Шесть Эпштейнов

Эпштейн - распространенная еврейская фамилия. В 19-ом веке она ассоциировалась с хасидскими талмудистами вроде раввина по имени Йехиэль Михаль Эпштейн (1829-1908), который родился в Бобруйске и возглавлял общину Новогрудка, оставив после себя многочисленные сочинения.

В Википедии Эпштейнов около сотни - почти столько же, сколько Шапир. Рассказ о произвольно выбранных шести однофамильцах будет вариантом истории про "Два мира - два Шапиро".



1. Шахно Эпштейн родился в 1883 в семье раввина из местечка Ивье недалеко от Вильно. Вливается в революционное движение, в 1909 приезжает в США, где участвует в разных изданиях на идиш, в 1917 возвращается в Россию после февральской революции, в 1919 после развала Бунда записывается в большевики, в 1921 вновь приезжает в США, чтобы помочь организовать компартию и соответствующие издания на идиш. Возвращается в 1930, продолжая сотрудничество с советскими спецслужбами и зарубежные командировки.

В 1937 пропадает без вести Джульет Пойнц, одна из основательниц компартии США, которая разочаровалась в коммунизме после сталинских чисток и собиралась выступить с разоблачениями. Шахно Эпштейна подозревают в участие в заговоре по ее ликвидации, но концы уходят в воду.

One evening in early June 1937, Juliet Stuart Poyntz walked out of her room at the American Woman’s Association Clubhouse at 353 West 57th Street. She was never seen or heard from again. The New York Times, which ran a few stories several months later related to her disappearance, reported that her room looked as if she had expected to return that same night; she had not taken any extra clothing with her, and all her luggage remained in the room.
It is virtually certain that Poyntz was murdered by the OGPU. The Soviet secret police was prompt in eliminating anyone who knew too much about its workings, especially if that person had shown signs of disillusionment or intended to reveal its activities to the public. Several rather comprehensive accounts exist of Poyntz’s death, all of them based on the story told by Gitlow. According to his version, the OGPU used Poyntz’s former lover, a man named Shachno Epstein, the associate editor of the Yiddish daily newspaper Freiheit and an OGPU agent himself, to lure Poyntz out for a walk in Central Park. “They met at Columbus Circle and proceeded to walk through Central Park,” Gitlow writes. “Shachno took her by the arm and led her up a side path, where a large black limousine hugged the edge of the walk. … Two men jumped out, grabbed Miss Poyntz, shoved her into the car, and sped away.” As the assassins supposedly reported later, they took Poyntz to the woods near the Roosevelt estate in Dutchess County, and killed and buried her there: “The body was covered with lime and dirt. On top were placed dead leaves and branches which the three killers trampled down with their feet.” <...>
New York Times articles from the years immediately following Poyntz’s disappearance at least support Gitlow’s claim that Poyntz was murdered by OGPU agents. According to the articles, Carlo Tresca, an anarchist and leader of New York’s anti-fascists, voluntarily appeared before Francis A. Mahony, acting chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney General’s office, then before a federal grand jury, in order to provide information in support of his claim that Poyntz “was ‘lured or kidnapped’ to Soviet Russia because she broke with her associates and ‘knew too much.'” The Times never revealed the name of Poyntz’s abductor, which Tresca gave to the legal authorities, but the description which Tresca shared with the correspondents sounds similar to that of Shachno Epstein: The agent is described as having “been an editor of a Communist foreign-language newspaper in this city,” “an intimate friend of Miss Poyntz,” in “the service of the [Russian] secret police,” and a person in whom Poyntz “had absolute confidence.” Tresca knew Poyntz well and had connections with other OGPU agents in the U.S., and therefore was likely to know or suspect the truth about her disappearance, or at least about the identity of the person used as a lure in her abduction. Therefore, it is grimly unsurprising to read in the Times that Tresca himself was murdered in January 1943. It seems plausible that, when Poyntz was about to give compromising information about them, the OGPU got rid of her, and when Tresca, in turn, exposed the OGPU murderers and the details of their plot, the OGPU eliminated him as well.
https://barnardarchives.wordpress.com/2002/08/13/juliet-stuart-poyntz-class-of-1907-2/

Упомянутый разоблачитель Бенджамин Гитлов был также одним из основателей американской компартии, но позже раскаялся, перекинулся в ярый антикоммунизм и способствовал, чем только мог, маккартизму и более поздней паранойе 1960ых.

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