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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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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.
The post How to pursue justice: 5 lessons from the life of Stan Levy appeared first on The Forward.
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A Philadelphia bike ride targeting Jewish-owned businesses on the eve of Kristallnacht anniversary spurs outrage from city and state leaders
(JTA) — PHILADELPHIA – A bicycle ride promoting the boycott of businesses in Center City Philadelphia that organizers claim are complicit in Israeli military actions is drawing scathing criticism from state leaders.
Jewish groups in the city are calling the ride blatantly antisemitic, noting that it targets Jewish-owned businesses on Nov. 8, the eve of the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” when Nazi rioters vandalized and burned German Jewish businesses, synagogues and homes, a major escalation of Nazi persecution of Jews.
Organizers insist the timing is coincidental, and in statements posted on their Instagram pages accuse their critics of being “cynical” and weaponizing antisemitism to target pro-Palestinian advocates.
The Instagram post advertising the event in Rittenhouse Square reads: “Ride around Rittenhouse with us as we show these Zionist business owners that we see them for the disgusting human beings they are.” It continues, “We’ll flag as many bikes as we can and show our solidarity with the Palestinian community and oppressed folk everywhere.”
State and city officials expressing outrage at the planned ride include Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, a Democrat, Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday, a Republican, and Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Jewish Democrat considered a contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
“As Mayor, I serve every Philadelphian under the explicit premise that freedom of speech and freedom from fear are not competing values,” Parker said in a statement. “No one should be targeted, threatened, or made to feel unwelcome because of their faith, identity, or background. Singling out businesses because their owners are Jewish is unacceptable and has no place in our city.”
A spokesperson for Shapiro, whose official residence was set ablaze on Passover last year by a man enraged by Israel’s conduct in Gaza, said the ride was clearly antisemitic.
“This bike ride, masquerading as a protest to advance the cause of justice, is nothing more than blatant antisemitism designed to intimidate and drive Jewish businesses out of our communities and there is no place for that in our commonwealth,” the spokesperson said.
Sunday said the restaurateurs were targeted because they are Jewish. “By explicitly targeting businesses because their owners are Jewish, the organizers are engaging in a form of discrimination that falls back on some of the oldest antisemitic tropes and tactics in history,” he said.
Hearing such support not only from political leaders but also from interfaith leaders throughout the city has left Philadelphia Board of Rabbis president David Levin “gratified.” “We’ve received broad-based support,” Rabbi Levin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The Jewish community obviously is finding it outrageous, but our civic leaders have stepped up with public comments.
“And my faith partners from other denominations have reached out to us in solidarity and support,” Levin said. “I’m delighted Philadelphia has lived up to its tagline as the City of Brotherly Love. We are feeling that.”
He called on those sympathetic to the businesses not to interfere with the bikers. “The worst thing we could do is find ourselves in a place where there’s confrontation and this thing escalates and people potentially put themselves in a position where they could get hurt,” Levin said.
“I’ve been sort of using the tagline ‘Keep the streets empty and the restaurants full,’” he said. “The best thing we can do in the days and weeks ahead is support these restaurateurs trying to make a living, and our community is turning out in droves.”
The organizers, Philly Bike On Your Left in collaboration with Philly Writers Against the War on Gaza, Boycott CookNSolo and Philly Solidarity Calendar, posted the invitation to join on Oct. 30 on Instagram.
“We call for a boycott because the owners materially and ideologically support the ongoing occupation and genocide of Palestinians,” Boycott CookNSolo, named for the restaurant chain owned by Israeli American celebrity chef Michael Solomonov, said. “Profits from their enterprises and from their fundraising efforts have been used to fund the occupation and to support pro-genocide interest groups in the U.S. and ‘Israel.’”
It is not clear why the organizers believe the businesses are tied to any “occupation,” or how they are “pro-genocide.”
Solomonov, who declined to comment, has been targeted in the past for fundraising for United Hatzalah, a first responder rescue group that works with a wide range of civil and government bodies in Israel and abroad, including the IDF. One such fundraiser came after the group said its resources were stretched thin due to their work to save lives and preserve the dead after the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly Hamas raids inside Israel. Other restaurant owners appear to have been targeted, according to protest organizers, for expressing support for Israel on social media after the attacks, which killed 1,200 people inside Israel.
Boycott CookNSolo also said that drawing attention to the Kristallnacht timing was “a cynical take that is not only offensive to the historical victims of Nazi persecution but an intentional distraction from the actual pogroms currently taking place in the West Bank and the wholesale destruction of life and livelihood in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.”
Schlesinger’s Deli owner Allan Domb, one of the targeted owners, said he was heartened by the broad support he received.
“It’s upsetting to see this level of hatred against four business owners for no reason,“ said Domb, a former Philadelphia city councilman. “It’s blatant antisemitism. But the positive side is, the amount of support from Philadelphia and outside of Philadelphia has been amazing.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A Philadelphia bike ride targeting Jewish-owned businesses on the eve of Kristallnacht anniversary spurs outrage from city and state leaders appeared first on The Forward.
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Pro-Israel conservatives blast JD Vance for blaming Israel after GOP midterm losses
(JTA) — Conservative pro-Israel voices are lashing out at Vice President JD Vance after he linked the Republican Party’s massive midterm losses to the country’s relationship with Israel and the war in Iran.
Vance on Wednesday said that “the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone” and listed four strategies to bring back voters: end the war in Iran; focus on the cost of living and inflation; put America first and “change our relationship to Israel.”
Eric Levine, a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he doesn’t “recall seeing a single exit poll in which any voter identified ‘change our relationship with Israel’ as a factor in their voting decision.”
“It makes you wonder why he would make such a claim,” Levine added.
Conservative radio personality Sid Rosenberg, a Jewish New Yorker and friend of President Donald Trump, slammed the vice president and cited his “constant calls for a ceasefire” as the reason why the conflict with Iran has persisted.
“Vance is a disloyal, agenda driven problem for our party moving forward,” Rosenberg wrote on X, urging Trump to replace him as chief Iran negotiator with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a favorite of Rosenberg’s and other Jewish conservatives for the 2028 GOP presidential nod.
Rosenberg has long criticized Vance for not being “strong enough on Israel” and has demanded that Vance distance himself from Tucker Carlson, a right-wing commentator who condemns U.S. military aid for Israel and who has been accused of amplifying antisemitic tropes.
In September, Rosenberg accepted an invitation to meet with Vance at the White House, as the vice president attempted to make overtures to the Jewish community following a series of controversial remarks about Israel. Following the meeting, Rosenberg reported that he and Vance “hit it off,” adding that the two men would likely have “many more meetings about very substantial things” in the future.
“He is willing to listen,” Rosenberg said at the time. “I don’t think by any stretch that JD Vance hates Israel, hates the Jewish people.”
Jonathan Greenberg, director for combatting antisemitism at Defending Education and a former staffer for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, told JTA earlier this week that he viewed Vance’s comments as “nonsense.”
“The same Islamist-communist alliance that’s infiltrating our schools and teaching our kids to hate America is the same alliance that Israel is fighting,” said Greenberg, who ran for state office in Illinois as a Republican in 2012 but is now unaffiliated.
“The idea that we’re going to take an ally in that fight and feed them to the same ogre that’s coming after us makes absolutely no sense to me,” he added. “I think the vice president’s wrong.”
CUFI Action Fund, a nonprofit branch of the pro-Israel advocacy group Christians United for Israel, described the vice president in a statement as “clearly, demonstrably and unambiguously wrong.”
“In a list of the top four reasons the Republicans lost, the Jews were effectively blamed twice if you can hear that pitch of dog whistle,” the statement said, referring to Vance’s fingerpointing to both Israel and the war in Iran.
“This war should’ve been over months ago, and if the vice president wants someone to blame for that, he needs only look in the mirror,” the organization said, alluding to the argument that Vance’s proposed concessions to Iran helped spur the war instead of ending it. “The Vance-Carlson movement, which we call woke rightism, is as loud as their candidates are weak.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Pro-Israel conservatives blast JD Vance for blaming Israel after GOP midterm losses appeared first on The Forward.
