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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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With the last hostage released, is American Jewish unity over?
When the remains of the last Israeli hostage in Gaza returned to Israel this week, Scott Spindel, a lawyer in Encino, Calif., finally took off the thick steel dog tag he had put on after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
His friend Lauren Krieger, an orthopedic surgeon, did the same. And he pulled down the last of the names of the hostages remaining in Gaza that his wife, Jenn Roth Krieger, had placed in the window of their Santa Monica home.
During the nearly 28 months that Israeli hostages remained in captivity in Gaza, Krieger, 61, and Spindel, 55, consistently argued over Israel’s war in the strip.
“Lauren would say that we probably were a little too extreme,” Spindel, whose daughter serves in the IDF, told me in a telephone interview. “I don’t think we blew up enough buildings.”
But those differences paled beside their mutual concern over the fate of the hostages.
“Unfortunately,” said Spindel, “it took tragedy to pull us together.”
So it was across the American Jewish landscape. Then, the body of Staff Sergeant Ran Gvili, the 24-year-old Israeli police officer killed on Oct. 7 and taken by Hamas terrorists back into the enclave, was returned to Israel — the last of the hostages to come home.
Jews from across the political spectrum unpinned yellow ribbon buttons from their lapels, removed the hostage posters from their synagogues, and folded up and put away the blue-and-white flags displayed as a symbol of the missing Israelis.
The marches and vigils American Jews held on behalf of the hostages — small but meaningful echoes of the mass rallies that roiled Israel — came to a quiet halt.
Jewish unity is forged in adversity. Without it, we are apt to find enemies among ourselves. And as painful as the hostage saga was, it unified an otherwise fractious American Jewish community in a time of crisis.
Without that common concern, are even deeper rifts our future?
“As committed and connected as we were,” said Spindel, “it doesn’t change the fact that we also were still divided about solutions.”
A family in distress
Across the United States, synagogues of all religious and political bents regularly joined in the same Acheinu prayer for the release and return of the hostages.
“Our family, the whole house of Israel, who are in distress,” the prayer begins — a wholly accurate summation of the totality of Jewish concern.
Surveys showed that the hostages unified American Jews even when Israel’s Gaza campaign divided them. An October 2025 Washington Post poll found that a plurality of American Jews disapproved of Israel’s military actions in Gaza — but a whopping 79% said they were “very concerned” about the hostages.
There have been other moments in recent Jewish history when calamity created unity. The 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, for instance, brought together the vast majority of American Jews in mourning, even those who opposed his policies.
And, of course the brutal Oct. 7 attack, which claimed almost 1,200 lives, created a near-universal sense of shock and sorrow.
But the hostage crisis may have had an even deeper emotional — and perhaps political — impact.
“Even for people who were not affiliated Jewishly, those hostages struck a deep, deep chord,” Krieger told me. “It felt personal. I don’t think we’ve had that level of collective trauma in our lifetimes in that same way.”
And a family divided
The hostage crisis bonded American Jews to one another, and to their Israeli counterparts, at a time when enormous political rifts were opening within their communities.
In the U.S., as in Israel, there were sharp disagreements over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war and whether he was even prioritizing the hostages’ safety.
And the encampments and protests against the war at college campuses — in which many Jewish students participated, and to which many others objected — created even deeper divisions over support for the Jewish state.
But if the hostage issue didn’t erase such differences, it muted them. Krieger and Spindel could frustrate each other in conversations about the conduct of the war, or American support for it. But in the end, they were both in that 79% that the Washington Post poll identified.
What will hold them — and the rest of us — together, now?
The hostage crisis provided something history unfortunately bestows upon Jews with regularity: an external enemy that transcended ideological differences. With it gone, American Jews return to what they’ve always been — a community bound by tradition, and riven by politics.
Krieger and Spindel have already resumed their arguments. But even though the dog tags are gone, they’re both still wearing Jewish stars on silver chains around their necks. When someone admires Krieger’s, he takes it off and gives it to them. He buys his metal stars in bulk on Amazon, and has given away dozens since Oct. 7.
“I want people to feel like I do,” he said, “like we’re a peoplehood worth cherishing.”
Worth cherishing — even though we can’t agree on much else.
The post With the last hostage released, is American Jewish unity over? appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran President Says Trump, Netanyahu, Europe Stirred Tensions in Protests
Amnesty International Greek activists and Iranians living in Athens hold candles and placards in front of the Greek Parliament to support the people of Iran, in Athens, Greece, January 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that US, Israeli and European leaders had exploited Iran’s economic problems, incited unrest and provided people with the means to “tear the nation apart” in recent protests.
The two-week long nationwide protests, which began in late December over an economic crisis marked by soaring inflation and rising living costs, have abated after a bloody crackdown by the clerical authorities that US-based rights group HRANA says has killed at least 6,563, including 6,170 protesters and 214 security forces.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told CNN Turk that 3,100, including 2,000 security forces, had been killed.
The US, Israeli and European leaders tried to “provoke, create division, and supplied resources, drawing some innocent people into this movement,” Pezeshkian said in a live state TV broadcast.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced support for the demonstrators, saying the US was prepared to take action if Iran continued to kill protesters. US officials said on Friday that Trump was reviewing his options but had not decided whether to strike Iran.
Israel’s Ynet news website said on Friday that a US Navy destroyer had docked at the Israeli port of Eilat.
Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Europeans “rode on our problems, provoked, and were seeking — and still seek — to fragment society,” said Pezeshkian.
“They brought them into the streets and wanted, as they said, to tear this country apart, to sow conflict and hatred among the people and create division,” Pezeshkian said.
“Everyone knows that the issue was not just a social protest,” he added.
Regional allies including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have been engaging in diplomatic efforts to prevent a military confrontation between Washington and Tehran.
The US is demanding that Iran curb its missile program if the two nations are to instead resume talks, but Iran has rejected that demand.
Foreign Minister Araqchi said in Turkey on Tuesday that missiles would never be the subject of any negotiations.
In response to US threats of military action, Araqchi said Tehran was ready for either negotiations or warfare, and also ready to engage with regional countries to promote stability and peace.
“Regime change is a complete fantasy. Some have fallen for this illusion,” Araqchi told CNN Turk. “Our system is so deeply rooted and so firmly established that the comings and goings of individuals make no difference.”
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CBS News Chief Weiss Touts Commentator Push, Draws Mixed Reaction in Newsroom
FILE PHOTO: Bari Weiss speaks at the 2022 Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 3, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
Three months into her tenure, CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss presented a vision this week to revitalize the nearly century-old broadcaster, in part by applying the same formula that fueled the rise of The Free Press – recruiting commentators who offer observations about news, politics and culture.
From adding 19 new commentators, including some drawn from The Free Press ranks, to introducing new podcasts, newsletters and live events, employees were variously energized or skeptical of the ideas presented by CBS’ new boss. Weiss’ notions about how to thrive in a post-Walter Cronkite era struck some as in conflict with the stated mission of doing great journalism, according to seven current and former CBS News employees and industry insiders.
In her presentation, Weiss also envisioned a galaxy of cross-platform stars, like New York Times columnist and CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin, whom she highlighted with a meme: “Sorkining.” The Dealbook founder is the author of several business books, executive producer of the Showtime series “Billions,” and maestro of the New York Times premiere live event, and a Davos fixture.
“It’s like saying ‘Hey, Hollywood. Why can’t you just be like Leonardo DiCaprio?’ If people knew how to bottle that magic and make someone a star, they would do it,” said a former CBS employee.
An industry veteran said the idea suggested a lack of appreciation for the power of television, which has been making stars for generations: among them “CBS Evening News” anchors Dan Rather, Connie Chung, Walter Cronkite and Katie Couric.
The 41-year-old Weiss, who has no broadcast experience and has been described as a distant leader by six current and former CBS News sources, now has to deliver on her promise of capturing new and younger viewers – including political independents who don’t see themselves reflected in mainstream media. It is a daunting undertaking that has hobbled executives across broadcast and cable, including former CNN chief Chris Licht, ousted in June 2023.
One supporter sees the charismatic Weiss as a modern-day Katharine Graham, the legendary publisher of the Washington Post, who was undermined by underlings when she took over in 1963. Graham transformed the paper and led it through its Watergate-era heyday, and generally left editorial decisions to Executive Editor Ben Bradlee.
A current staffer, speaking on background, said, “People are saying, ‘Let’s give her a chance’ … I want to see her succeed. If she succeeds, we all succeed.”
CBS News and Weiss did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
PRIORITIES FOR CBS NEWS
Weiss, a former opinion journalist and media entrepreneur, joined CBS after parent Paramount owner David Ellison bought her five-year-old media company, The Free Press, for $150 million in October.
Some see Weiss’ playbook of expanding CBS’s journalism ranks with commentators as conflicting with other initiatives including breaking news and landing deep investigative stories, according to three current and former CBS News staffers and an industry veteran.
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” said the former employee. “But is that what a news division is or are they craving something completely different? That’s fine but don’t pretend it’s a news division.”
Another current CBS News staffer talked about past failures to capitalize on new ways of reaching the audience, such as leveraging the power of the Paramount+ streaming service to promote news shows, observing, “We have done a wretched job of being on the internet.”
Weiss is also attempting to change the news network’s political orientation, appealing to a wider cross-section of Americans, according to her remarks Tuesday. Weiss said she wants CBS News to reflect the friction animating the national conversation.
In broadening its perspective to include more diverse viewpoints, CBS News could ultimately lay claim to the uncharted ground for a center-right broadcaster, said Integrated Media Chief Executive Jonathan Miller, a veteran media executive who has held senior positions at News Corp and AOL.
“We need to commission and greenlight stories that will surprise and provoke – including inside our own newsroom,” Weiss said in her address to employees. “We also have to widen the aperture of the stories we tell.”
On that front, CBS has had mixed results so far. Earlier this month, “CBS Evening News” broadcast a widely panned segment featuring U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in various meme-like situations, saluting him as “the ultimate Florida man.”
EARLY SUCCESSES
It has also seen successes, including Lesley Stahl’s interview with Trump son-in-law and Middle East advisor Jared Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, within a week of brokering a peace deal between Israel and Hamas, and Norah O’Donnell’s “60 Minutes” interview with Trump. Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over its editing of an interview with his White House rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
It landed journalistic scoops, including interviewing the man who charged one of two gunmen who attacked a Jewish community gathering in Sydney, and exclusive video of Alex Pretti, the man killed by Border Patrol in Minneapolis, reading a tribute to a veteran who died in 2024.
Weiss announced that the network would bring in contributors with expertise in politics, health, happiness, food and culture, whom she encouraged staffers to use on-air. The roster includes Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson of the conservative Hoover Institution, as well as Casey Lewis, a former Teen Vogue and MTV editor who writes about youth culture.
“It’s great to have younger people, a diverse demographic and diverse ideology represented,” said Kathy Kiely, the chair in Free-Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism. “Newsrooms can’t do a good job unless we have that diversity in our ranks. What worries me is the emphasis on opinion over primary-sourced, reported facts.”
Weiss emphasized making content available online before it airs on TV to reach more viewers. CBS has long been in third place behind rivals ABC and NBC and, like most mainstream media, is struggling with audience declines as consumers migrate to social platforms.
Pew Research estimates about one-third of all adults get at least some news from podcasts. CBS News does not appear among Spotify’s or Apple’s rankings of the top 50 news podcasts.
One former employee expects the digital-first goal to be complicated because CBS hasn’t devoted sufficient resources to helping correspondents or anchors curate their social media presence or re-edit television interviews for YouTube or streaming.
Weiss encouraged staffers to think of the news organization as the best-capitalized media startup in the world.
“We are in a position, with the support of all of the leadership of this company, to really make the change we need.”