(New York Jewish Week) – The latest chapter of the surreal saga about who makes the decisions for veteran pop artist Peter Max is the confrontation of two children of Holocaust survivors against each other.
One is Libra Max, son of Peter Max. The other is Barbara Lissner, an attorney who represents Holocaust survivors, along with their efforts to obtain restitution. She became Peter Max’s guardian in 2019, shortly after the New York Times first reported the alleged abuse of Max’s former guardian and the exploitation of his business associates.
Libra Max sued Lissner in federal court, alleging Lissner blocked his access to his father, allowed the artist to be overmedicate, improperly paid more than $ 16 million from Peter’s estate-and even removed his rescue cats.
Meanwhile, Lissner sued Libra Max for defamation, saying Libra had baselessly accused him of kidnapping Peter Max. Among Lissner’s supporters was Adam Max, son of Peter Max and brother of Libra.
The long saga has been playing out on the court for years and reached a new milestone on Monday when Peter’s custody judge refused Libra’s request to hear medical testimony about Peter’s need for oxygen. AAccording to Libra attorney Jeffrey Eilender, the judge “refused Libra’s request to conduct an evidence hearing … before a possible life-and-death decision was made about the removal [his] oxygen. ”
The dizzying allegations allow for little clarity despite an indisputable fact: A 20th-century Jewish artist whose candy-colored psychedelia spoke to hippies and squares in the 1960s and ’70s seems unable to speak for himself.
Peter Max became one of the most well -known artists in the 1960s for painting posters, flyers, album covers and more. (Courtesy)
Now 84 and battling severe dementia, Max is in the midst of a battle to determine who will control a property worth an estimated $ 65 million.
Lissner’s law firm, Lissner and Lissner, was started by her husband’s family to provide legal services to Holocaust survivors, according to its web site. Lissner was the son of Holocaust survivors, including his father, who was rescued by Oskar Schindler. Among the company’s services are what it calls Victim of Nazi Persecution Restitution Trusts, where eligible candidates can protect their assets in case they need long-term health care. The company also offers estate planning, asset protection, Medicaid planning and custody litigation.
After the Times report, Max’s second wife, Mary Balkin – who first sought care to take over her disabled husband’s business – committed suicide. Within 24 hours, Lissner was appointed by the New York State Supreme Court to manage the artist’s businesses under a custody arrangement that was initially supported by Libra Max.
Libra, however, was angry with Lissner, who told New York Jewish Week that he had not visited his father in his home since June 2019, and that his father’s friends and other family members were also not allowed to enter. He added that when family and friends observed Peter via FaceTime, he appeared to be sedated.
In 2020, Libra, along with Peter’s 17 cousins, tried to remove Lissner as Peter’s guardian in lawsuits submitted to the New York State Supreme Court. He also started a website called Free Peter Max, where hundreds of friends, associates and others signed up in support of ending Lissner’s care for the artist.
Libra Max said Lissner confiscated Peter’s phone, refused to share medical information with the family and isolated Peter in his Upper West Side apartment, where Libra was born and raised. “The pain of it all for me was watching my father suffer,” Libra said. “These last three years have had to be warm, beautiful and loving. We can’t turn back time.”
Lissner did not respond to requests for comment.
“It’s about my father’s human rights,” Libra added. “Why is this man, this beautiful, traditional, Jewish immigrant, who survived, who came here, who became the dream of the Americans, why did the government imprison him?”
Libra Max said he has not visited his father in his Upper West Side apartment since June 2019. (Courtesy)
Peter Max was born Peter Max Finkelstein in 1937, and fled with his family from Berlin to Shanghai in 1939. The family later settled in Haifa and Paris before settling in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. After attending the Art Students League of New York, he began making posters, flyers, album covers and even TV commercials featuring kaleidoscopic, counterculture imagery. In 1969 he was featured on the cover of Life magazine, for a profile titled “Picture the actor as a very rich man. “
In recent years, he has been asked to paint everything from a race car to a cruise ship to a section of the Berlin Wall.
For Libra, her father’s case is an accusation of “abusive” care laws where the elderly or disabled are isolated from family members and given medication as a means of control. In many such cases, he and other critics of the system insist, caregivers liquidate their clients ’assets and then intimidate family members and loved ones.
“If you have an ethical person coming in as a guardian, even a court appointee, the system can actually work,” Libra said. “There have been two guardians in a few years [before Lissner] and they did not interfere with our family. ”
According to Goldfarb Abrand & Salzman, a law firm in New York that specializes in working with senior citizens, adult guardianships. can be an effective legal tool in helping adults with disabilities who are unable to care for themselves or whose families need help to manage their assets and financial affairs.
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Libra Max with his father Peter Max in 1973. (Courtesy)
Guardianship cases are brought under the New York Mental Hygiene Law, which is intended to meet the needs of people with disabilities.
But Libra said being a guardian has become “a welcoming ground for predators,” with the courts and doctors and lawyers all involved.
“It’s a whole process of making money,” Libra said. “They’ll just put someone on guardianship. Your property is completely wiped out, you have fewer rights than a convicted felon, you can’t even choose your own lawyer.”
Beverly Newman, who said her own father of Holocaust survivor, Al Katz, was abused under a guardianship arrangement, told New York Jewish Week that Holocaust survivors are “easy targets.”
“They don’t have families or big families,” Newman said. Families were “killed or reduced decades ago. They don’t fight either. These are the people who just want to live. They don’t want to fight. They don’t want to be tried. ”
He now runs the Al Katz Center, based in Florida, which advocates for seniors in similar situations across the country.
The care system, according to him, is a whole network of caregivers, judges, lawyers and service providers who work together to victimize susceptible individuals.
“There’s a code of silence,” Katz said. “If you violate that code of silence, you will be punished. My father died in 2010 and they are still trying to take his property, his property is still open, completely free of charge, and they are doing that to punish us. ”
The Center for Estate Administration Reform advised more than 3,000 cases of abuse nationwide since 2014.
“Libra isn’t just fighting for himself, his father and his family,” Eilender said. “He fights for all the people who suffer because of an abusive care.”
Meanwhile the legal back and forth continues. Lissner filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court against Libra for defamation in January 2022, alleging he was falsely accused of kidnapping Peter. His son, Adam Max, said the New York Post in January that he supported Lissner in his lawsuit.
Adam Max did not respond to requests for comment.
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Libra is now countersue in New York State Court: In a filing on June 17, he says that Lissner caused intense emotional distress while lying in court as well as in violation of laws against SLAPP, intended to prevent pointless lawsuits intended to silence or suppress free speech.
Libra said videos from 2019 show his father in “good health” and says he and his brother just want to make medical decisions for him.
In another video, Peter asks Libra to climb to the top. When he said he couldn’t because of custody laws, Peter responded saying, “Can I talk to the judge?”
“It’s very clear what his preferences are,” Libra said.
