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This translation is dedicated to the memory of Leon Kupferstein (1944–2006).
Leon Kupferstein was born September 27, 1944 in Samarkand, then U.S.S.R. Herschel and Fela Kupferstein had fled Warsaw to escape Hitler’s rampage through Europe, arriving in the U.S.S.R. where they were sentenced to languish in Stalin’s Siberian work camps. Once freed, they made their way south, and once their son was born they returned to their native Poland. Finding their familiesslaughtered they moved on to Paris where Leon’s sister Evelyn was born. Finally they made their home in New York City where they would live in the heart of Yiddishkeit in the Amalgamated Houses in the Bronx. Leon was a counselor to many Yiddish youth at Camp Hemshekh, the socialist summer retreat his parents helped start with other members of the Jewish Labor Bund. From the Bronx High School of Science to the City College of New York, to L’Universite Catholique de Louvain where he earned his M.D., Leon never wavered from offering his best. Ultimately, he chose psychiatry and psychoanalysis as his path, becoming a student and then a leader and mentor at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute in New York City.
The life and the health of the mind was his passion and his family was his greatest love and solace. An excellent athlete, he brought the same energy and focus to basketball and tennis as he did to all his endeavors. Always, he was fair, honest, and proud to be a Jew, to speak his mameloshn, and to
keep the memory of our people’s tragedy alive to ensure “never again.”