EPSTEIN Origin of surname

Louis  M. Epstein (1887-1932). Born in Vilkaviskis, he became director of a Hebrew bookstore and publishing firm established in Warsaw by his father. He was an early member of Hibbat Zion and of the secret Zionist order, Bene Moshe. On behalf of the Menuha ve-Nahala settlement society he went to Erets Israel to purchase the land on which Rehovot was founded. In 1900 Lewin-Epstein settled in New York as representative of the Carmel Wine Company and for a time was treasurer of the Federation of American Zionists. In 1918 he went to Palestine with the American Zionist Medical Unit which he managed. He was also attached to the Zionist Commission and settled in Palestine.

Eliyahu Zeev Lewin-Epstein (1863-1932), Zionist, born in Vilkaviskis, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). He became director of a Hebrew bookstore and publishing firm established in Warsaw by his father. He was an early member of Hibbat Zion and of the secret Zionist order, Bene Moshe. On behalf of the Menuha ve-Nahala settlement society he went to Eretz Israel to purchase the land on which Rehovot was founded. In 1900 Lewin-Epstein settled in New York as representative of the Carmel Wine Company and for a time was treasurer of the Federation of American Zionists. In 1918 he went to Eretz Israel with the American Zionist Medical Unit which he managed. He was also attached to the Zionist Commission and settled in Eretz Israel.

Ernesto Epstein (1910-1997), pianist, music educator and writer, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but grew up in Germany and studied musicology at the Humboldt University in Berlin. From 1941 he lectured at the Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores in Buenos Aires and from 1966 he taught at the University of Buenos Aires, where in 1986 he founded the Department of Music as part of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. In 1946 he founded the Collegium Musicum in Buenos Aires and in 1989 he was awarded the coveted Konex Award. In 1995 he published his memoirs.

Itzhak Epstein (1862-1943), Hebrew writer and educationalist, born in Luban, Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire). In 1886 he and others were sent to Palestine to be trained in agricultural work at the expense of Baron Edmond de Rothchild. Epstein worked for four years in Zichron Yaacov and Rosh Pinah, Israel. He then became a teacher. In 1891 he was made principal of a new public school in Safed and later taught also in schools in Rosh Pina and Metullah. Between 1902 and 1908 he studied at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and then was made director of the Alliance School in Thessaloniki, Greece (1908-1915). He pioneered a new “natural” method of teaching Hebrew and expounded the method in a text book which he published in 1900.

After World War I he returned to the Land of Israel where for a short time he was the principal of the Lewinsky teachers' seminary in Jaffa. He was then made a schools' supervisor under the Zionist movement. When he retired from full time work he devoted his time to the study of Hebrew linguistics, concentrating on phonetics. He wrote several books on the subject of teaching teaching Hebrew.

Henri (Henryk) Epstein (1891/2-1944), painter, born in Lodz, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). He started his artistic studies at the art school of Jakub Kacenbogen in Lodz, then attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany, until 1912. He arrived in Paris for the first time in 1912 and returned in 1913. Until 1938 he lived and worked at La Ruche - a compound of sixty workshops located in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. He participated in classes at La Grande Chaumire art academy. A friend of the French painter Maurice Utrillo and of other contemporary Parisian artists, Epstein was also associated with many of the Jewish artists who lived in Paris and with whom he shared a concern for Jewish art and art in general. His works depict landscapes, peasants working in the fields, fishermen at work, interiors, portraits, and nudes. He exhibited at the Salon des Independents in 1920 and 1927, Salon d'Automne in 1921, Salon des Tuileries in 1927, and the Hodebert gallery in 1929. 

In 1938, Epstein bought a house in Épernon and moved there. During the German occupation of France, he was arrested by the Gestapo, probably following a denouncement, and detained at a prison in Chartres during February 1944, before being transferred to Drancy and then deported to his death at Auschwitz on March 7, 1944.     

Paul Epstein (1871-1939), mathematician, best known for his contributions to number theory, born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He studied at the University of Strasbourg, then part of Germany, earning a PhD, and then he worked at the same university until 1918, when following WW I, Strasbourg returned to French sovereignty and Epstein relocated to Frankfurt. He became a lecturer and then a professor at the University of Frankfurt holding that position until the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933. Unlike his son Fritz Theodor Epstein, a researcher of East European history, he could not emigrate from Germany and on August 11, 1939, during the Nazi regime in Germany, he committed suicide, at his home in Frankfurt, in order to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. His academic work was focused on the number theory and he proposed a generalization of the Riemann zeta function depending on a given quadratic form. Epstein proved a functional equation, the analytic continuation and the Kronecker limit formula for these later so-called Epstein zeta functions. Epstein was the editor of Enzyklopädie der Elementarmathematik (1922).

Kalvarija

In Yiddish: Kalvarye; in Polish: Kalwaria  

A small town in the Mariampole district, south-western Lithuania.

Kalavarija is situated on the banks of the Sesupe river which flows through it; the town is near the Polish border and prior to World War I belonged to the Polish district of Suwalki. In independent Lithuania, between the two world wars Kalvarija was annexed to the Mariampole district.

Kalvarija developed from a village named Traba where Jews were living since the beginning of the 18th century. In 1713 they received the permission to build a synagogue. In 1766 1,055 Jews lived in the town. In 1808 a new synagogue was consecrated.

At the end of the 19th century more than 7,000 Jews lived in Kalvarija, 70% of the general population. The community had five synagogues. The great synagogue was a large fortress-like building, copied from one of this type in Vienna; its walls were covered with paintings of animals.

Before World War I the young studied in local yeshivot and in the municipal Russian school; some continued in the high schools of Mariampole and Suwalki. During the period of Lithuania's independence after the war there existed a Hebrew school, a religious school of the Yavne network and a Yiddish school. The position of Rabbi of Kalvarija was occupied by Torah sages, among them Rabbi Isik Shapira, called the “Sharp One" who wrote Emek Yehoshea. There were many enlightened people in the community.

About 200 Jews of the community were injured in battles of World War I (1914-1918). During the war the Jews were forced to retreat into the interior of Russia; not all of them returned to Kalvarija after the end of the war. In independent Lithuania after World War I the Jews constituted only 27% of the general population.

The first Jews in Kalvarija, while it still was a village, were weavers and craftsmen; they received working licences without belonging to the Christian guilds. During the 19th century trade and craftsmanship passed into Jewish hands; the factories employed Jewish workers also and there were Jewish clerks in the town council, the courts and in the legal offices. Jewish traders exported local and Russian agricultural produce into Europe. Dozens of Jewish families made a living from the two market days, some Jews were bee keepers in a big way. The Jews were among the first to grow tobacco in Lithuania. The tobacco plantation of the Epstein family and the tobacco factory of the Salomon family employed a great number of workers. The local flour mill, one of the largest in Lithuania, belonged to Jews.

Army camps, prison and hospital also furnished work for Jewish suppliers.

During the period of Lithuania's independence many sources of Jewish livelihood became closed to them, such as in agriculture, trade and industry which were given over to government institutions. Lithuanian artisans cooperatives took over the work of Jewish craftsmen; many Jews were forced to emigrate overseas or move to other towns in Lithuania.

Prior to World War II there were about 1,000 Jews in Kalvarija.


The Holocaust Period

After the outbreak of World War II (September 1, 1939) and the conquest of Poland by the Germans, Lithuania came under Soviet rule and at the end of summer 1940 was annexed by the Soviet Union.

Jewish refugees from conquered Poland were absorbed in the Kalavarija community.

The Germans entered Kalvarija on the first day of their attack on Soviet Russia (June 22, 1941). As the town was near the border, it was included in the 25 km belt where the Germans decreed instant annihilation of the Jews. On July 1 the Lithuanian police who served the Germans sent out special orders; the Jews were commanded to wear a yellow patch, forbidden to use the sidewalks and forced to go out daily on forced labour.

On July 9, the first group of Jews were murdered, 90 in number; they were killed in pits prepared beforehand, near a lake, 2 km from the town. These were Jews who were arrested as communists and intelligentsia and they were tortured before being executed.

On August 30 all the Jews were collected ostensibly to be transferred to the ghetto in Mariampole; they were taken to barracks near the town where all the Jews of the neighbouring settlements were gathered, about 8,600 people. On September 1, 1941 they were all shot to death on the banks of the Sesupe river and thrown into prepared pits. Eye witnesses tell that the river ran red with the blood of the victims, and that the local Lithuanians watched the killings and prevented any Jew from escaping. Jews who did manage to escape were later caught by Lithuanians and shot in the main square of the town.

After the extermination of the Kalvarija Jews, the local Lithuanians celebrated their liberation from the Jews. The head of the local clergy ordered the Jewish shops near the church to be destroyed and in their place a wall around the church was built.