If the Talmudic precept “whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world” is to be believed, Bernard Krisher saved the world many times during his 87 years, which ended March 5 in Tokyo.

Krisher’s own life began in Germany in 1931, the son of Jewish shop owners who would flee the Nazis through the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Portugal, arriving in the United States in 1941 on a ship aptly called Serpa Pinto, the “ship of destiny.”