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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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Australian Bar Shut Down for Displaying Posters of Netanyahu, Putin, Trump in Nazi-Like Uniforms
Adolf Hitler in Nuremberg in 1938. Photo: Imperial War Museums.
A live music bar and cafe in Australia was shut down by local police on Wednesday for displaying posters that depict world leaders and others, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, wearing Nazi-like uniforms.
The Dissent Cafe and Bar in Canberra Central said in a Facebook post that ACT Policing, the community policing arm of the Australian Federal Police, shut down the venue for two and a half hours on Wednesday night. Police said they were investigating a complaint about possible hate imagery relating to five posters in the venue’s window display. A scheduled performance at the bar and cafe was also canceled because of the shutdown.
ACT Policing said in a statement on Thursday that it declared the cafe a crime scene and officers would investigate whether there was a breach of new Commonwealth law about hate symbols. Police noted that they asked the venue’s owner to remove the posters and he refused.
“Officers attended the premises and had a discussion with the owner, with officers seeking to remove the posters as part of their investigation into the matter. The owner declined this request and so a crime scene was established,” read the police statement. “Five posters were subsequently seized and will be considered under recently enacted Commonwealth legislation regarding hate symbols.”
The Dissent Cafe and Bar had displayed in its front windows posters depicting Netanyahu, Trump, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, US Vice President JD Vance and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk in Nazi-like uniforms. The posters were created by the artist group Grow Up Art and underneath them were signs in the window that said “Sanction Israel” and “Stop Genocide.” Grow Up Art displayed the same images as part of a billboard poster campaign last summer and they are also sold on t-shirts. The artist group nicknamed the men in the posters collectively as “The Turd Reich,” a play on the Third Reich, the name for the Nazi dictatorship in Germany under Adolf Hitler’s rule.
Dissent Cafe and Bar has defended the artwork, saying it is “clearly and obviously parody art with a distinct anti fascist [sic] message.”
“In what is obviously harassment the ACT police have declared a crime scene at Dissent and tonight’s gig is unfortunately canceled,” Dissent Cafe and Bar wrote on Facebook when the closure happened on Wednesday.
The posters have since been placed back in the windows of the live music bar, but the images are now covered with the word “CENSORED” in red. ACT Policing said on Thursday they are still investigating the posters and are also “seeking legal advice on their legality.”
“ACT Policing remains committed to ensuring that alleged antisemitic, racist, and hate incidents are addressed promptly and thoroughly, and when possible criminality is identified, ACT Policing will not hesitate to take appropriate action,” police added.
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At Board of Peace Debut, Trump Announces Global Commitments for Gaza Reconstruction
USPresident Donald Trump speaks at the inaugural Board of Peace meeting at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, US, Feb. 19, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump told the first meeting of his Board of Peace on Thursday that nations had contributed $7 billion to a Gaza reconstruction fund that aims to rebuild the enclave once Hamas disarms, an objective that is far from becoming a reality.
The disarmament of Hamas terrorists and accompanying withdrawal of Israeli troops, the size of the reconstruction fund, and the flow of humanitarian aid to the war-battered populace of Gaza are among the major questions likely to test the effectiveness of the board in the months ahead.
The meeting in Washington came amid a broader push by Trump to build a reputation as a peacemaker. It also took place as the United States threatens war against Iran and has embarked on a massive military buildup in the region in case Tehran refuses to give up its nuclear program.
The Board‘s founding membership does not include some key US Western allies concerned about the scope of the initiative.
In a flurry of announcements at the end of a long, winding speech to representatives from 47 nations, Trump said the United States will contribute $10 billion to the Board of Peace. He did not say where the money would come from or whether he would seek it from the US Congress.
MOSTLY MIDDLE EASTERN MEMBERSHIP
Trump said contributing nations had raised $7 billion as an initial down payment for Gaza reconstruction. Contributors included Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, and Kuwait, he said. The membership is mostly made up of Middle Eastern countries, plus leaders from outside the region who may be looking to gain favor with Trump.
Estimates for rebuilding Gaza, which was reduced to rubble after two years of war, range up to $70 billion.
Trump proposed the board in September when he announced his plan to end Israel’s war in Gaza. He later made clear the board‘s remit would expand beyond Gaza to tackle other conflicts worldwide, a point he reiterated on Wednesday by saying it would look into “hotspots” around the world.
Trump said FIFA will raise $75 million for soccer-related projects in Gaza and that the United Nations will chip in $2 billion for humanitarian assistance.
The Board of Peace includes Israel but not Palestinian representatives. Trump‘s suggestion that the Board could eventually address challenges beyond Gaza has stirred anxiety that it could undermine the UN’s role as the main platform for global diplomacy and conflict resolution.
“We’re going to strengthen the United Nations,” Trump said, trying to assuage his critics, even though the United States is in arrears on making payments.
Trump said Norway would host a Board of Peace event, but Norway clarified it was not joining the board.
IRAN SABER-RATTLING
Even as he talked up himself as a man of peace, Trump rattled sabers against Iran.
Trump said he should know in 10 days whether a deal is possible to end a standoff with Tehran. “We have to have a meaningful deal,” he said.
Trump said several nations are planning to send thousands of troops to participate in an International Stabilization Force that will help keep the peace in Gaza when it eventually deploys.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto announced his country would contribute up to 8,000 troops to the force.
The plan for the force is to begin working in areas Israel controls in the absence of Hamas disarmament. The force, led by a US general with an Indonesian deputy, will start in Israeli-controlled Rafah. The aim is to train 12,000 police and have 20,000 troops.
“The first five countries have committed troops to serve in the ISF – Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and Albania. Two countries have committed to train police – Egypt and Jordan,” International Stabilization Force commander Army Major General Jasper Jeffers said on Thursday.
HAMAS DISARMAMENT A KEY ISSUE
Hamas has been reluctant to hand over weaponry as part of Trump‘s 20-point Gaza plan that brought about a fragile ceasefire last October in the two-year Gaza war.
Trump said he hoped the use of force to disarm Hamas would be unnecessary. He said Hamas had promised to disarm and it “looks like they’re going to be doing that, but we’ll have to find out.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Israel that Hamas will be disarmed one way or the other. “Very soon, Hamas will face a dilemma – to disarm peacefully or disarmed forcefully,” he said.
In Gaza, Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said in a statement that the real test of the Board of Peace “lies in their ability to compel the occupation to halt its violations of the ceasefire, to oblige it to meet its obligations, and to initiate a genuine relief effort and launch the reconstruction process.”
The Board of Peace event had the feel of a Trump campaign rally, with music blaring from his eclectic playlist that included Elvis Presley and the Beach Boys. Participants received red Trump hats.
Hamas, which has resumed administration of nearly half the enclave, says it is ready to hand over to a US-backed committee of Palestinian technocrats led by Ali Shaath, but that Israel has not allowed the group into Gaza. Israel has yet to comment on those assertions.
Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian with a senior role in the Board of Peace, said at the meeting that 2,000 Palestinians have applied to join a new transitional Palestinian police force.
“We have to get this right. There is no plan B for Gaza. Plan B is going back to war. No one here wants that,” said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
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Andreas E. Mach’s Monument to Memory: Jüdische Familienunternehmer in Hitlers München
A store damaged during Kristallnacht. Photo: German Federal Archives via Wikimedia Commons.
In an age of slogans and shortcuts, Andreas E. Mach has written a meticulous, unflinching book. Jüdische Familienunternehmer in Hitlers München (“Jewish Family Entrepreneurs in Hitler’s Munich”) is not only a history of businesses — it is a map back to a city that once existed, and a ledger of how it was unmade.
Mach’s canvas is Munich from the 19th century through the aftermath of 1945. His method is documentary and patient: city directories and business registers; police and tax files; contemporary newspapers; memoirs and family papers. From this archive he reconstructs the families who shaped Munich’s modern economy — department stores like Bamberger & Hertz, fashion and textile manufacturers, breweries and beverage firms, banks, and the great art dealerships (Bernheimer, Drey, Heinemann, Thannhauser, Rosenthal, Helbing). He shows how these Jewish-founded enterprises fueled jobs, style, philanthropy, and civic leadership — and how, step by step, they were boycotted, expropriated, “Aryanized,” and erased from the city’s commercial map.
The book opens with a foreword by Dr. h.c. Charlotte Knobloch (July 2024), president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria and former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Her message is clear: remembrance is responsibility amid rising antisemitism.
Mach is a political scientist and historian from a southern German entrepreneurial family, with studies in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands (M.A.) and in the U.S. (M.P.I.A.), early work in investment banking, and, since 2005, the founding of the international family-enterprise forum ALPHAZIRKEL.
A photographic essay explains the cover image: in March 1933, Munich lawyer Dr. Michael Siegel was beaten, forced barefoot through the city, and made to wear a placard. Mach places that humiliation inside a system that very quickly moved from intimidation to dispossession. He then widens the lens: a historical overview traces the growth of Munich’s Jewish community — from 1,206 members in 1852 to more than 11,000 by 1910 — its institutions (the 1887 main synagogue on Herzog-Max-Straße with roughly 2,000 seats; Ohel Jakob; prayer houses and charities), and its contributions to a capital that became internationally respected in art and culture. He notes that by 2022 the community again counted roughly 11,000 members, and that Jewish life is once more visible in the cityscape with the 2006 synagogue and cultural center at Jakobsplatz.
Mach’s narrative is careful about complexity. He documents assimilation and civic engagement — business leadership, philanthropy, even sports (Kurt Landauer’s presidency at FC Bayern) — but he also records the persistence of antisemitism before 1918, debates over Zionism, and the arrival of poorer Eastern Jews whose visibility fed prejudice. He includes wartime service and suspicion side by side: around 100,000 Jews served in the German army in World War I; the humiliating Judenzählung of Nov. 1, 1916 sought to prove Jews shirked the front, yet subsequent figures showed similar front-line rates (and decorations) to non-Jews — but the results were not published at the time. Mach quotes and paraphrases contemporary Jewish voices who felt they were fighting “on two fronts” — for the country and for equal rights.
The revolutionary crisis of 1918–1919 is presented as prelude rather than detour. Mach recounts the proclamation of the Free State of Bavaria on Nov. 8, 1918, by Kurt Eisner; his assassination on Feb. 21, 1919; the brief council republics; and the brutal “white terror” that followed. He names the murdered and condemned — Gustav Landauer beaten to death after arrest; Eugen Leviné executed; Ernst Toller sentenced; Erich Mühsam imprisoned — and records the double standard in sentencing: perpetrators from the Reichswehr and Freikorps often received lenient treatment while revolutionaries were abused and, in some cases, murdered. The period also ushers in figures who will define the next era: Rudolf Heß, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Dietrich Eckart, and Adolf Hitler’s first steps in 1919 under Captain Karl Mayr, including the antisemitic “Mayr letter.” Mach’s point is cumulative: explanations, enemies, and habits of looking away were practiced in these years, and Munich became the stage on which they would later be performed.
When Mach turns fully to “Hitler’s Munich,” the argument is anchored by street-level facts. He documents the April 1, 1933 boycott — photographed, staged, and effective as intimidation. He details the demolition of the main synagogue in June 1938 on Hitler’s order: the contractor (Leonhard Moll), the speed (within a month), and the compensation (200,000 Reichsmarks) to remove what Hitler called an “eyesore.” He tracks the Nov. 9–10, 1938 pogrom in Munich with specific images and captions (smashed windows at the Bernheimer gallery on Lenbachplatz; the boycott poster at Bamberger & Hertz on Kaufingerstraße), and notes that nearly all adult Jewish men were deported to Dachau in the aftermath. Individual fates punctuate the narrative — among them the arrest of banker Emil Krämer. Administrative theft is made visible: Jews were compelled to declare assets; by 1938, Jewish losses in Germany totaled roughly 12 billion RM; in Munich alone Mach cites roughly 600 million RM in real estate and nearly 150 million RM in securities and balances registered in 1938. On countless forms, one formula recurs: “The property falls to the Reich.”
Mach also reproduces the texture of “Aryanization” as it appeared to the public. He cites a Völkischer Beobachter advertisement of July 25, 1938 announcing that the porcelain, glass, and household goods firm “formerly Martin Pauson” had been transferred into “German ownership.” He shows how city paperwork could continue to list Jewish firms even as their owners were being forced from homes into Judenhäuser, or into hiding. At Munich’s liberation on April 30, 1945, only 34 Jews were found in hiding in the city. Mach references research on Jews who attempted to survive underground in Munich and Upper Bavaria, the dangers they and their helpers faced, and the gap between postwar stories of universal assistance and the record of denunciation and greed.
The book’s architecture makes its case. After the narrative chapters — “Jüdisches Leben in München – ein historischer Überblick bis 1918” (“Jewish Life in Munich – A Historical Overview Until 1918”), “Das München der Revolution – Prélude des Holocaust” (“The Munich of the Revolution – Prelude to the Holocaust”), “Hitlers München: die ‘braune’ Stadt” (“Hitler’s Munich: the ‘brown’ city”), “Arisierung und Restitution” (“Aryanization and Restitution”), and the detailed account of November 1938 — Mach opens into registers readers can use: a directory of businesses affected during the pogrom; a reprint-based listing of Jewish business owners recorded by the trade police in 1938; and studies of Nazi art plunder in Munich. He then offers sector and firm profiles: leading art dealers (A.S. Drey, Heinemann, Thannhauser, Bernheimer, Helbing, Caspari, and others); selected family companies (including bank and retail houses); Jewish lawyers; and a long section on fashion and textiles (department stores, manufacturers, tailors, wholesalers). A distinct contribution is the inclusion of Lotte Bamberger’s memoir (with German translation), which threads one family’s trajectory through the commercial and moral topography Mach has drawn.
Throughout, Mach refuses euphemism. He writes with moral clarity but without sermonizing: he lays out the documents, then the consequences; he names who benefited, who signed, who looked away, and who helped. He proves that the story of Jewish family enterprise is not ancillary to Munich’s identity — it is central. When those families were expelled, the city did not simply “change”; it lost part of itself.
On a personal note, I met Andreas once — and that was enough. Charismatic and purposeful, he cuts through the noise with a quiet insistence on truth at a moment when too many remain silent or choose the wrong side as antisemitism rises worldwide. For years I heard about him from one of my closest friends, Emil Schustermann, who spoke of Andreas with steady admiration. This past summer I was fortunate to meet the legend in person. The integrity you feel in his book is the integrity you feel across a table: steady, unsentimental, anchored in facts and responsibility.
Jüdische Familienunternehmer in Hitlers München is, finally, a usable history. It helps citizens, students, and leaders see Munich differently: storefronts as testimonies, plaques as prompts, absences as questions. It closes the distance between numbers and names, between street addresses and fates. And it leaves readers with the task the book so plainly sets — to remember precisely, to teach honestly, and to stand, now, against the same old hatred in its new clothes.
Eli Verschleiser is a NYC-based entrepreneur, financier, real estate developer, and investor. In his philanthropy, he is Chairman for Our Place, among other nonprofit organizations that provide support, shelter, and counseling for troubled Jewish youth. He is a frequent commentator on political and social services matters and can be followed on X (formerly Twitter): @E_Verschleiser