The forgotten Jewish soldier in my hometown square

Growing up in Lancaster, Ohio, I often walked past the war memorial in Zane Square Park — a monument of granite situated near benches and an American flag at the heart of our small downtown. One panel bears a cross, the words “DUTY HONOR COUNTRY,” and a Star of David.

I knew even as a child that memorials are designed with intention. Every detail is present for a reason. But I had no answer for who the star represented. I didn’t know any Jews in Lancaster. There was no synagogue, no Jewish presence at my schools, and no visible signs of Jewish life downtown or anywhere else I looked.

The symbol stood like a question mark — clearly important, yet completely unexplained.

What was the star doing there?

Years later, in college, I found the answer.

The Star of David honors Victor Howard Epstein, a 20-year-old soldier from Lancaster who was killed in action in Germany on February 22, 1945. He served in the 319th Combat Engineers during the final push against the Nazis. Victor was the 82nd resident of Fairfield County to die in World War II. He had graduated from Lancaster High School in 1942 and enrolled in the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University. Soon after he volunteered to serve his country.

As a child, he was a member of Lancaster’s Boy Scout Troop 112, sponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Church, and he belonged to B’nai Israel, the small synagogue that once gathered just blocks from the memorial. That congregation, after years of decline, closed its doors in 1993. The final High Holiday services were held in 1989.

Victor’s family had deep roots in Lancaster. His father, Clarence Epstein, immigrated from Lithuania in 1905 and helped found B’nai Israel. Clarence led High Holiday services some years and co-founded the Epstein Shoe Company with his brother Charles, a fellow World War I veteran. The shoe store operated for 57 years at 128 W. Main Street, becoming the oldest retail business in Fairfield County before it closed in 1989.

Victor’s brother Morton also served in World War II and later moved to Cleveland around the time I was born. The family endured more than Victor’s loss. His parents, Clarence and Dora, had lost an infant son in 1921. When Victor died in Germany, they buried another.

Today, the Epstein family is no longer living in Lancaster. The synagogue was converted into a private home and is now listed on Airbnb. Organized Jewish life has vanished from Lancaster. But that star, etched into the war memorial in 1985, remains.

It’s remarkable, really. By the time that monument was erected, Lancaster’s Jewish community was already small and fading. And yet, the designers chose to include the Star of David. They remembered. They knew that Jewish families had sacrificed alongside their Christian neighbors. That inclusion — quiet, respectful, and deliberate — preserved a story long enough for someone like me to find it.

When I first wrote about Victor’s story in 2017, I was 21 years old. Just a year older than he was when he died.

I remember feeling a strange kinship. Like him, I was a student in Columbus — at Capital University, just 10 miles from Ohio State. I wondered: had he also attended Jewish student life programs on campus? Had he dreamed, as I did, of marriage, a meaningful career, a life filled with memories?

I wondered, too, whether my own family — longtime residents of Lancaster — had ever known the Epsteins. Had they comforted Dora and Clarence after the news from Europe came?

Zane Square Park holds other memorials: one to Fairfield County’s Medal of Honor recipients, another to Vietnam veterans, another to General William Tecumseh Sherman. The historic buildings that surround the square — most dating to before World War II — look much the same as they would have when Victor walked its streets. But the people have changed. Local Jewish life is now preserved only in historical accounts.

And yet, the Star of David remains for everyone to see.

Memorial Day asks us not only to remember those who died in service — but to recall who they were. To remember their families. Their values. Their dreams. The communities they came from, and the ones they left behind.

Victor Epstein died as both an American and a Jew. The war memorial in Lancaster tells us that much. But it takes a story to give that symbol meaning. And this year, I hope that story reaches someone else who once saw that star and did not know the name behind it.

Let us remember him. Let us remember them all.