Michael Stoll

Michael Stoll passed away on November 13, 2025 just a few months shy of his 100th birthday. Born in Poland in the small village of Lida, now part of Belarus, Michael eventually emigrated to the United States following a harrowing and miraculous escape during the Holocaust.
Stoll was seventeen years of age when on September 18, 1943, he hacked out the bars of a window on a train box car with an axe his sister smuggled on board. Michael then shimmied along the edge of the moving train at night, broke the lock on the door and eleven Jews jumped leaving behind another 40-50 Jews in the box car who were never heard from again. Michael, his father and sister along with eight other persons wandered through the woods and fields for 6 months before meeting and joining up with the famous Bielski brigade, a Jewish regiment of partisans fighting to save Jews against Nazi Germany. Miracle number two was meeting his mother and younger sister in one of the Bielski camps. Michael's heroic exploits are now legendary and have been well documented in numerous books, documentaries (Four Winters, Jerusalem in the Woods), the USC Shoah Foundation and in the film Defiance.
Michael spoke five languages fluently and became a translator in the U.S. Army soon after arriving in the U.S. Eventually, he became an artisan craftsman building a successful business, marrying and raising a family. An avid skier, he spent the first ten years of his retirement skiing for a month in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah.
Michael spent many years as president of the Lida Holocaust Memorial Foundation – an organization devoted to preserving the memories of all those Jews who were killed during the war. In 1973, Stoll traveled to Israel with a group of Bielski partisans and met with Golda Meir who paid tribute to their efforts to save Jews during one of the worst periods known in Jewish history. In 1994, he, his sister Bella and other surviving Bielski partisans traveled with their families to receive hero medals from the Belarus government acknowledging the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.
Stoll was predeceased by his wife of 40 years, Etta Stoll. He leaves behind his son Andy (Ronda), daughter Nancy (Rich), grandchildren Ian (Mary) and Suzanne, and numerous nephews and nieces and their children. He was without question, the most lovable family patriarch a family could wish for.