The Autobiography of Beba Epstein

by JESSICA TAUBER

In May 2017, a momentous discovery was made: some 170,000 pages of additional, previously unknown Jewish documents at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. These newly discovered materials, thought to have been destroyed by the Nazis, are being added to the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project.

The autobiography of Beba Epstein—written when she was a precocious fifth-grader before the start of World War II—is one of those 170,000 treasures.

When the Nazis invaded Vilna, Beba—the eldest among her siblings—hid alone in the attic of a gentile military officer’s house whose family lived downstairs. When she stopped receiving news from her family members, she left her hiding spot and was smuggled into the Vilna ghetto to find them. She never did find them, as they had already perished in Ponar. Beba herself was trapped in the ghetto and was ultimately in three concentration camps, including Kaiserwald and Stutthof, from where she was liberated.

After the War, Beba made her way to the United States with the help of her uncle Lasar Epstein, an activist in the Jewish Labor Committee, whose papers are preserved in the YIVO Archives. Beba later married Elias Leventhal and had two children: Mary, a psychiatrist, and Michael, an attorney, who both reside in California.

Throughout her remarkable life, Beba was very active in the Jewish community. She worked as a social worker for Jewish Family Service in LA, assisting Russian Jewish refugees as part of the Russian Resettlement Unit, and volunteered in Jewish organizations.

Beba’s writing offers her family a view of life before the Holocaust, which she rarely spoke about. She passed away in 2012, with her family thinking she was 88, only to learn from her autobiography that she was 89, just two days short of her 90th birthday.

Beba’s legacy lives on—it lives on through her family and it lives on at YIVO. Her autobiography draws a picture of lives that were lived and lost; in Lithuania approximately 90 to 95 percent of the Jewish population was murdered. Its discovery is truly a story of coming full circle, and forming a link between generations.

Jessica Tauber is YIVO’s Communications Manager.