The Child of Gulag

Dr. Yuri C. Feynberg was born and raised in the Soviet Union. He will speak about his book, The Child of Gulag, an autobiographical story told in novelistic form. Dr. Feynberg spent part of his childhood behind the barbed-wire fences of a remote Siberian labor camp, where his mother had volunteered to work as a physician. Through the eyes of a young boy, the book depicts daily life within Stalin’s Gulag system while telling a deeply personal story of hardship, survival, family, and resilience.

After earning a master’s degree in special education and speech pathology from the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute in 1970, he worked as a special-education teacher, speech therapist, and principal of a residential school serving 450 children with developmental disabilities. He came to the United States as a political refugee in 1979 and later earned a doctorate in public administration from New York University. In 1991, he founded the Life Adjustment Center, continuing his lifelong work on behalf of people with developmental disabilities.