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Discover Beba Epstein's Story

The legacy we leave behind is a testament to who we are and what we value.

Autobiography of Beba Epstein, written in 1933-34 as part of YIVO’s youth autobiography contest. Courtesy of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Part of the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Collections Project, YIVO’s landmark preservation and digitization initiative.

When the Nazis invaded Vilna, Beba Epstein—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 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, 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. 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. It is truly a story of coming full circle, and forming a link between generations.

Join YIVO in making Beba’s autobiography and other valuable archival treasures available for present and future scholars, historians, and the general public around the world. Please remember, the legacy we leave behind is a testament to who we are and what we value.

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