A Survivor's Legacy: Holocaust Survivor Irving Bienstock Helps Keep Judaism Alive by Planning His Future Philanthropic Impact

The Charlotte Jewish News August 2022

This is an excerpt of a feature that first appeared on Foundation For The Carolinas’ storytelling website, FOCUS. For more stories of philanthropy, history, the community and giving, visit philanthropyFOCUS. org.

By Ken Garfield

Irving Bienstock survived the Nazis. He took shelter in an orphanage in Amsterdam. He made his way to the United States and reunited with his family. He met the love of his life, Lillian, at a Temple dance in Brooklyn, N.Y. His work led them to Charlotte, where they found a home, a synagogue and a community that has honored his journey.

This is his life, and this is his mission: To tell the story, challenge hatred and support the causes that keep Judaism and love alive.

Irving Bienstock turned 96 on June 15, 2022. There’s no time to waste.

“I’m a very lucky human being,” he said. “I’m very fortunate that I survived the Holocaust. Once I die, no one will ever know what the Nazis did to us, what they did to me. You must speak up if you are subject to any kind of discrimination.”

A Legacy Gift

Each school year, approximately 6,000 Charlotte-area middle and high school students participate in the Butterfly Project (more than 53,000 since its inception); its workshops combine storytelling and the arts to teach about human behavior through the lessons of the Holocaust.

There, the students hear from Irving Bienstock and Suly Chenkin, a fellow survivor, who share their personal stories, many learning about the Holocaust for the first time.

Now comes his latest act of remembrance.

Bienstock is leaving a legacy gift to Foundation for the Charlotte Jewish Community, designating 16 organizations to benefit from his generosity upon passing. These organizations, Jewish and secular, in the Charlotte area and beyond, work to perpetuate Judaism, fight hate and help the poor.

Established in 1997, Foundation for the Charlotte Jewish Community (a supporting organization of Foundation For The Carolinas) helps manage the endowments of Jewish and secular nonprofit organizations in Charlotte and beyond. They also actively help members of the Jewish community, like Bienstock, create meaningful philanthropic plans and achieve their charitable goals.

“I am very appreciative of the time and expertise provided by FCJC with the development of my legacy plan,” said Bienstock. “They simplified the process and assisted me in focusing on those charities and causes that had the greatest impacts on our lives. It is my hope that these gifts will allow these organizations to impact future generations.”

The Bienstocks’ legacy gift also expresses Irving’s love for his wife, Lillian. They were married 69 years when she passed away in 2019 at age 90. He has designated support for the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America, the neuromuscular disease that led to her passing.

A Life Reborn

Bienstock grew up in Dortmund, Germany. His father, William, was an accountant. His mother, Ida, kept house. Bienstock spent a happy childhood playing soccer and marbles with the neighborhood kids.

All that changed on Nov. 9, 1938. Bienstock was 12 years old when Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass – signaled the start of the Holocaust. Bienstock remembers. “Mobs of people in the street,” he told Charlotte Magazine years ago. “The synagogue burning. The Nazis coming into our home. My mother asked a policeman, ‘You’re supposed to be protecting us.’ He said, ‘You dirty Jew, we told you to get out of Germany.’”

So, he did. On Jan. 15, 1939, he boarded a train and fled alone to Holland (now known as the Netherlands). In 1940, at age 13, after 15 months in an Amsterdam orphanage, he received a visa. With his mother, Ida, and younger sister, Sylvia, he boarded a ship in Rotterdam for New York. The plan was to meet up with Bienstock’s father, William, who had already secured a visa and fled Germany because he was wanted by the Nazis. The plan worked.

A life reborn: His family settled in Brooklyn, N.Y, and, after serving in the Army, Bienstock forged a career in the textile industry. Smitten with Lillian – a beautiful daughter of immigrants who was as serious about her faith as Irving – they married in 1949.

They moved to Charlotte in 1975 when he was assigned to run a knitting machinery plant in Monroe. He joked that if Charlotte hadn’t had a kosher butcher, they might have remained in Flatbush.

His Mission Continues

Bienstock’s second home is Temple Israel, a sacred place to him that evokes memories of attending Sabbath services with his father in Dortmund. For Cantor Emeritus Elias Roochvarg, Bienstock evokes memories of another time.

“With his courtliness and somewhat formal yet approachable demeanor,” Roochvarg said, “he represents to me one of the last vestiges of the pre-war Jewish community of Europe.”

Irving Bienstock belongs to the brotherhood and sisterhood of Holocaust survivors who are still here to speak for the 6 million Jews and 5 million others murdered by Hitler. As few as 100,000 are alive to tell us about Kristallnacht, Auschwitz and what can happen when evil is allowed to run rampant.

This is what keeps Bienstock moving forward, the opportunity to use his gentle voice to speak up, and his good fortune to spread the message long after he is gone.

Ken Garfield, former religion editor of The Charlotte Observer, is a freelance writer/editor who helps Foundation For The Carolinas and other nonprofit causes tell their stories.

Feature Photo Caption: Young Irving and Lillian Bienstock