Myriam Sarachik

Myriam Paula Sarachik (August 8, 1933 - October 7, 2021) was a Belgian-born American experimental physicist who specialized in low-temperature solid state physics. From 1996, she was a distinguished professor of physics at the City College of New York. Myriam Sarachik was born Myriam Paula Morgenstein on August 8, 1933, in Antwerp, Belgium. Her parents, Sarah (Segal) and Schloimo Morgenstein, were Orthodox Jews who were born in Poland. Her mother moved to Belgium as a child and her father moved in his mid-teens. Her parents met and married in Belgium. Her father worked as a diamond cutter and diamond dealer. Myriam had two siblings, an older brother Paul and a younger brother Henry. The primary language spoken at home was Yiddish. The family fled Belgium in 1940 due to the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. At first they fled to Calais, France, but by the time they arrived it had already been invaded by Germany, so the family returned to Antwerp. In the process her older brother Paul became separated and was transported on a British ship for women and children from Dunkirk to England. In 1941, after a year in Antwerp the family decided to try to escape the German occupation again. They took a train to Paris and then with fake papers attempted to cross the border into Spain. While attempting to cross the border, the family was apprehended and interned in Merignac, a concentration camp near Bordeaux. They were then transferred to Camp de la Lande near Tours. The family escaped the same year and were smuggled across the border between German-occupied France and Vichy France. After spending a few weeks in Nice, the family took a train across the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain and stayed in Bilbao before sailing from Vigo to Cuba. Sarachik spent the next five and a half years in Cuba as a refugee, where she attended school and learned Spanish and English. In 1947, Sarachik and her family were granted visas to enter the United States and they moved to New York City.