Michael Szenberg was born in 1934 in the Polish town of Sosnowiec, which boasted a very sizable Jewish community of some 60,000. Born four years after his sister and only sibling, Michael, or Michal as he was known then, was a “miracle baby” for his mother, who’d been told she couldn’t have another child. His parents lived with their two children in his maternal grandparents’ spacious apartment.

His father hailed from Bedzin (a.k.a. Bendin), a twin city to Sosnowiec, where the Gerrer Rebbe’s brother-in-law, Rav Chanoch Henoch Levin, was the rav, and Michal’s grandfather, a Gerrer chassid named Itche Meir Sheinberg, was the rosh kahal. From Bedzin, Michal’s father, the youngest of ten, moved to Sosnowiec, where he married Sarah Rosensaft and prospered as the owner of a small department store on Modziejowska Street, across from his home.

Although Dr. Szenberg says he has “very few memories of childhood, for I really had no childhood,” he does remember a conversation with his mother that taught him an early lesson in basic economics. “When I was a young child, I asked my parents, ‘Why do people come from Katowitz, which is about an hour away, to buy in your store?’ My mother’s answer was, ‘Because they like the personal interaction with us.’ The importance of interacting with others, the human touch, that’s something that has stayed with me. It’s why some businesses thrive and others flounder.”

The importance of the human dimension has deeply influenced him as a teacher, too.

His guiding principle, he says, is “Always available. My door is always open to discuss any issue.” In their evaluations of his classes, students laud his combination of pedagogic skills and an open, welcoming attitude leavened with humor and humility. “Truly one of a kind,” said one of many similar class evaluations. “Such a caring, wise, and energetic individual. He always has his own personal inspirational stories. Very patient, explains everything, encourages questions. He is a must take.”

In 1938, with talk of approaching war in the air, Michal’s grandparents, together with his parents and two of his uncles and their families, moved from Sosnowiec to Kielce, Poland. The uncles eventually made their way to Uzbekistan, and from there to Eretz Yisrael. His grandparents and parents, however, made the fateful decision to return from Kielce to Sosnowiec because his grandmother became ill and the local doctor advised against traveling on to Uzbekistan.

With the outbreak of war in September 1939, the happy, tranquil life young Michal had known in Sosnowiec ended forever. The first thing the Germans did upon arriving in town was to take two Jews and hang them in the center of town as a punishment for some small infraction they had committed in order to survive. “It was mandatory for everyone to come out and watch,” Dr. Szenberg recalls, “and I can never eradicate from my mind the sound of the Shema Yisrael they cried out.”

The Jews of Sosnowiec were herded into a ghetto on the outskirts of town. From time to time, the Nazis would carry out a roundup of Jews who would then be sent to extermination camps — the dreaded aktzion — and a pattern became discernable: Whenever the light at the police headquarters stayed lit through the night, it was a sign that they were preparing an aktzion for the next day. A sentry stationed in the house next to the police station would relay the information, alerting the Jews to make plans to hide.

“One time,” Dr. Szenberg relates, “we hid for a few days in the basement of a grocery store that was controlled by the Germans. There were too many people and not enough air, and suddenly a distant cousin of mine who was there with us decided that he could take it no longer and came out of hiding with his whole family. Those who had no patience lost the battle. A woman sitting next to me had a small baby with her, and as the Nazi soldiers paced up and down the streets in search of Jewish hiding places, the baby began to cry. In desperation, the woman put her hand over the baby’s mouth. When the Germans left, the mother removed her hand from the baby’s mouth, but it was too late. I can still hear the horrified cries of the mother.”

The Nazis killed the children of the ghetto, one by one, until Michal was the only one remaining. During the day, he cowered, motionless and starving, in a makeshift hideaway, and only at night would his mother take him out to feed him.

In early 1943, the liquidation of the Sosnowiec ghetto began. Michal’s maternal grandmother was sent to the nearby concentration camp of Braun, never to emerge; her husband had already died in the ghetto. His father’s parents would eventually be sent from Bedzin to perish in Auschwitz.

Michal’s father was resigned to the fate that seemed to await them, but his mother wouldn’t hear of it. Summoning all her courage, she went looking for a German officer she heard had saved some 150 Jews from the ghetto — one Jew each day. He had been assigned to take ten people to clean in the neighboring towns, but instead of taking ten, he managed to take eleven. When the workday was over, he would leave one behind, and upon his return he would show the guards he was returning with all of the ten.

On the last day before the ghetto was to be liquidated, this German officer took Michal out in a sack as if he were a load of garbage. Once out of the ghetto, he handed him over to a woman who bandaged his face to hide his obviously Jewish features and spirited him by train to the town of Dombrowa. The officer also took Michal’s father, whose blondish hair and blue eyes enabled him to pass as Aryan, dressed him in the uniform of a Gestapo officer and boarded a train to Dombrowa with him.

Reflecting on this long-ago miracle of salvation, Dr. Szenberg is still incredulous when he recalls how the officer never took any payment. “I don’t know his name,” says Dr. Szenberg, “but every book I publish, I dedicate to him. Interestingly, he told my father that he didn’t want to know their ultimate destination because sometimes he drank, and under the influence of alcohol he might have given out the information.”

Despite the heroic efforts of that anonymous German officer, the Szenbergs were the only ones to survive. All the others sought refuge with Polish families who agreed to hide them but didn’t keep to their word, and after the Jews gave them their money and diamonds, the Poles poisoned the food they provided for them.

The Szenbergs found refuge with the Mirowski family, avoiding the fate of the others by insisting on paying their hosts in installments. When the Szenbergs’ money ran out several months before the war ended, Michal’s father promised the Mirowskis that after the war he would take them back to Kielce and dig up jewelry he had hidden there. And indeed, he did just that.

The Szenbergs, together with the young daughter of family friends whom they had taken along with them, lived in the Mirowskis’ attic for 18 long months, in a space so small that it was only possible to sit hunched over. Every few days, their hosts provided them with one loaf of bread.

What did a ten-year-old boy do for a year and a half in a space like that, where even talking was risky? “There was just one book there, which I read over and over again until I knew it by heart. It was about the head of Poland’s version of the KGB, who was eventually killed by the Communists, like everyone else. There was a big lesson in that book: that even though every KGB chief ended up dead, the next one in line still wanted the position for kavod.”

In December of 1944, mere days before their liberation, the Szenbergs had their closest brush with death. Mr. Mirowski held a holiday party at his home for 40 friends, while up above, the Szenbergs lay completely still, fearful of making the slightest sound that might attract attention. But in a drunken stupor, the host put up the ladder to the attic and invited all his guests up to see his Jewish “zoo.” When that happened, the Szenbergs said tearful goodbyes to each other, certain that they would be reported — but not one person said anything about what they had seen in the Mirowskis’ loft.

On January 5, 1945, the first Soviet troops reached Dombrowa, and Michal and his family were freed from their confinement. But they were not at all secure from the Jew-hatred permeating Europe, with Poles continuing to kill Jews who dared return to their hometowns. The Szenbergs made their way back to Sosnowiec, where they reopened their department store. Michal’s father also took an active role on behalf of the broken survivors, becoming Agudath Israel’s emissary to the Polish government.

Of the tens of thousands of Jews living in prewar Sosnowiec, only 140 returned home — and just one boy among them — little Michal Szenberg. Attending school as the only Jewish student meant running a daily gauntlet of gentile kids who’d surround and beat him, all the while shouting “parshivy Zhid — rotten Jew.” But his mother insisted that he persevere, telling him it would be hard initially to stand up for himself, but would get easier with time.

“This life lesson,” he observes, “was one of many my mother taught me. You know, she was the meekest person, you cannot imagine, and my father, he was a maggid shiur, all his siblings would come to him, the youngest brother, for advice. But it was my mother who did what had to be done in the moment of crisis.

“Many years ago, I gave a speech in which I tapped into this and talked about how rejections actually energize me. The editor of the health section of the Wall Street Journal, in writing a column about rejection, came across my speech and called me up. She asked me, ‘How did you arrive at this understanding?’ I said to her, ‘By being rejected so many times and, you know, being Jewish, one gets rejected a lot. But you don’t give in and you continue on your path, on your road to success, even if you fail along the way.’”

The Szenbergs remained in Poland until 1950, when, with the assistance of the Joint Distribution Committee, they were able to emigrate to Israel. Although the Polish Communist government saw to it that they left with nothing but the shirts on their backs, the first thing Michal’s father bought after his arrival was a Shas. Later, he paid a large sum to have the family’s sefer Torah — hidden throughout the war — smuggled into Israel.

Arriving as new olim, the Szenbergs could have spent time in a ma’abarah, a temporary immigrant camp where the room and board were free. But they chose not to, a decision Dr. Szenberg explains from an economist’s perspective: “My parents said, ‘No, this is not the way to go, because if we get complacent and accustomed to getting a free ride, you will not have any initiative.’” Instead, the family settled in Tel Aviv, where they rented an apartment and found work managing a store.

Back in Europe, those who’d possessed engineering skills had a chance for survival under the Nazis, and thus it was natural for Michal’s parents to now steer him toward a career in that field. He attended a Tel Aviv engineering high school called Shevach and continued on to the Air Force, where he worked as an airplane mechanic and graduated from the IAF’s aeronautics school, where he was captain of the school’s cadets.

But, Dr. Szenberg observes, “Hashem had different plans for me. I applied to the engineering school of New York University and was accepted, and I planned to come to the United States to begin school as soon as I got out of the Air Force. I went to the American Consulate in Tel Aviv to apply for a visa, assuming it would be no problem, but at that time, the consul refused to let me travel to the States. I was devastated.

“So I decided to enroll in Bar-Ilan University and take courses that would enable me to transfer into the engineering program at NYU once I would be able to come to New York. I also started taking some economics courses that would be transferable. The next year, I again approached the consulate for a visa — and once again, they turned me down. So I continued on with my studies in economics, and I began to really enjoy the field.”

He eventually was able to continue his schooling in the US. He graduated from Long Island University in 1963 and received his PhD in economics from the City University of New York in 1970.

Once in New York, he reconnected with a young woman named Miriam Zilberstein, and before long the two married. Miriam’s parents came to Tel Aviv from Warsaw and raised four daughters, all of whom remained observant despite growing up in the religiously inhospitable environment of Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff neighborhood.

Despite having taken a “wrong turn” from engineering into economics, he points to his own life experiences when he tells his students, “Accept what comes your way. What you think is the most important thing in life could possibly be the least important thing, because Hashem might want to lead you in another way.”

The Szenbergs settled in Flatbush, where Mrs. Szenberg is a longtime teacher at the Yeshivah of Flatbush elementary school and the professor keeps his chassidic connection as a mispallel at the local Gerrer shtibel. Their children are Naomi Kunin, an ophthalmologist who lives in Flatbush and whose family davens at Rabbi Reisman’s shul, and Avi, an attorney, who attended Touro College for his undergraduate degree (before his father joined the faculty), studied in the Mir in Jerusalem, and went on to graduate from law school at the University of Pennsylvania.

One of Dr. Szenberg’s favorite mottos is “Always ask,” a lesson reinforced when his son was accepted to Penn, and Dr. Szenberg called his son’s rosh yeshivah to share the news.

“The rosh yeshivah said to me, ‘Are you sending him alone?’ I said, ‘Yasher koach, you’ve told me a big thing. I would have let him be in the University of Pennsylvania as a young unmarried boy and that’s not good.’

“But as I always say,” Dr. Szenberg continues, “the three most important letters in the alphabet are a-s-k. We asked admissions people in Penn if they’d hold his seat for next year, and they agreed, providing we’d pay $2,500. I recalled how my mother always said that ‘sometimes a penny is a million dollars and sometimes a million dollars is a penny’ — and my son went back to Israel to learn for another year in Mir. But before sending him off, I said to him, ‘Avi, promise me that you’ll be one of the first three people in the beis medrash in the morning.’ Well, when the brother of his future wife — Tova Cyperstein — saw that he was one of the first to arrive every morning, he set his sights on him.”

Dr. Szenberg likes to speak of his mother as having twice given birth to him miraculously: Once, when he was born after the doctors had said she’d never have a second child, and again when she acted with decisive courage to approach the German officer who would become their savior angel. But although this humble man won’t say it, there was a third miracle, too, when out of very traumatic early-life experiences, he gave birth to himself. From beginnings that might easily have broken another person, Michael Szenberg emerged as, in Dean Goldschmidt’s words, “a role model of a successful, top-notch professional and recognized scholar, who is at the same time a paragon of a ben Torah in his interpersonal conduct and observance of Torah and mitzvos.”

What’s next for this 80-something scholar whose motto is, “Never stop working, never retire, just get re-fired?” More books, of course. He’s working on another scholarly tome and an autobiographical account of his life, entitled Etz Hachaim (The Tree of Life). And then there’s Fundamentals of Happiness: An Economic Perspective, which he just coauthored with his longtime collaborator Lall Ramrattan.

This book is on the interface between the three great themes of his life: Judaism, economics, and happiness. “The Hebrew language itself,” says the professor, “makes the connection between economics and happiness. The word ‘osher’ with an alef (happiness) is a homophone for ‘osher’ with an ayin (wealth). The latter is no substitute for the former. But if you’re blessed with the former, you automatically have the latter, too.”

Balancing Act

Among Dr. Szenberg’s books is one he coauthored in 2019 titled American Exceptionalism: Economics, Finance, Political Economy, and Economic Laws. One of the ways in which America is exceptional, of course, is in its role as the world’s leading free-market economy.

But in recent years, with an avowed socialist having made a credible run for president and neither political party interested in reigning in government spending and debt, it seems that aspects of socialism have begun to make an appearance in this country’s economic life. In addition to his in-depth knowledge of economic theory, Dr. Szenberg has the real-life experience of having lived under governmental systems quite different from America’s, and he believes the private enterprise system’s success lies in a balancing act between profiteering and protection.

“Government has a responsibility,” he says, “to protect society from unfair business practices while at the same time ensuring the smooth operation of a free enterprise capitalist system. There’s a role for government in regulating monopolies that harm the economy — even a free-market system needs to incorporate programs to combat poverty and help those left behind in society. At the same time, overregulation can destroy the spirit of capitalism, which has succeeded in large measure because it rewards individuals for their efforts.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 853)