LAZAR EPSHTEYN

LAZAR EPSHTEYN (January 9, 1886-September 16, 1977)

            He was born in Vilna.  He attended religious primary school and a Russian Jewish elementary school, and he took courses in senior high school as an external student.  He was an active leader of the Bund and on the trade unions of business employees.  He was arrested five times.  In 1916 he was in China.  After the February Revolution (1917), he returned to Russia and was active in the Bund in Petrograd and Kiev.  In 1918 he returned to China and remained there until 1938; afterward he left for the United States and settled in New York.  In his years in New York, he was tied to the Jewish Labor Committee.  Epshteyn wrote correspondence pieces for: Veker (Alarm) in Vilna, Folks-tsaytung (People’s newspaper), and Nasha tribuna (Our tribune), the Russian organ of the Bund.  He was co-editor of the Harbin-based Der vayter-mizrekh (The Far East) and Nashe slovo (Our word), and he published there articles concerning the census of Harbin Jews which whom he was working.  He was a member in Tianjin of the management of the club “Kunst” (Art).  He wrote correspondence pieces from China for Warsaw’s Folks-tsaytung (People’s newspaper), and Forverts (Forward) and Tsukunft (Future) in New York.  Among his pen names: Yakir, L. Ebets, and A. Blat.  He died in New York.

Sources: Tsum fuftsnt yortag fun der oktyaber-revolyutsye, historisher zamlbukh (On the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution, historical almanac) (Minsk: State Publ. for the Byelorussian Jewish Section, 1932), p. 97; Frants Kurski, Gezamlte shriftn (Collected writings) (New York, 1952), p. 256; Arbeter-ring boyer un tuer (Builders and leaders of the Workmen’s Circle), ed. Y. Yeshurin and Y. Sh. Herts (New York, 1962), p. 287.