Names Not Numbers

Michael Epstein

Lodz, Poland

Labor Camp In Siberia, Russia

1935

Michael Epstein

Lodz, Poland

1935

Michael was born on October 10, 1935, in Lodz, Poland. His father was a shochet (butcher), and his mother was a seamstress. On September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland, and by September 8, they had entered Lodz. At that time, Michael’s father was serving in the Polish army.

To escape the advancing German forces, his mother, who was with little Michael, not yet five years old, along with an aunt and uncle, decided to flee eastward toward Russia. They managed to reunite with Michael’s father in Bialystok by the end of 1939.

The Germans and Russians entered a non-aggression pact and they divided Poland between them with Bialystok being on Russian side.

Russians considered refugees as potential spies and sent them to Siberia in the winter of 1939. In Siberia, they lived in mud houses and the adults worked in a forced labor camp, chopping trees and working in coal mines.

In 1942, as part of a deal recognizing the Polish government in absentia, Russia freed the Polish citizens in Siberia.

They decided to look for a warmer place and went by cattle cars to Turkistan, where they managed to find a place to live and to make a living trading in the black market.

They remained in Turkistan until the end of the war in 1945. Upon the war’s conclusion, they returned to Lodz, only to find their apartment occupied by others. They then moved to Germany, seeking refuge among the Americans.

They were placed in Feldafing, a displaced persons’ camp in Germany, where Michael appears in a photograph at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, depicting boys in the cheder at Feldafing. They stayed in Feldafing until 1949, waiting for a sponsor to help them emigrate to the United States. In 1949, Michael’s mother’s cousin succeeded in sponsoring their immigration.

Upon arriving in the United States, they settled in the Bronx, where Michael’s father found work as a butcher and his mother continued sewing coats. Michael attended yeshiva in the Bronx for two years, later teaching himself Jewish subjects and Hebrew reading. He subsequently attended public high school, City College, and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where he pursued a degree in electrical engineering.

He later worked in Teterboro, New Jersey, for an aerospace company, contributing to the development of an inertial navigation system used by NASA to guide spacecraft. Michael married his wife, whose family had also endured forced labor in Siberia where she was born, in November 1960. The couple has two daughters and a son.

Names Not Numbers

Michael Epstein

Michael Epstein

The End