related obstacles. She appealed to Eleanor Roosevelt, who was kind enough to pull strings on their behalf.
In 1946 Milton and his brother-in-law, Joseph Cossman, started a toy company that became famous for one of its products, Ant Farm. They moved the company and their extended families from Pittsburg to Los Angeles in 1952.
Mauricette is survived by three children (Harriet, Steven and Ellen) and three grandchildren (Andrea, Michelle and Brandon) whom she adored. She was greatly loved by family and friends and will live forever in their hearts.
Services will be held on Friday, June 18, 2021 at 12:00 Noon, Hillside Memorial Park, 6001 W. Centinela Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90045.