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These Holocaust survivors were once classmates in a DP camp. They just reunited after 76 years.
(New York Jewish Week) — The last time Michael Epstein, 87, and Abe Rosenberg, 83, were in the same room, they were in Germany, studying in a classroom in a displaced person’s camp in Bavaria after the Holocaust.
On Sunday, March 19, the two men — along with Rosenberg’s older sister, Ada Gracin, who was also in the DP camp — reunited after 76 years. This time around, it was in the social hall of Young Israel of New Hyde Park, New York, where the pair embraced, said the Shehecheyanu prayer to mark their reunion and shared their survival stories with an in-person audience of about 100.
The reunion came together quickly, just a few weeks after the two men learned they lived less than 40 miles from one another — Rosenberg in New Hyde Park, on the eastern border of Queens, and Epstein in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Originally intended to be an intimate meeting between the two families, the reunion soon broadened to a festive brunch and celebration open to the public.
“The Torah says it’s a mitzvah to relate what happened to us,” Rosenberg said. “Hitler’s goal was to destroy Yiddishkeit, Judaism. When we gather here, we are involved in a victory over him.”
Michael Epstein, Abe Rosenberg and Ada Gracin, left to right, stand together for the first time in 76 years after meeting as children living in a displaced person’s camp after the Holocaust. (Julia Gergely)
The two were brought together by a sharp-eyed videographer. In February, Epstein participated in an interview at a Jewish day school in Edison, New Jersey as part of the “Names Not Numbers” oral history project, which is dedicated to preserving the memories of Holocaust survivors and ensuring their legacies live on in future generations. As part of the project, high school students interview survivors about their experiences, which are filmed and made into mini-documentaries.
During the interview, Epstein presented a photograph of himself as a 7-year-old in “cheder” or elementary school at Feldafing, an all-Jewish displaced person’s camp near Munich, where he lived from 1945 to 1949.
As it happens, the videographer that day recognized the photograph. He had seen the same one during an interview he had filmed the prior year with another survivor — Rosenberg — who was living in Queens. When Epstein and his two daughters learned this, they knew they had to arrange a meeting.
“This is the first time I know of a reunion happening between survivors as a result of our program,” Daniel Mayer, a Names Not Numbers board member, told the New York Jewish Week.
As for Rosenberg, when he got the call from Epstein, “it just concretized the fact that the whole experience [of Feldafing] wasn’t a dream,” he said.
Though the two men did not specifically remember each other — Rosenberg was 8 and Epstein and Gracin were 11 at the time of the picture, taken in 1947 — at the event, they acutely recalled their lives at the DP camp.
Rosenberg and Epstein point themselves out in the picture of their childhood classroom, taken in 1947. (Julia Gergely)
Rosenberg, for example, remembers living in Barrack Nine with his sister and parents. During the war, the Nazis used Feldafing as a training ground for Hitler Youth. In Feldafing, like at other Jewish DP camps, survivors waiting for a country that would taken them in opened Jewish schools, started newspapers, composed music and began to rebuild their identities.
“We were hoping to go to Palestine, to Eretz Yisroel — that was our dream,” Rosenberg said. “It was not available to us” under the British Mandate. “Unfortunately, the doors of the whole world were closed to us.”
“So what did we do?” he continued. “We started to build on Jewish life again.”
On Sunday, as the assembled crowd noshed on bagels, lox and egg salad — and other participants joined via Zoom from California, Florida, New Jersey and Canada — Epstein, Rosenberg and Gracin shared their experiences with those in attendance.
First to speak was Epstein, who brought with him a scrapbook of pictures from his childhood. Epstein was born in Łódź, Poland, in 1935, which his family was forced to flee when Germany invaded in 1939. They went to Bialystok, which soon fell under the control of the Russians, who transported Poles and Jews to labor camps in Siberia via cattle cars. After spending time at a gulag camp in Siberia, Epstein and his family were moved to another in Uzbekistan.
When the war ended, Epstein and his parents returned to Łódź, only to find that their entire extended family had been killed and a Polish family was living in their apartment. With nothing left for them in Poland, they left for Feldafing. They lived there until they could find a way to get to the United States, where they eventually arrived in 1945.
Epstein, who is known as Zayde to his 11 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren — many of whom were in the room — left the crowd with a message to invest in Jewish education, and to work to uphold democracy. “We live in ‘di Goldene Medine’ (the Golden Land),” he said. “We thought, in Europe, that meant there was gold on the street. There’s no gold on the street but there is gold on paper in our Constitution, and in our Constitution there is still mining to do. There is still work to be done to make our Constitution’s morals realistic.”
The family of Michael Epstein gathered from New York and New Jersey to celebrate his life story. Epstein, second from the right in the front row, is holding one of his five great-grandchildren. (Julia Gergely)
Rosenberg and Gracin, who spoke next, were also from Łódź. Gracin, born Ada Rosen in 1935, recalled wearing the mandated yellow Jewish star patch on her clothing as a 4-year-old. Her mother was pregnant with her brother when they left Poland for Soviet Georgia, a journey she said was “fraught with peril,” as they were stopped multiple times by the Gestapo. The family lived in Georgia for six years and “fear was a constant.”
When the war ended, the family also returned to Łódź to look for surviving family members — there were none. They connected with the Jewish Agency and HIAS, which helped them get to Feldafing in 1945.
There, “we were referred to as ‘she’arit hapletah,’ the surviving remnants,” Gracin said. “I refer to this period in my life as ‘life reborn,’ as I lost my childhood prior to this. Although we lacked many things, I never felt deprived. The survivors cherished each child as if it were their own. We were precious jewels to them, as they had lost their own children.”
“For the first time in my life, I went to school, made friends, played and laughed,” she added. “I was a happy 9 year old.”
Gracin, her brother and her parents arrived in New York Harbor on April 6, 1949. “At last we were free of fear, free to live and practice our religion and thrive,” she said. “I feel blessed to have been given this chapter in my life and my revenge to Hitler is that I was blessed with three children and six grandchildren.” Two of Gracin’s children and four of her grandchildren were at the event.
In his remarks, Rosenberg recalled the heroism of the parents, teachers and rabbis in Feldafing, many of whom had lost their entire families but made it their mission to educate the few children who made it to the camp. “They were the heroes,” Rosenberg said. “They deserve the accolades — we were kids.” It is in their honor and memory that Rosenberg continued to share his story throughout his life, he said.
Though Epstein and Rosenberg did not stay in touch upon their respective arrivals to the United States, their lives continued to follow similar paths. Both went on to study engineering at the City College of New York and for a time both worked at Bendix Corporation, though in different departments — Epstein in the space program and Rosenberg on the supersonic transport team.
Congregants and community members brunched on bagels and listened to the survival stories in the social hall of Young Israel of New Hyde Park. (Julia Gergely)
Chuck Waxman, a docent at the Museum of Jewish Heritage who moderated the discussion, told the New York Jewish Week he was “blown away” by the event — he said he expected less than half the room to be filled.
But full it was, with family, friends, community members and other survivors who wanted to be a part of the miracle — both the miracle that happened in Feldafing and the miracle of the reunion in Queens.
The event also included speeches from Mayer Waxman, executive director of Queens JCC and Torah commentaries from Lawrence Teitelman, the rabbi of Young Israel of New Hyde Park, where Rosenberg is a member, and Benjamin Yudin, the rabbi of Congregation Shomrei Torah in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where Epstein is a member.
At the close of the event, the lyrics of “Zog nit keynmol,” the “Song of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising” — which was sung by Jewish partisan groups around Eastern Europe — were passed in sheets around the room. Rosenberg heartily led everyone in Yiddish.
“We plan to meet again in another 76 years,” Rosenberg joked to the New York Jewish Week. “Everyone is invited.”
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The post These Holocaust survivors were once classmates in a DP camp. They just reunited after 76 years. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump’s empire is crumbling, much like the Berlin Wall in 1989
As a foreign correspondent during the Cold War, I witnessed and reported on the collapse of East Germany’s corrupt communist state. Nearly four decades later, I feel a sense of déjà vu as I watch Donald Trump’s corrupt MAGA regime crumble at an accelerating pace.
German social media influencers and national news platforms have been posting videos of American mid-term election scenes that remind me of the night the Berlin Wall cracked open in 1989 — dancing in the streets, strangers hugging, laughter spilling out of Democratic watch parties, tears of relief and disbelief.
In Austin, Texas, Sally Lisa Starken, a German journalist and influencer, stood amid a roaring crowd of James Talarico supporters when the Democrat was declared the victor over Ken Paxton. Lifting her phone to capture the eruption for her Instagram followers, Starken looked just as stunned and jubilant as the sea of people surrounding her,.
For a moment, Austin was Berlin.
“Texas is turning blue! This is insane!” Starken said in her live post. A follower back in Germany wrote: “Yeah! Fantastic! Thank you for this wonderful news this morning!” Another added: “The USA has woken up!!! Hopefully that will soon happen here.”
Since Trump’s second inauguration, his autocratic style of governing has carried echoes of the Third Reich. And now, as the politically wounded American president enters the last half of his second term, his crumbling MAGA machine is looking like the corrupt Stalinist regime that ruled East Germany for four decades.
The opening of the Berlin Wall released East Germans from repression. While Trump has another two years to go as president, American voters rescued democracy by restoring Congress to its role as a check on overreaching executive power by rejecting Republican officeholders and candidates who had turned themselves into Trumpian marionettes.
Responding to citizen demands for accountability, German authorities after reunification pursued hundreds of cases against former East German officials, charging them with offenses that spanned the system’s spectrum of abuse — from the misuse of state resources to the killing of East Germans trying to flee to the West.
Corruption was endemic within the East German leadership. Senior officials, including Erich Honecker, lived in comfort inside a walled enclave at Wandlitz outside East Berlin and vacationed on the Baltic Sea in exclusive manor homes on Vilm, an island off limits to ordinary Germans. Luxury goods for the communist elite flowed through a secretive government agency called Commercial Coordination, which trafficked in Western technology, arms deals, and hard-currency diversions to Swiss accounts.
Few of the senior officials ended up paying for their misdeeds. Many were spared because of illness or frailty. Erich Honecker initially found refuge in Moscow but in 1992 was sent back to Germany to stand trial on charges of abuse of power and manslaughter for the killing of East Germans who tried to escape to the West. The case was abandoned because Honecker was seriously ill. He died of cancer in 1994 in Chile, where he had moved to reunite with his wife and his daughter.
As sensational as the proceedings against Honecker and his comrades were, they may well pale next to the scrutiny Donald Trump, his two oldest sons, his son-in-law, and their associates could face with Democrats now in control of Congress. After the GOP’s shellacking, Rep. Robert Garcia had two words for Trump administration officials linked to corruption and abuses of power: “Lawyer up.”
Garcia, a California Democrat who is in line to become the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has outlined an aggressive agenda for investigating the Trumps and their political and business circles.
“If we’re really going to take on the affordability crisis, we’ve got to take on the corruption of the Trumps because they’re stealing people’s money, their labor,” Garcia told Punchbowl News.
Garcia said his top areas of focus include Trump family corruption, alleged abuses by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, corporate misconduct, and cover-ups in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Although Trump and his allies have done little to conceal their conflicts of interest, compelling testimony under oath would force them to confront conduct they have evaded accountability for throughout Trump’s second term. We can expect hearings on the $2.2 billion in wealth Trump has accumulated as president, Eric and Donald Trump Jr.’s shady business dealings and Jared Kushner’s financial relationships with Middle Eastern governments.
Congressional hearings on Trump’s massive immigration crackdown would have the potential to become a sort of American analog to the post-unification trials of senior East German officials, mid-level commanders, and border guards in the killing of East Germans who tried to flee to the West — scaling the Berlin Wall, sprinting across the death strip along the border, or attempting other desperate escapes.
Democrats will likely try to shine a light on decision-making processes that led up to foreign university students being swept off the streets by federal agents, traffic stops in which immigrants were violently pulled from their cars, masked agents terrorizing families during raids on immigrants’ homes, the warehousing of Latinos and others in detention centers with allegedly inhumane conditions, the spiriting away of detainees to African countries with which they have no connection, and brutal tactics of the kind that resulted in the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Among those likely to face subpoenas are top Trump aide Stephen Miller, the former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and possibly Trump himself. Oversight hearings would force senior officials to explain, under oath, how these policies were conceived, approved and carried out — a public accounting that echoes, in form if not in historical circumstance, the post-reunification scrutiny faced by East German officials responsible for the lethal border regime.
What happens if all of this ends the way East Germany’s reckoning did — with months of public testimony, thousands of pages of evidence, and almost no real accountability? Trump retains broad pardon powers, and the Supreme Court has already granted him sweeping presidential immunity. As long as he remains in office, his Justice Department is unlikely to pursue anything Congress uncovers. The result could resemble the East German experience: a great airing-out of abuses, and perhaps a sense of moral clarity, but the central figures keeping the riches and advantages they have reaped during Donald Trump’s reign and escaping any real punishment.
Even so, such an airing-out would not be meaningless. It would stand as a warning that the vast corruption of Trump’s second term will never again be tolerated — and as a record of how close America came to losing the checks that make democracy possible.
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The post Trump’s empire is crumbling, much like the Berlin Wall in 1989 appeared first on The Forward.
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Eisenkot moves closer to ousting Netanyahu. Here’s what could come next.
(JTA) — Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot leaped ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week in the effort to secure enough support from the rest of the parliament to form Israel’s next governing coalition. But that doesn’t mean he’ll succeed in his quest to become prime minister.
Yashar won the most seats – 21 – of any party not aligned with Netanyahu in last month’s vote. But neither the prime minister’s bloc nor the opposition garnered the 61-seat minimum needed to form a governing majority.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday will announce who is being given the first shot at forming a coalition. By the end of this week, Eisenkot was able to announce that 67 parliamentarians had endorsed giving him the first chance to do so, compared to 46 for Netanyahu.
That means Herzog is all but certain to tap Eisenkot on Sunday to form a government – but Eisenkot’s path forward remains far from clear.
Eisenkot leads a bloc of four Zionist parties that make up Israel’s so-called change bloc, united by their stated goal of replacing Netanyahu. Together, they hold 48 seats in the incoming parliament, or Knesset, which means they need to enlist the support of parties whose seats total at least 13 to reach the magic number of 61 out of 120 Knesset seats. Or, they could gain a plurality if enough other parties abstain from voting in the new coalition.
Eisenkot has 28 days to negotiate that arrangement once given the opportunity, or mandate, to do so by Herzog, plus a 14-day extension if the president allows it. If Eisenkot fails, another candidate could get a shot at forming a coalition, or another round of elections might loom.
Sixty-seven lawmakers supported Herzog giving Eisenkot the mandate. But that’s different from voting for him to actually take power. Here are the paths he could take, and why each one is fraught.
An unlikely alliance?
The first option, which has gained traction in the days since the election, is to cooperate with the ultra-Orthodox parties. These parties have a longstanding alliance with Netanyahu but have served in governments with leaders in the center and left in the past.
There are several indications that such an arrangement may already be taking shape. For starters, United Torah Judaism, one of the two haredi Orthodox parties in the Knesset, told Herzog that it would not endorse either candidate for prime minister – seemingly breaking from the alliance with Netanyahu.
During the consultations with Herzog, the party’s leaders made clear that their support would go to whichever bloc was willing to make concessions on Haredi conscription, including abandoning sanctions against those who refuse to enlist.
If United Torah Judaism with its 7 seats shifts its support from Netanyahu’s coalition to the change bloc, Eisenkot could secure a plurality, provided the Arab parties at least abstain.
Another indication that such an arrangement may be in the works came from Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party and a member of the change bloc. For years, Lieberman has been best known in Israeli politics for his fierce opposition to the haredi parties.
In a stunning change of course, Lieberman signaled in a Friday post on X that he was open to cooperating with the haredi parties to replace Netanyahu — an arrangement that would have been almost unimaginable until recently.
“The election results require all of us to rethink our approach and recognize that there are no good alternatives or magic solutions before us,” Lieberman wrote. He said politicians would need to “show flexibility and make compromises,” including on the issue of haredi military conscription.
“Our national responsibility requires us to make difficult decisions and be prepared for painful compromises,” he added.
The other leaders of the change bloc have been considerably more vague, focusing on the need to replace Netanyahu without specifying how they intend to do so.
“In recent days, I have been advancing a plan with my partners to establish a national emergency government,” Eisenkot wrote on Friday of the four parties that comprise the opposition bloc coming out of the election.
“The logic behind it is to quickly swear in a government based on the four Zionist parties of change and renewal, with any party or Knesset member who agrees to my four basic principles joining immediately or gradually,” he explained. These principles include recognizing Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, accepting the values enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, mandatory military or civilian service, and recognizing Hamas as a terrorist organization.
But in the same post in which he announced his willingness to compromise with the haredi parties, Lieberman also introduced a potential obstacle that could derail the entire effort. The veteran politician ruled out supporting any minority government, raising the number of seats the change bloc needs to secure to 61. That would require the support of both haredi parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, rather than just the former.
That is a considerably greater challenge. Shas is considered more right-wing than United Torah Judaism, and its leader, Aryeh Deri, has maintained an especially close relationship with Netanyahu for years. The party also endorsed Netanyahu for prime minister during the consultations. So far, there has been no indication that Shas intends to abandon him, casting serious doubt on the viability of a change-bloc government backed by the haredi parties.
And that is far from the only obstacle facing such an arrangement. One of the central themes of the change bloc’s election campaign was the need to enlist haredi men in the military and change the state’s longstanding approach to their exemption from service. One of the bloc’s strongest campaign arguments was Netanyahu’s unpopular alliance with the two haredi parties. Every leader in the bloc, without exception, pledged before the election not to sit with them in government.
Forming a government with the haredi parties, likely involving significant compromises on military conscription, would be seen by many change-bloc voters as a stunning betrayal.
The first signs of a revolt have already emerged within the bloc. Dan Illouz, an elected Knesset member from Lieberman’s party, wrote on Friday that “we cannot give up on a conscription law,” making clear that he would oppose compromises on the issue.
An unprecedented partnership?
Another scenario that could theoretically allow Eisenkot to form a government would be to rely on cooperation with another minority, the Arab parties — an arrangement that has long been controversial in Israeli politics. The 19 seats won by Ra’am and the Joint List, the two Arab parties in the bloc, could provide the additional support needed for a change bloc government.
Eisenkot would need active support from Ra’am, the more moderate of the two Arab parties, which previously joined the coalition that replaced Netanyahu in 2021 and has made integration into Israeli society a central part of its platform, alongside an abstention or support from outside the coalition, i.e. not actively joining the coalition, by the Joint List. The more hard-line Arab party has signaled its willingness to engage in unprecedented cooperation with the change bloc to bring down Netanyahu’s coalition.
But here, too, cooperation is far from straightforward, and the obstacles again come from within the change bloc itself.
In addition to ruling out support for a minority government, including one backed by Ra’am, Lieberman made clear that he would oppose any government relying on the Arab parties. “We must not establish a government that relies on the abstention of the Joint List and Ra’am,” he emphasized in his Friday post.
Without Lieberman’s support, cooperation between the change bloc and the Arab parties appears unlikely. It would require the active support of both Arab parties, rather than just Ra’am, a prospect likely to create significant difficulties for members of the change bloc who may be reluctant to cooperate with a party that many Jewish Israelis view as hostile to the Jewish state and the Zionist project. Israeli media have reported that some lawmakers in the bloc have already conveyed that they would struggle to sit in a government with the Arab parties.
Here, too, such an arrangement would represent a clear breach of a campaign promise made by every leader in the change bloc. Eisenkot himself said in a late September interview with Channel 12 News that the Arab parties, including Ra’am, did not meet his conditions for joining a government. Among those conditions, he said, was recognizing Hamas as a terrorist organization.
A unity government after all?
The third possible route to forming a government would be a national unity coalition between Netanyahu and the change bloc, or at least some of its constituent parties.
So far, all the leaders of the change bloc appear to have categorically ruled out such an arrangement after the election.
In his Friday post, Eisenkot said there was an “urgent need to replace” Netanyahu’s leadership. Lieberman declared that “the Netanyahu era must come to an end.” Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats, said the bloc had a “historic responsibility” to send Netanyahu home, while Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister who leads B’Yachad, also emphasized the urgency of replacing the current government.
The underlying assumption is that Netanyahu, who will remain prime minister if neither bloc succeeds in forming a new government and new elections are called, would prefer another election to giving up the office.
That would mean any unity arrangement would likely require Netanyahu to remain prime minister, at least initially, under a rotation agreement. Some have speculated that the change bloc’s overtures to the ultra-Orthodox parties are intended to lower Netanyahu’s bargaining power ahead of potential negotiations over a unity government.
For all the momentum behind Eisenkot’s bid to replace Netanyahu, none of the available paths to a governing majority looks straightforward. Securing the mandate may have been the easy part – forming a government could prove much harder.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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How to pursue justice: 5 lessons from the life of Stan Levy
At a time of so much division and injustice, when the temptation is to retreat into outrage or into ourselves, there is much to be learned in the life of our friend, Stan Levy.
Stan, who died Nov. 5 at the age of 84, founded Bet Tzedek Legal services and was a fixture in the Los Angeles legal, philanthropic and Jewish communities for close to 60 years. Ensuring fairness where it was absent was Stan’s calling, both as a lawyer and a rabbi.
How he set out to do that — the sheer range of his accomplishments — is daunting: an experienced concert promoter, a corporate general counsel and law firm partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, an ordained rabbi, the founder and spiritual leader of a thriving congregation, B’nai Horin, the founder of a transdenominational rabbinical and cantorial school, the Academy of Jewish Religion, and, for good measure, the visionary behind the founding of three of the community’s most important legal aid organizations — Bet Tzedek, Public Counsel and the Western Center on Law & Poverty.
But the lessons behind the list matter more.
The first lesson: pay attention to the people others don’t see. The 1970s were something of a heyday for legal services, the funding relatively more plentiful and far less controversial than today. But Stan saw something few others did. There were no free legal services in what was then the center of Jewish life in Los Angeles, the Fairfax District. He recognized the significant needs of Holocaust survivors, a group otherwise invisible to most, and other low-income individuals and families living in the heart of the Jewish community. And in 1974, he founded Bet Tzedek Legal Services.
From its start as a small legal clinic in 1974, Bet Tzedek now draws on more than 1,100 staff and pro bono attorneys, and helped more than 82,000 people of all backgrounds in 2025. In 1970, before he turned 30, Stan launched Public Counsel, now the largest pro bono law firm in the country.
The second lesson of Stan’s life: build the institution, then let it outgrow you. Along with co-founder Luis Lainer, Stan continued to be a board member of Bet Tzedek for more than 50 years.
There was no founder’s syndrome for him. At various times we both served as CEOs at Bet Tzedek. We never heard Stan say, “That’s not the way we have done it.” Instead, he encouraged us and embraced changes. After 50 years, he was younger and more restless than the rest of us.
The third lesson: learn from everyone — especially from your own tradition. Stan was known to quote the likes of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Muhammad Ali with equal fluency. His favorite quote from Heschel was, “An act of injustice is condemned not because the law is broken, but because a person has been hurt.” His favorite from The Greatest was, “Service to others is the rent I pay for my room here on earth.”
He was a Jewish leader deeply versed in Jewish learning — it’s not as common as you’d think. In 1968, Stan founded B’nai Horin, which translates as “Children of Freedom.” The congregation was never affiliated with a movement and remained welcoming to all, drawing hundreds to its High Holy Days services, b’nai mitzvah classes and Shabbat services.
In 2001, seeing the need for a seminary that would educate professionals like him who wanted to more deeply explore their Judaism, Stan co-founded the transdenominational Academy of Jewish Religion in Los Angeles, which ordains rabbis, cantors and chaplains. Stan could passionately explain access to justice while drawing on Jewish history, tradition and teachings.
The fourth lesson: successful leadership is measured by the number of people you lift. The impact Stan had on our individual lives reflects the way he touched so many people. He guided our careers, helped guide us into leadership positions at Bet Tzedek, performed Mitch’s wedding and led shiva services for David’s parents.
When David launched The Justice Ball, a new era in legal aid fundraising events, it was Stan who negotiated the contracts for the famed musical acts who appeared. When Mitch launched the Holocaust Survivor Justice Network, a national pro bono program, Stan stepped away from his role as a law firm partner and ran the program across the country. He created an international network of more than 5,000 attorneys who have helped secure over $200 million in reparations for survivors. He was a founder who never hesitated to show up to do the work.
The last lesson he taught us may be the most important: Stan and his wife Lynda were inseparable, a power couple before there was such a thing. His sons, Jules, Aaron and Joshua, were the subject of so many of his stories. Stan could balance being a Renaissance Man with his greatest talent of all, being a Family Man. Neither suffered for the other; he had room in his heart for his passions and his loves.
The world is far from healed — though not for Stan’s lack of trying. His life points the way forward for all of us: find the people who’ve been overlooked, build something to serve them, bring everyone you can into the room — and then keep going.
Stan Levy, may your memory be a blessing.
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