Israel Starck
Israel Starck (Srulek Storch) was born in 1929 in the Carpatho-Ruthenia region of Eastern Europe, in the town of Podhoryan - Munkács, near the chain of the Carpathian Mountains, then a part of the Czechoslovakian Republic. In 1939 the region reverted back to the control of the Hungarian Empire.
In March 1944 the country was occupied by the invading German forces. Mr. Starck, then just 14 years old, and his entire family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz-Birkenau just one month later. His parents perished in the camps. Over the next year Mr. Starck was interned in three more concentration camps: Mathausen, Melk, and Ebensee.
Mr. Starck was liberated by the American armed forces on May 6, 1945, in Ebensee. Eventually he, together with other war orphans, was sponsored entry to the United States by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. He arrived to Chicago in 1948.
Mr. Starck briefly attended Chicago’s Hyde Park High School. He later started his own wholesale company and with G-d’s help became a successful, established businessman. He also serves as an active member of his local Jewish community, participating in charitable and supportive works. Mr. Starck and his wife Ethel are parents to 7 children, and grandparents and great-grandparents to a large, extended family residing in Chicago, New Jersey, and Israel.
Mr. Starck, now semi-retired, resides with his wife in Chicago and Jerusalem.