In Passing

New York

Barbara Epstein, ‘Anne Frank’ editor

Barbara Epstein, a founder and co-editor of the New York Review of Books who pushed for American distribution of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and edited the book’s original U.S. version, has died. She was 76.

Epstein died Friday of lung cancer at her Manhattan home, said Robert Silvers, her longtime co-editor at the book review.

For more than 40 years at the magazine, Epstein guided the work of literary luminaries such as Gore Vidal and Joyce Carol Oates.

The Boston native founded the magazine with a group that included Silvers, Robert Lowell and her then-husband, Jason Epstein, during a 1963 publishing strike that shut down the New York Times Book Review.

Early in her career, while a junior editor at Doubleday, Epstein pushed the publishing house to print the first American version of “Diary of a Young Girl,” the famed Holocaust account that later became known as “The Diary of Anne Frank.” She edited the book, which was published in 1952.

Milwaukee

James Cameron, lynching survivor

James Cameron, who survived an attempted lynching by a white mob and went on to found America’s Black Holocaust Museum, died June 11. Cameron, 92, had suffered from lymphoma for about five years.

In 1930, in Marion, Ind., Cameron and two friends were arrested and accused of killing a white man during a robbery and raping the man’s companion.

A mob broke them out of the local jail and hanged Cameron’s two friends, then placed a rope around his neck. The 16-year-old shoeshine boy was spared when a man in the crowd proclaimed his innocence.

Cameron was convicted of being an accessory before the fact to voluntary manslaughter and spent four years in prison. He said he had been beaten into signing a false confession and was granted a pardon in 1993.

Cameron said in interviews that he was inspired to create the museum by a 1979 trip to Israel and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial.

In 1988, he opened the museum in a small storefront room in downtown Milwaukee. The museum explores the history of the struggles of blacks in America from slavery to modern day and was considered one of the first of its kind in the country.

New Brunswick, N.J.

Tim Hildebrandt, famed illustrator

Tim Hildebrandt, half of the famed Hildebrandt Brothers illustration studio, whose images fired popular imagination in the late 20th century, died June 11 from complications of diabetes. He was 67.

He and his twin, Greg Hildebrandt, are probably best known for their illustrations and posters for “The Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars.” They also were famed among illustrators for their work on children’s books, comics and fantasy illustrations, all of it characterized by unusual realism, depth and richness of color.

According to Terrance Brown, the director of the Society of Illustrators in New York, “Tim Hildebrandt earned more than a footnote in the history of American illustration. He and Greg are the long chapter.” Brown described them as among “the roots of popular culture.”