Israel Epstein

Israel Epstein was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1915.[1][2] His parents had been active in the Bund, the Jewish socialist labor movement, in Vilna during the decade before his birth.[2] Two years later, his parents, described as staunch Marxists, moved the family to China.[1] Wasserstein wrote that Epstein was raised in what he called the “Bundist faith.”[2]

Epstein told Wasserstein that he had attended the English-language Tianjin Grammar School. Wasserstein associated that education with Epstein’s old-fashioned British accent and “Ronald Colman–like locutions.”[2] Epstein also recalled teenage punch-ups with Betar groups, identifying Betar as the youth movement of the Zionist Revisionists then active in the Far East.[2] The Tianjin family celebrated Purim and Hanukkah but did not fast on Yom Kippur.[2]

Epstein began working as a journalist at age 15 and produced in-depth reports on the course of China’s historical development.[1] While working for U.S. news organizations, he interviewed Mao Zedong in the 1930s.[1] In a later assessment, The Jerusalem Post described him as “the writer who introduced the bravery of the Chinese people in fighting against Japanese aggression to the whole world.”[4]

Wasserstein’s account states that Epstein joined the Communist Party as a young man. In 1951, he was appointed editor of China Reconstructs, which Wasserstein described as the Communist government’s main English-language propaganda organ; Epstein also delivered broadcasts on the English service of China National Radio.[2] The magazine later became China Today, and Epstein eventually took Chinese citizenship.[3][1]

During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, Epstein was imprisoned for five years. Wasserstein placed him among the foreign sympathizers who were nearly consumed by the Maoist movement and wrote that, after his release, Epstein was permitted to resume his work and did so “without qualms.”[2] In recognition of his services, he was appointed to the People’s Consultative Council, which Wasserstein characterized as a quasi-legislative body comparable to the British House of Lords in status and lack of power.[2]

Shortly before Epstein’s 90th birthday, Chinese President Hu Jintao paid him a goodwill visit. Hu was also general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission.[1] China’s official news agency, Xinhua, called Epstein’s achievements in China across the turbulent twentieth century “unparalleled.”[1]

Epstein’s memoir, My China Eye, was published in 2005; Wasserstein noted that it appeared shortly before Epstein’s death.[2][5] Known to friends as “Eppy,” he was remembered by Wasserstein as cheerful, gregarious, and overflowing with anecdotes. Wasserstein visited him in 1990 at his government-provided apartment in Beijing’s Friendship Hotel.[2] Photographs also document a meeting between Epstein and political scientist Jack Jacobs in Beijing, as well as a postcard Epstein later sent Jacobs.[6]

Wasserstein described Epstein as one of the People’s Republic of China’s most honored citizens. Epstein received a state funeral, and his ashes were interred at Beijing’s Babaoshan revolutionary heroes’ cemetery.[2] The Jerusalem Post placed him alongside physician Jakob Rosenfeld and translator Sidney Shapiro among Jewish figures who contributed to China’s revolution and construction.[4]

Epstein’s service to the Communist Chinese state received critical treatment in Wasserstein’s account. Wasserstein described China Reconstructs as the government’s main English-language propaganda organ and emphasized that Epstein resumed his work without qualms after five years of imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution.[2]

A 2018 letter by Harvey Klehr in the Jewish Review of Books stated that the Vassiliev Notebooks, described as copies of documents from KGB archives, identified Epstein as a KGB source under the code name “Minayev.” The letter said that he was recruited in China in 1937 and lived in the United States from 1945 to 1951.[7] These allegations are attributable to the letter and were not independently established in the accompanying biographical article. Klehr also reported that Epstein said his Cultural Revolution imprisonment had “helped improve him by shrinking his ego.”[7]