Mietek Weintraub

Mietek Weintraub was born an only child in Lodz, Poland, in 1926. Attending the Itzhak Katznelson Academy, he was forced to stop his education in September 1939 to be confined in the Lodz Ghetto. After losing his father to starvation in 1941, he was transported to Auschwitz in 1944 where he was subsequently separated from his mother and endured devastating days. Liberated by the American Army in Austria near the Mauthausen concentration camp, he soon returned to Lodz in search of surviving relatives. Finding none, he went back to Germany from where he immigrated to the USA in 1948. Working his way through college, he obtained an Associate's Degree from Wright Junior College, after which he Americanized his name, a Bachelor's Degree from Roosevelt University and a Master's Degree from the University of Chicago. His teaching career started at Purdue University where he taught German and Russian, then Russian at the University of Kentucky, then English in Haifa, Israel. He returned to the USA and worked as a bilingual teacher in Chicago public schools until his retirement in 1989. He has three children, one grandson, four great grandchildren and currently resides near Chicago. He has previously published three short stories: "The New Neighbors" (Jewish Magazine, 2002), "My Grandparents' Seder" (Family Gatherings, 2003); "The Fragrance and the Stench" (Wild Things, 2008).