Anita Epstein / Anita Kuenstler (F / Poland, 1942-2019), Holocaust survivor
Anita Epstein / Anita Kuenstler (F / Poland, 1942-2019), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Poland> <Krakow Ghetto> <Hidden Children> -- <United States>
- MEMOIRS : Miracle Child (2018)
Biography
Anita Epstein was born November 18, 1942 in the Kraków ghetto, Poland, to Salek and Eda Kuenstler. When she was three months old, her parents smuggled her out of the ghetto, persuading a Catholic family named Zendler to hide her. The Zendlers, who had three children of their own, baptized Anita and raised her as a Catholic.
Father died but mother survived and was reunited with the child after the war. They lived in a displaced persons' camp in Selb, Germany near the Czechoslovakian border until 1949 and then came to the United States on a troop ship, the USS Taylor. Anita later became a lobbyist for education and trade issues.
Book : Miracle Child (2018)
- Anita Epstein, with Noel Epstein, Miracle Child: The Journey of a Young Holocaust Survivor (Brighton, MA : Academic Studies Press, 2018).
"This memoir is about a Jewish baby born in the Krakow ghetto in November 1942, three years after Hitler conquered Poland, and, remarkably, escaping death—one of a mere one half of one percent of Jewish children in Poland who survived during the Nazi era. Her life was saved because her parents hid her with a Catholic family. Just as remarkably, her mother, still alive after suffering terribly through four of Hitler’s camps, traveled for weeks back to Poland and found her again. The book also depicts the author’s postwar challenges in Germany and America."-- Publisher description.
Noel Epstein, former Education Editor of The Washington Post, spent more than forty years as a journalist with the Post, the Wall Street Journal and as an independent consultant. He is the editor of Who’s In Charge Here? The Tangled Web of School Governance and Policy (Brookings Institution Press, 2004) and author of Language, Ethnicity, and the Schools (Institute for Educational Leadership, George Washington University, 1977), which helped shape U.S. bilingual education policy.
USHMM
Anita Kuenstler (later Anita Epstein) is the daughter of Salek and Eda Kuenstler. Her parents married in Kraków on August 30, 1939. Anita was born on November 18, 1942 in the Kraków ghetto. When she was three months old, her parents smuggled her out of the ghetto, persuading a Catholic family named Zendler to hide her. The Zendlers, who had three children of their own, baptized Anita and raised her as a Catholic. Salek was killed in Mauthausen, but Eda survived two labor camps and incarceration in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen from which she was liberated in April 1945. After hospital treatment for typhus she returned to Kraków and found Anita. Eda and Anita went with other Jews to a displaced persons' camp in Selb, Germany near the Czechoslovakian border. They lived in Selb until 1949 and then came to the United States on a troop ship, the USS Taylor.