THREE

Flight and Rescue

Rabbis—And a Visa That Saved Lives

The Communal Rabbinate: Uneasiness before 1938

As early as 1934, the American Reform movement had been concerned about the events in Europe, particularly in Germany. A committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) was preparing to raise funds and support the immigration and placement of German refugees. The committee began to explore what was necessary to create positions for refugee rabbis and how to raise funds for these temporary positions.

The spiritual leaders who fled to the United States at that time were seeking immediate shelter from persecution or trying to avoid imminent arrest, or they were expelled, like Joachim Prinz in mid-1937. Most were seen as political figures in their environment and played a significant role in public. But in 1937, the German Nazi state was still enforcing the emigration of Jews and trying to eliminate any Jewish leadership that generated resilience and inner strength among Jews. Such leadership was a prime target because it protected and guided the weaker members of the community.

Most of the aid these early refugees in the rabbinate received from American institutions came from friendships with leading American rabbis or scholars who either had a close connection with German Jewry and its seminaries or had long shared a common ideological interest, such as Zionism. These friendships facilitated the process of finding employment and obtaining a nonquota visa to enter the United States, as there was no centralized administration or committee to coordinate that process at the time. Rabbis Stephen Wise and Leo Jung had been born in central Europe, had a cultural background there, spoke German, and had studied either in Vienna, where Wise was ordained, or in Berlin, where Jung had attended the Rabbinerseminar. In like fashion, both Zionism and family relationships connected the refugees and their rescuers, but few German refugees were in a position to benefit from these types of support or aid.

Among the first rabbis to read the writing on the wall was Joseph Breuer. He was the spiritual and intellectual leader of the strong and economically well-situated separatist Hirschian Orthodox community in Frankfurt, which was organized as part of the Israelitische Religionsgesellschaft and included an established kehillah and multiple educational and religious institutions that operated independently from the local Einheitsgemeinde.

A towering leader of German separatist Orthodoxy, Breuer was the perfect target for the Nazis. He was confronted with libel charges by Nazi authorities as early as the spring of 1933 when, during the purges of communists, his yeshiva was accused of harboring members of this political opposition. Breuer may have felt more exposed to Nazi terror than his colleagues under the protection of the Gemeinde.

Due to these accusations and the growing antisemitic mood in Germany, Joseph Breuer opted for emigration and accepted a position as a rabbi of the Jewish community in Fiume (Rijeka) on the Adriatic coast. The territory had been designated as a free port for landlocked Hungary after the First World War before it was integrated into Italy in 1924. As a result, the city had a small Hungarian-Jewish community that wanted Breuer, a native of Hungary, to become its leader and establish a yeshiva. This destination seemed to fulfill the promises of a temporary home for the Breuer family and the students who followed their rav for rabbinical training. Over time, the rabbi planned to relocate to Palestine, but he was unable to acquire the immigration visa.

Faced with disappointments and insufficient financial resources for establishing the yeshiva and witnessing the rise of a local fascist movement, Breuer realized that Fiume might not live up to its initial promises. The rav decided to return to Frankfurt after consulting with his brother Isaac, who still resided in Germany and was convinced in 1934 that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party were a temporary phenomenon and would not cause any serious long-term harm.

Breuer’s return to Germany was meant to be temporary. He intended to find a more suitable long-term option for his large family. Perhaps one of the few Jewish refugee families that voluntarily returned to Germany, the Breuers resettled in Frankfurt in 1934, where the rav resumed his duties in the yeshiva and continued to plan for a relocation of the school. Quite similar to the rabbinic leadership of the three seminaries in Berlin and Breslau, Breuer felt he had a responsibility to provide his students with assets that would facilitate their emigration, such as semicha (ordination), letters of recommendation, and information that would help them relocate and continue their professional lives outside Germany. In doing so, Breuer utilized his contacts through the Yeshiva Samson Raphael Hirsch and his former students.

Simon Schwab, the district rabbi of Ichenhausen in rural Bavaria, was another target of Nazi harassment. After studying at the Yeshiva Samson Raphael Hirsch in the Frankfurt secessionist community led by Rav Joseph Breuer, Schwab pursued his rabbinical training as one of the first German-Jewish students who chose to study at east European yeshivot instead of modern Orthodox seminaries or yeshivot. In the 1920s, he studied at the yeshivot of Telz and Mir in Lithuania before returning to Germany to take a position in Darmstadt; he then moved to the rural Bavarian town of Ichenhausen to become the district rabbi.

Enthused by the traditional forms of Jewish learning in eastern Europe and convinced that the Enlightenment and emancipation were not beneficial for Jews, Schwab sought to establish a traditional yeshiva in Ichenhausen, the first of its kind after traditional yeshivot had disappeared from Bavaria in the nineteenth century as a result of the educational requirements for a modern rabbinate. While the yeshiva was being planned and organized between 1933 and 1934, Schwab met with little objection, but once the yeshiva opened its doors in 1934, the local Hitler Youth targeted it with demonstrations, a poster campaign, and threats of violence. The yeshiva closed on its second day when Schwab was forced to send home his students after a warning from the local police chief that the Hitler Youth was planning a pogrom targeting the yeshiva and its students.¹

In 1935, even before his experience in Ichenhausen, Schwab was considering finding a position in Palestine. He made an exploratory trip there that year and was offered a position by a congregation in Haifa. However, as he stated in an interview with the Research Foundation of Jewish Immigration in 1971, he could not accept the offer because the salary was so low he could never have supported his family. Then, during visits to Switzerland in the summer of 1936, Schwab met Rabbi Leo Jung,² spiritual leader of the prestigious Jewish Center in New York and one of the first academically trained Orthodox English-speaking rabbis in America. Jung listened closely to Schwab’s reports on the political situation and growing persecution in Germany. After Schwab said that he was thinking about leaving Germany, Jung advised him to contact Dr. Nathan Adler, a distant relative of Schwab and an influential lay member of Congregation Shearith Israel in Baltimore. There, a pulpit had been vacant for three years, and the local Orthodox congregation was searching specifically for a German Orthodox rabbi. Schwab quickly contacted the lay leadership of Shearith Israel, submitted his paperwork with recommendations, and was invited to meet the congregation and give several talks in Baltimore.

He received an unexpected offer to take on the pulpit of Shearith Israel late in September 1936, which allowed him to settle with his entire family in Baltimore by the end of 1936.³ His passport, which had been seized by Nazi authorities after his first trip to the United States, was “graciously” returned to him for the purpose of emigration only, which indicated how Jewish emigration was being enforced by the Nazi state at the time.

Among the small number of rabbis who left Germany before 1938 was Joachim Prinz. In his autobiography, he explained how his situation deteriorated under constant Gestapo surveillance and that even a “well-meaning” “Gestapo-friend” could no longer shield him. While the Berlin rabbi had not anticipated expulsion as his fate, he claimed that he had prepared for emigration in 1936 during a trip to the United States and had also visited Palestine with his wife in 1934.

While in the United States in 1936, Prinz met with his wife’s uncle, a successful investment banker, and his Zionist colleague and friend Stephen Wise, who introduced him to American Judaism and American society. He was ultimately able to secure an affidavit from his wife’s relative for a regular quota visa and a contract with the United Palestine Appeal for a lecturing engagement. This would ensure that he could support his family after they arrived in the United States at the end of July 1937.⁴ As in Schwab’s case, the Nazis had seized Prinz’s passport in early 1937 after his return from the United States and explained to the young rabbi that it would be returned only for the purpose of emigration.⁵

Max Koppel arrived in the United States shortly after Prinz in August 1937. A graduate of the Jüdisch-Theologisches Seminar in Breslau,⁶ Koppel had officiated in Hirschberg, Silesia, and Berlin before his emigration. He traveled to the United States in 1936 to visit relatives and must have obtained an affidavit for emigration from them.⁷ To make a living, he first taught German language classes and organized services only on the High Holy Days. By 1938, he was able to launch the Conservative refugee congregation Emes Wozedeck in Washington Heights. He continued to minister to this congregation until his tragic death in 1974 when he was murdered by a burglar in his apartment.⁸

Max Vogelstein, a rabbi from Coblenz, took a different route. He traveled first to Cuba and then to the United States in 1938. While it is unclear if he went to Cuba to obtain a visa, the trip must have facilitated his emigration because he left Germany permanently for the United States in 1940.

Playwright and author Rabbi Emil Moses Cohn held a pulpit in a small secessionist congregation in Berlin-Grunewald that was not part of a Gemeinde. He was a forceful and charismatic man with a strong devotion to culture and the arts and a robust social conscience, which was increasingly linked to his Zionist convictions. A prominent author and artist who spoke to Jews and non-Jews and used sermons, plays, and books to express his powerful messages and progressive humanist thoughts, Cohn stood out among the German-Jewish rabbinate and soon attracted the attention of the Nazi apparatus.

As early as 2 April 1933, he was taken into custody for the first time, albeit briefly, and accused of communist activities and connections. Since these accusations could not be proven, he was allowed to return to his rabbinate and family the same day. As a prominent voice of German Jewry, he continued to be on the radar of the authorities and was again arrested in December 1935 and charged with instigating subversion, treason, and acts against the government. The accusations were derived from a public talk he gave titled “The Commandment of This Hour” (Das Gebot der Stunde) in a synagogue in Köpenick, Berlin, which was considered offensive by the police monitoring the event. As a result, Cohn was sent to the Plötzensee prison in Berlin where he was held in investigatory custody until he was released and tried in a special court (Sondergericht) in June 1936. This time, his former political engagement on the side of the pro-German separatist movement in the Ruhr area in the early 1920s and a friend’s testimony helped him avoid further consequences and ultimately set him free.

However, only weeks later, in early September 1936, he was arrested again, a sign that the intention was to silence him permanently. Accused of spreading “treasonous” content in his Rosh Hashanah sermon in which he quoted and repeated a central passage of the Haggadah stating that God would liberate Jews from outward suppression, he was once again jailed. Cohn was aware that a trial would most likely result in being sent to a concentration camp from which he might never return. Thus he lost all hope of continuing his ministry and cultural activities in Germany and applied for a two-day parole, supposedly to attend his son’s upcoming bar mitzvah.

To everyone’s astonishment, this parole was granted to him. After having given his blessing to his son, Cohn used this rare opportunity to cross the border into the Netherlands that night and lived in Amsterdam until late in 1938. Cohn no longer saw a future for himself and his family in Europe. At the same time, he was aware of the professional and cultural problems he might encounter as a rabbi and writer in Palestine, and his wife did not want to settle there permanently. So he accepted an invitation from his Zionist friend Stephen Wise and Albert Einstein to give a lecture tour in the United States, which provided entry on a nonquota visa.

From the beginning, he planned to not return to Germany and to use this visa to stay with his family in the United States. In 1938, one of his daughters had married a German refugee in San Francisco and settled there. Cohn spent his first year of emigration, 1939, at the New Synagogue in New York, familiarizing himself with American Judaism and society. In 1940, he changed his immigration status on a visit to Cuba, where he—like many others—took out his first papers and began the process of obtaining citizenship. He was subsequently able to bring over the rest of his family legally.⁹ His wife and two other children entered the United States successfully in New York City in 1940.

The Communal Rabbinate: Growing Despair

Memoirs, interviews, and family members’ recollections illustrate how difficult it became even for Jewish leadership to deal with social exclusion, economic pressures, and constant surveillance. In 1937 and 1938, these issues greatly concerned congregations and the rabbinate as a profession at the center of a community under duress. The situation affected the health and resilience of the rabbi, his family, and their private life.

Martha Appel, the wife of Rabbi Ernst Appel, who officiated in Dortmund, provides detailed insight into the everyday challenges of the rabbinate and its encounters with Nazi spies and police and explains how Jewish life became almost unbearable. Her recollections illuminate how the policies crushed not only congregants but also the rabbis, who had to perform their duties under almost impossible circumstances after 1935/36.¹⁰

Confronted with and challenged by humiliation, pain, and misery at home and in the community, Ernst Appel’s health deteriorated. His doctor told him to avoid stress and go on a vacation. Still feeling a strong sense of belonging, Ernst did not want to give in to his wife’s urgings to leave Germany. When they finally took a short vacation in April 1937, they were surprised by a forced lockdown of the local B’nai B’rith lodge and the confiscation of the financial property of their lodge. Both of them were arrested as leading B’nai B’rith members, which they were. The Appels had long been active in this prominent German-Jewish organization as board members.

As a result of these experiences, Ernst finally gave in to Martha’s desire to leave Germany. In May 1937, the family fled to the Netherlands with no notice; from there, they obtained affidavits from relatives and visas to enter the United States in November 1937.¹¹

At the local level, the legal situation of Jews in Germany deteriorated in 1937. Wolf Gruner observed this in Berlin, which had become a center for the internal migration of Jews from small towns and villages. People fled to the community because it was large and well organized and could shield its members more effectively than other communities in Germany. But even in Berlin, individuals could not be protected from the arbitrary cruelty of the Nazis, a circumstance that spurred emigration to a hence-unknown degree that year.¹²

The tension between the Jewish community and Nazi authorities became more tangible after the 1936 Olympics in Germany. During 1937, pressures on Jews increased, and it was no accident that Jewish leaders like Schwab, Prinz, and Cohn were forced to leave the country that year. The following year brought a steady expansion of anti-Jewish measures and an increase in Nazi atrocities, which foreshadowed the coming expulsion, removal, and destruction of the Jewish population and increasingly legitimated a new level of brutality against Jews in Germany. The annexation of Austria in March 1938, the cruelty experienced by the Austrian Jewry, and the annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in September 1938 underscored that Germany was expanding its influence and wanted to expel the country’s Jews by force.¹³

Violence and intimidation had threatened the physical existence of communities and synagogues long before the pogrom of 9 November 1938¹⁴ and was facilitated and encouraged by the newly passed Law on the Redesign of German Cities (Gesetz über die Neugestaltung deutscher Städte),¹⁵ which legalized the elimination of Jewish facilities from urban spaces in the fall of 1937.

The Communal Rabbinate: Physical Assault

A chain of events began in Munich and Nuremberg, two prominent centers of Nazi activity where local antisemites and party members were encouraged to eradicate any signs of a proud and integrated Jewish presence. These two centers were often referred to as the “capital of the [Nazi] movement” (Munich) and the “city of the Reich party assemblies” (Nuremberg). When the cities became hubs of the Nazi movement and state-enforced antisemitism, Jewish communities experienced an extraordinary degree of chicanery and humiliation.

Therefore, when the main synagogue in Munich—a majestic building representing the integration of the community late in the nineteenth century—had its fiftieth anniversary in 1937, neither the community nor the rabbi felt that it was a time to celebrate.¹⁶ Their magnificent home, which was once Germany’s third-largest synagogue and known for its tasteful design, had been labeled an architectural eyesore by the German authorities. Senior rabbi Leo Baerwald feared that any celebrations of the synagogue’s anniversary might cause repercussions, so the festivities were toned down and overshadowed by concerns about the future. One year later, on 7 June 1938, Hitler visited the adjacent building housing the local artists’ association and declared that the synagogue was an obstacle to inner-city traffic (and inappropriately close to the party headquarters) and ordered that it be removed.¹⁷

Within less than a month, the synagogue was demolished. The last service witnessed the pain and frustration of a community that felt this indicated a loss that went much further than the removal of a building. The event was attended by a large number of Germany’s rabbis, who had gathered in Munich for a meeting of the German rabbinical association and closely followed the destruction of this monument to Jewish presence in Munich.¹⁸

At almost the same time, on 15 June 1938, the Jewish community of Nuremberg learned that its main synagogue on Hans-Sachs-Platz would suffer the same fate because its “oriental” architecture conflicted with the German architecture of the city and was not in line with the newly passed Law on the Redesign of German Cities.¹⁹

In Dortmund, the synagogue on Hiltropwall succumbed to the ambitions of the local NSDAP Kreisleiter (county leader), who seemed to be copying the measures taken in Bavaria. In an effort to turn Dortmund, rather than Bochum, into the capital of the local Gau (regional administration), it was argued that the synagogue on Hiltropwall should be razed to make way for an air raid bunker in the future capital. As a result, the synagogue was torn down, starting on 21 September 1938, leaving the community with no safe place to assemble.²⁰

A similar desire to make Kaiserslautern the capital of the local Gau determined the fate of its synagogue, which happened to be located along the future main parade avenue, then named Dr.-Frick-Strasse. Once again, at the end of August 1938, an ambitious mayor ordered the destruction of the synagogue. The demolition began, and the building’s remnants were finally blasted away on 10 October 1938, less than a month before the pogrom of 9 November 1938.²¹

The events shook all Jewish communities and the rabbinate nationwide, as they proved that Nazism was not aiming for “only” segregation, nor would it respect or even allow separate Jewish spaces. Instead, these acts demonstrated the fragility of the Jewish presence in Germany, how far the Nazis would go, and that the goal was to rid the country of the Jewish population.

Another significant act undermining the status of Jews in Germany was the so-called Polenaktion (Polish action), the forced expulsion of Polish nationals residing in Germany to Poland, which began on 27 October 1938. At the time, approximately seventy thousand Jewish-Polish nationals were living permanently in Germany; due to the overtones of exclusion in German citizenship legislation, their naturalization was difficult, if not impossible.²² They continued to represent a legally vulnerable “foreign” minority, even though many of them were socially well integrated into German society and were long-term residents.

Jewish-Polish nationals were also threatened by antisemitic policies in Poland, specifically a decree passed on 6 October 1938 that required them to have their foreign residence endorsed by Polish authorities by 30 October 1938. If they did not comply, they could lose their Polish citizenship rights. The fact that the Polish government was extremely restrictive with its endorsements left many Polish Jews in Germany in a precarious position regarding their citizenship status and residence and provided a pretext for the Nazis to take action against this minority in Germany.

Starting on 27 October, Nazi authorities raided Jewish communities and arrested some seventeen thousand Polish citizens living in Germany. While this measure did not directly affect German-Jewish nationals, the dramatic expulsion of this many Polish Jews from Germany certainly resonated, especially since the Polish authorities’ refusal to admit them to Poland created a humanitarian crisis whereby they were stranded for weeks in a no-man’s-land between Germany and Poland near the city of Zbaszyn.

The treatment and broad rejection of these Jews by both countries affected German-Jewish community members indirectly. Many were married to Polish citizens or had relatives in Poland. The German rabbinate and its institutions were shaken. Many of the seminaries’ foreign faculty members, students, and graduates were trapped in Zbaszyn for several weeks because they had a Polish passport. These included Hebrew professor Moses Sister of the Hochschule, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Erwin Zimet.²³

In mid-1938, the correspondence of American seminaries noted the rising numbers of rabbis from countries affected by Nazism, such as Austria and the so-called Sudetenland, who were seeking assistance for immediate emigration in addition to their colleagues from Germany proper. This included scholars like Professor Kaminka, who had temporarily relocated to Tel Aviv, and Professor Samuel Krauss, both of Vienna.²⁴ On 17 August 1938, the Orthodox Rabbinical Association of Germany officially turned to Cyrus Adler, begging for help with their members, many of whom were forced to emigrate for several reasons, including the fact that they were increasingly unable to support themselves.²⁵

The dramatic course of events drove home the realities the rabbinate encountered as Jewish leadership during those years. While many officiating rabbis were convinced until 1936 or 1937 that their place was with their communities, the timeline of events highlights how the Nazi authorities were increasingly focused on eliminating the rabbinate as the backbone of Jewish communities. Targeted rabbis were those who spoke out fearlessly, who were well known in their larger Jewish and non-Jewish communities, and whose voices were heard widely. Rabbis in small towns and rural communities with usually smaller communities had a much harder time withstanding the pressure of Nazi intimidation and experienced less backing as an excluded minority.

This led to an internal migration to larger cities and especially to Berlin, which was a Jewish hub before the onset of mass emigration. Even during Kristallnacht, some rabbis fled from their assigned pulpits as their synagogues were being destroyed and sought shelter or support in the capital or went underground there.²⁶ Due to the growing number of refugees, more pulpits were vacated and needed new leaders. These positions were filled by new graduates, often barely or hastily ordained. They advanced quickly in their careers by taking positions for which they would have waited for a long time under “normal” conditions. These new responsibilities so early in their careers challenged them accordingly. A sense of urgency accompanied this erosion of Jewish communities, which is well described in a number of autobiographical and biographical recordings.²⁷

The events did not go unnoticed by the American Conservative and Orthodox rabbinical seminaries. Cyrus Adler, president of the JTS and Dropsie College, approached Rabbi Simon Greenberg, president of the Rabbinical Assembly, about organizing efforts with the respective Reform and Orthodox rabbinical associations and coordinating their work on behalf of the German refugee rabbis.

It was suggested that Greenberg also work with British Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz in London. Hertz had created an emergency council to aid religious leaders, students, and scholars seeking shelter in Britain or its dominions, since Britain had become the central European hub for the rescue of Jewish refugees in Europe. Adler reminded his colleague to also consider the availability of rabbinical positions in Britain, the British dominions, and South America and negotiate possible training accordingly.²⁸ In the United States, Adler alerted the CCAR, the United Synagogue of America, and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis to the crisis and urged them to cooperate with the National Coordinating Committee (NCC) to form a special committee to aid rabbis and religious functionaries in a larger national framework.²⁹

The first meeting of the steering committee took place on 13 October 1938, before Kristallnacht, with Gustave Falk, Herbert Parzen, Samuel Cohen, Samuel Grinstein, Leo Jung, and Rabbi Jacob Hoffmann as representatives of the American rabbinate and Samuel Kohs, Cecilia Razovsky, and Robert Dolins as representatives of the NCC, a joint venture of Jewish and non-Jewish organizations to aid refugees from Nazi Germany.³⁰

The meeting participants defined the type of person and qualifications they were looking for to coordinate the project. Among other things, the person needed “a good command of Yiddish, German, and English” and should have a unifying personality that could bring the three religious movements together. He did not have to be a rabbi.

Rabbi Jacob Hoffmann, once the Orthodox rabbi of the Frankfurt Gemeinde, was invited to represent the German rabbis. He had just arrived in the United States in 1938 after his expulsion from Germany as an “enemy of the state”³¹ and stressed that most of the refugees might be Orthodox rabbis because they encountered the strongest persecution. He proposed to set up a central fund supporting those congregations that were willing to hire a refugee rabbi, especially if they could not finance a position themselves.

All of the committee members voted that Cecilia Razovsky³² become part of the committee because she had served as the head of the immigration division of the NCC and brought with her a lot of expertise in working with the administration and aiding teachers and rabbis. She agreed to support and advise the rabbis once they entered the United States, approved the establishment of a central fund, and stated that she was already working on securing positions for rabbis in the US.

Leo Jung expressed concern about the placement of the younger, less experienced refugees, who he felt were more like “teachers” than “rabbis.” Thus a committee was formed to discuss measures for training these refugees to meet American standards. To explore the options for their placement, Rabbi Herbert Parzen suggested using the reports prepared by students of the JTS on small-town communities where they had temporarily officiated during the High Holidays in areas that could not otherwise afford a full-time spiritual leader.³³

The next meeting of that committee, which became known as the Special Committee Meeting to Consider Problems of Refugee Jewish Religious Functionaries, took place on 24 October 1938 and addressed how to deal with the growing number of refugees, including rabbis, cantors, and religious teachers, all of whom could apply for a nonquota visa to the United States.³⁴ Present at this meeting were representatives from each of the American Jewish movements: Rabbi Gustave Falk of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohen of the United Synagogue of America, and Rabbi Samuel Grinstein of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. Once again, Rabbi Jacob Hoffmann represented the German rabbinate.

At this meeting, Rabbi Herbert Parzen, born in 1896 in Prussian Poland and educated in the United States,³⁵ was appointed chairman of the special committee. He explained that the duties of his future secretary would be to serve as an intermediary among the NCC, national lay and rabbinical organizations, and the refugee rabbis. This person would also develop positions for the refugees, select suitable applicants for specific congregations, and organize meetings in which the representatives of the three American Judaism movements could interview them. Like the chairman, the secretary was expected to possess a working knowledge of Yiddish and German and have the support of all three religious groups engaged in the project.

In addition, the committee decided that applicants for positions in the United States must be interviewed in person by each of the religious movements representatives, attend courses in English and on the requirements and expectations of the American rabbinate, and, if necessary, sign up for additional training to enable them to continue their work in the United States.³⁶

Kristallnacht: Emergencies at Home and Abroad

As the special committee was being set up, Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) occurred on 9 November 1938 and thus added a new and unexpected urgency to these preparations. One day after the pogrom, Cyrus Adler interviewed thirty-eight-year-old rabbi Alexander Burnstein of Newark, New Jersey, for the position of executive secretary of the special committee. Burnstein was born in the Ukraine but educated in the United States, satisfied the language requirements, and was willing to move to New York City. He was extraordinarily dedicated to this position and quickly developed a scheme to facilitate and structure his work.³⁷

Kristallnacht expedited the existing crisis because of the mass atrocities carried out against Jewish businesses, institutions, synagogues, Jewish archives, and rabbis. Although it has been well documented that the event was intended to demonstrate the Nazis’ willingness to use violence to rid themselves of all Jewish presence in Germany, it is unclear why there is so little research on the rabbinate as a target in the events of that night. After all, synagogues and communities came alive mainly through the presence and support of the rabbis who actively conducted and led community life, strengthened the perseverance of the congregation, and tried to ameliorate the social, economic, and psychological effects of the Nazi regime on their congregants. In fact, rabbis at the time were maintaining the communities as safe havens for Jewish sociability and centers where Jews in Germany could develop practical solutions to their problems.

The impact of the pogrom on Jewish communities can only be fully understood if that event is also considered as the night that targeted rabbis and thus caused a mass flight of the rabbinate. Kristallnacht not only destroyed Jewish communities physically but also lashed out against a large portion of their leadership, crushed community spirit, and thus broke the backbone of Jewish resilience. The destruction of Germany’s synagogues, the systematic elimination of Jewish leadership, and the elimination of safe havens and retreats for community and solidarity were soon to facilitate the onset of the Shoah.

The backdrop of the pogrom was the assassination of German diplomat Ernst Eduard vom Rath in Paris by a young Polish Jew, Hershel Grynspan. This act was used as grounds for the massive reaction of the Nazis. Grynspan’s parents had been victims of the so-called Polenaktion only two weeks earlier, and his act was promoted as one of Jewish revenge against German national representatives abroad. Subsequently, the Nazi Party portrayed the pogrom as a spontaneous reaction, a rising up of the German people against the “Jewish crime.”

The pogrom of 9 November resulted in the deaths of over one hundred people in a single night, left many victims injured, and destroyed over seventy-five hundred businesses and most of the synagogues in Germany. Over thirty thousand Jewish men were arrested and “disappeared” in camps and prisons without warrants or any other information on their whereabouts for weeks. Recent research indicates that a large part of the German public, including the official police and fire departments, watched the atrocities performed against Jews, even if fewer Germans than anticipated actively participated. Regardless, the German people did not rise up to stop the carnage the Nazis were inflicting on their neighbors.

The atrocities were carried out with stunning rigidity and brutality and are documented in the archives of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, where a database contains information about the postwar trials of Germans who perpetrated crimes against Jews during the Nazi period.³⁸ This pogrom, finally, was the moment when the rabbinate experienced firsthand how far German society had collapsed. They saw how formerly well-respected Jewish citizens, religious leaders, institutions, and businesses received no support from their fellow citizens and witnessed how German society had become a racially exclusive community, the social fabric of which held no solidarity with those labeled racially different.

The destruction of the synagogues undermined the community, triggered mass flight, and left those who stayed with little or no protection. Employees of the communities and their families were confronted with ruined facilities and the loss of income. Most of the officiating rabbis were arrested, and many of the advanced seminary students went into hiding or tried to cross the border.³⁹

Even for those more fortunate, the situation was dangerous, as in the case of Erich Löwenthal, a young Orthodox rabbi from Berlin who went into hiding during the pogrom. Löwenthal was offered a job by the Swiss congregation Agudass Achim of Zurich just days after the pogrom, on 16 November 1938. But he experienced unexpected challenges: the Swiss authorities refused to allow him to cross the heavily guarded border into their country.⁴⁰ Only with the assistance of German-born Gisela Warburg Wyzanski, a Zionist leader of the youth organization Aliyah with whom he was friends, was Löwenthal able to reach the United States six months later.⁴¹

Meanwhile, rabbis were fleeing with few possessions and no plans for long-term stays abroad. If they were lucky, their families could stay behind and arrange for a more organized transfer of their household and departure. Alfred Kober of Cologne described how he was prevented from entering the synagogue to save objects.⁴² Almost all rabbis were freed from detention only on the condition that they leave Germany immediately, as Manfred Swarsensky graphically described in his account of his circumstances. On his release from Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Swarsensky had to promise not to share his experiences with anyone in Germany and state in writing that he had entered protective custody voluntarily to escape the “rage of the German people” (Wut des deutschen Volkes) and that no harm was done to him.⁴³

Rabbi Leo Trepp of Oldenbourg, also imprisoned in Sachsenhausen “with his congregation,” explained how shaken he was from his experiences at the camp. While he was imprisoned, his wife contacted the British chief rabbi, whom she happened to know. When Manfred Swarsensky was released and forced to leave Germany within two weeks, the two men obtained temporary visas from the Emergency Council of the Chief Rabbi.⁴⁴

Many rabbis left without their families, relying on their wives to organize visas for them and other family members.

Walter Jacob, the eight-year-old son of Augsburg’s rabbi Ernst Jacob, recalls the circumstances of his father’s arrest and release in late December 1938 and the responsibilities his mother took on during this crisis. When Ernst Jacob returned from the concentration camp, he was not only shaken by what he had experienced during his arrest in Dachau; he was also forced to leave Germany immediately.

He obtained one of the emergency visas provided by the Emergency Council of the British Chief Rabbinate and left for London. His family stayed in Augsburg until they received permission to leave Germany, a process that involved extensive paperwork and emigration tax payments. Since leaving Germany at the time also meant leaving behind any access to bank accounts and resources, they required time to plan their departure and did not leave to reunite with Ernest in London until the spring of 1939.

The following nine months in England were difficult. Unsettled, in transit, foreign, and unable to make a living due to their status as refugees, the family used the time to learn the English language. Once their immigration number came up, they embarked on a ship to New York, where they spent their first months on Long Island for the orientation phase of their new life in the United States.

While Jacob’s autobiography is not very specific about the visa the family obtained, they likely received a regular quota visa because he recalls that they had to wait until their number “came up” late in 1939 and mentions a relative who met the family on arrival, an indication that the immigration was facilitated by the affidavits of family members who were already in the United States.⁴⁵

Rabbi Hans Enoch Kronheim from Bielefeld was in the United States when the pogrom occurred and was informed by his wife, Senta, to stay in America. Kronheim was forced to quickly find a position and make preparations for his wife and two daughters, who finally arrived in Jamestown, New York, in June 1939 with the aid of the United Synagogue of America.⁴⁶

Rabbis caught during the pogrom experienced horrific humiliation and loss. In the Silesian town of Oppeln (Opole), Rabbi Hans Hirschberg was forced by Nazi storm troopers to set his own synagogue on fire that night—a traumatic experience.⁴⁷

Emotional trauma resonated in the memories of many rabbis and their children. Ismar Schorsch underscored this when discussing his father Emil’s experience of witnessing the complete destruction of his synagogue in Hanover.⁴⁸

Jewish schools, seminaries, and yeshivot were closing, including the Samson Raphael Hirsch Yeshiva in Frankfurt am Main, where Rav Joseph Breuer had been taken into custody on the morning of November 10 and put in a holding center called the Festhalle in Frankfurt. Here the victims of the pogrom were herded together to await further action. The fifty-six-year-old rav was unexpectedly fortunate because one of the guards, a SA officer (storm trooper), knew him and shouted that he was to step forward as a man over age sixty. Subsequently, Breuer joined the group of seniors who were not deported to Buchenwald or Dachau but were ultimately released, which enabled Breuer to relocate with his children Jacob, Samson, and Meta to Antwerp where his daughter Hanna Schwalbe lived. Once his wife had hastily made travel arrangements for herself and her remaining children Edith and Sophie, the family was reunited.⁴⁹

From Antwerp, the Breuers immigrated to New York City with all their underage children; the older children could not be included in their father’s nonquota visa. The Breuer family received assistance from a former student of the Breuer Yeshiva, Jacob A. Samuel, who had relocated to the United States and promised to help Breuer get an affidavit. On 28 January 1939, the family traveled by ship to Le Havre, France, and turned their backs on Europe. In their possession was a nonquota visa obtained through Yeshiva University, where Samuel had approached its president, Bernard Revel, for assistance.⁵⁰

Emil Fackenheim describes in his autobiography how he found the Hochschule closed on the morning of 10 November 1938. After returning to his family’s home, where he learned that his father had been imprisoned, he was arrested and taken to Sachsenhausen. He reports that he experienced intense humiliation in Sachsenhausen until he was released on 8 February 1939. The Gestapo had made clear to him that his choice was to either leave Germany in six weeks or return to Sachsenhausen.⁵¹

Some German rabbis, like the Orthodox Hartwig Naphtali Carlebach, fled to eastern Europe to look for solidarity and safe haven among east European colleagues in traditional yeshivot, such as the Yeshiva Mir. But the decision to go east often put them in an even worse situation once the Nazis started the Second World War in 1939. While Carlebach managed to escape to the United States from Lithuania in 1939, others were unable to leave before the Nazi invasion and could only escape east, if at all, via Shanghai. From there, some reached the United States and other countries after 1945.⁵²

In Wilhelm Weinberg’s case, fleeing eastward from Nazism was just a prelude to an extremely difficult and dangerous flight that covered nearly the entire globe. After staying in several countries in eastern Europe, he crossed into the Soviet Union and ultimately into central Asia (Kyrgyzstan), where he survived the Shoah under communism while hiding the fact that he was an ordained rabbi.

Weinberg was born on 3 April 1901, in Dolina, Galicia, and arrived in Berlin to study for the rabbinate at the Hochschule in 1932. It might have been his political activism in the Zionist movement that got the attention of the Nazi Party because he soon ran into serious trouble with the police. After a trip to Zurich in June 1935, he was harassed, arrested, and sentenced to one year and nine months for foreign currency violations. When he was released from prison, he left the country and returned to Austria, where he received his ordination from the Hochschule in absentia. This is evidence that the faculty there did their best to give students the most support possible, even under almost impossible circumstances.

Only after 1945 could Weinberg finally return to the German-speaking part of central Europe, where he used to feel at home. He joined the flow of so-called Displaced Persons and ministered to them in the American occupation zone in Hallein near Salzburg and in Frankfurt am Main, where he served as the first postwar chief rabbi of Hesse until he left Europe for the United States in 1951.⁵³

Apparently, rabbis with a foreign citizenship, such as the Romanian Max Nussbaum, were barely noticed and could stay longer in Germany for that reason. Nussbaum was neither arrested nor bothered during the pogrom, and he left Berlin with his wife only in 1940.⁵⁴

This experience was confirmed by Salamon Faber, an advanced student at the Jüdisch-Theologisches Seminar in Breslau, who witnessed the pogrom and the closing of the seminary in that city. He told his son Eli Faber that he was not touched because of his foreign citizenship and could actually assist his fellow German students and professors at the seminary.⁵⁵

While the American rabbinate was hastily preparing to deal with the emergency in the German rabbinate, the mass exodus was met with reservations by the German-Jewish leadership. Leo Baeck, who had supported the emigration of young rabbis, stated that he had expected different behavior from his mature colleagues.

In an April 1939 letter to Ismar Elbogen, he explained that the Hochschule had resumed its work as well as it could under the circumstances. The goal, he stressed, was to conclude “in honor.” To achieve that, the Hochschule sought ways and means to publish completed scholarly works, provide students with diplomas, and carry on with honorable conduct and attitude in this already doomed enterprise. Baeck bitterly criticized the majority of the rabbis, claiming that they had not only failed their duty but that many of them had just disappeared after Kristallnacht or their imprisonment afterward. In his eyes, only a very few had demonstrated leadership and actually returned to their communities, as did Manfred Swarsensky and Max Dienemann.⁵⁶

The Work of the Committee on Refugee Jewish Ministers of the NCC

The pogrom directly affected the work of the newly founded Committee on Refugee Jewish Ministers (CRJM), which, under the developing emergency conditions and only four weeks in office, changed its original goal of finding permanent positions in the American rabbinate for refugee rabbis to creating short-term positions. This would save lives and give German colleagues time to acclimate to the American rabbinate.

Alexander Burnstein, executive secretary of the CRJM, petitioned for this change of strategy because he was receiving “dozens and dozens of pleas and cablegrams from the very best Rabbis, who are still abroad and most of whom, seemed to be jailed in concentration camps.”⁵⁷

As a solution, Burnstein proposed joining with British Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz, who, in close proximity to Nazi Germany, was confronted with the plight of German Jewry, particularly German rabbis. Having set up an Emergency Council of the Chief Rabbi, Hertz’s office worked with the Central British Fund for German Jewry, the largest central aid organization on behalf of German Jewry, based in London. Directly confronted with the rising flood of refugees from Germany, the council developed a plan with the British Home Office to offer German refugee rabbis a special visa that would provide them with temporary shelter in Britain for one year.

These emergency visas allowed refugees to find long-term homes in areas such as the United States or the British dominions. Burnstein suggested that American Jewry approach the American government and immigration authorities to reach a similar deal to free Jewish prisoners from Nazi concentration camps, a suggestion that never materialized because the US immigration bureaucracy was growing increasingly reluctant to issue visas as the crisis expanded.⁵⁸

Nevertheless, Burnstein drummed up solidarity among his American colleagues. He persuaded them to use their influence and prestige inside and outside their congregations in support of hiring refugee rabbis and explaining to their congregations that this support would not only free these men from concentration camps but would also allow them to receive a special nonquota visa to enter the United States. American rabbis were to spread this information among smaller congregations that might not have a permanent rabbi but would hire a refugee under the circumstances.

An attached survey form discussed what type of minister, cantor, ritual butcher, choir leader, and organist could be hired; which funds were available in the congregations to support the project; and in what ways the special committee could help them take responsibility for a refugee from Germany.⁵⁹ The importance and success of this grassroots support are evident in the fact that by mid-January 1939, the British Chief Rabbi’s Religious Emergency Fund had succeeded in providing emergency visas for 112 rabbis and teachers, 26 cantors and ritual butchers, and 130 yeshivot students, many of whom were waiting to settle permanently in the United States after an interim stay in Britain.⁶⁰

Under pressure to function and produce positions for refugee rabbis, the American committee adapted its structure and changed its name to the CRJM.

To enable the committee to respond more quickly to problems and requests, an executive committee was created consisting of Dr. David de Sola Pool, Dr. Benedict Glazer, Rabbi Gustave Falk, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohen, Rabbi Samuel Grinstein, Cecilia Razovsky, and Dr. S. C. Kohs. Rabbi Dr. David de Sola Pool, president of the Synagogue Council, presided over the new executive committee as chairman. This new committee was to support Alexander Burnstein in his ongoing business. Efficiency and a systematic approach were Burnstein’s main concerns amid the ongoing crisis. He dedicated a great deal of his time to confer with several major leaders of American Jewry on how to organize the exchange of information on opening pulpits between congregations and the executive committee, which expanded to include Dr. Julian Morgenstern, Dr. Felix A. Levy, Rabbi Max Currik, Dr. Cyrus Adler, Rabbi Simon Greenberg, and Dr. Leo Jung.

Based on the first exchanges and placements, Burnstein decided to start working with rabbis who were already in the United States and gather information about their experience and needs to help them find positions. By systematically recording this data, he gained a better understanding of their training, backgrounds, and qualifications. To classify the refugees’ experience and knowledge for placement purposes, Burnstein recommended establishing examining boards to rate their qualifications. In addition, he suggested setting up a working relationship with the appropriate rabbinic organizations to explore what these professional organizations might offer to this special group of job seekers.

The significance of his work is proven by the numbers he listed in his correspondence. By 16 January 1939, he had interviewed 52 candidates, and there were “at least 150” newly arrived cantors, teachers, shohetim, rabbis, mohelim, and organists. Their information was collected on registration cards and distributed to the examining board before the arrivals were interviewed by the board and classified for specific positions. At this time, Burnstein made 13 placements, received 120 responses from congregations, was in the process of confirming 62 additional positions, and was heading the negotiations for an additional 14 openings in congregations.⁶¹

Across the United States, the CRJM executive committee worked with communities, congregations, and rabbinical associations as well as a nationwide network of local committees of the NCC for Aid to Refugees and Emigrants Coming from Germany.

The NCC was a national nondenominational organization, initiated in 1934 by the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and headed by Professor Joseph Perkins Chamberlain. A number of leading Jewish organizations were represented, including the National Council of Jewish Women, the Jewish Social Service Association of New York City, and the Young Men’s Hebrew Employment Service. Non-Jewish groups were represented as well, such as the International Migration Service and the Emanuel Federated Employment Service.⁶² The NCC quickly mobilized greater support among Jewish and non-Jewish organizations and arranged for the placement of many refugees. The committee tried to facilitate immigration for three hundred refugee rabbis for whom Jews in Britain had managed to secure temporary emergency visas there.

Burnstein knew that the refugees depended on his aid because Jewish organizational life had largely broken down in Germany. He felt it was his responsibility to bring over as many of these colleagues of the approximately 650 synagogues of Germany at the time.⁶³ Conscious of the obligations of his position and the centrality of the American effort to aid their German colleagues, Burnstein demonstrated great empathy for these refugees, their situation, and their plight. Their experiences troubled him personally and prevented him from sleeping at night, a circumstance he shared with Cyrus Adler.⁶⁴ Feeling strongly for the German refugees, he stressed that his task was well worth the effort based on what the German Jewry was experiencing.⁶⁵ Burnstein’s personal correspondence with Cyrus Adler illuminates how emotionally involved in the project that senior leader of the American Jewry was as well and how much he cared about every detail Burnstein reported to him.⁶⁶

On 20 February 1939, Burnstein shared his first success by presenting a list of twenty-three placements he had arranged for German rabbis; he then continued to submit similar lists on a regular basis.⁶⁷ He may have gotten some information on available positions from lists annually prepared and circulated by the United Synagogue of America, which provided detailed information on congregations. This was one way the United Synagogue helped congregations meet their needs and solve such problems as hiring a rabbi.⁶⁸ By the beginning of 1939, the circle of refugees was widening as Burnstein’s letters reveal: Rabbi Solomon Feuerstein of Prague, Czechoslovakia, and Dr. Kalman Friedmann, former chief rabbi of Florence, Italy, also approached the committee as they began to feel the Nazi influence in their areas.⁶⁹

While small congregations welcomed the opportunity to hire a rabbi under Burnstein’s program but often lacked the necessary funds, the more prominent and wealthy congregations, such as the well-known Reform Temple Emanu-El in New York, were hesitant to hire a refugee from Germany for fear of the resistance they could face among the socially exclusive lay membership. Burnstein’s office managed both problems by, on the one hand, providing the necessary funds to congregations that needed financial support to hire a refugee and, on the other, by actively promoting the acceptance of refugees among other prominent Reform congregations, such as those led by Abba Hillel Silver in Cleveland or Louis Mann in Chicago, who had already started to create positions for refugees.⁷⁰

Besides challenges among the Jewish communities, the rescue efforts faced administrative resistance in the State Department, even though or precisely because this type of immigration was a privilege and an exception to the rule, which was frequently underscored in how these applications were processed.

The case of Eugene Horovitz, who was trapped in Britain on a temporary visa, demonstrates how paper walls often blocked the way of several rabbis. Having found a position in a small congregation in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, with the committee’s assistance, Horovitz was denied the nonquota visa because the congregation members could not explain why they wanted to hire a rabbi at that time and why they could not continue meeting without a rabbi as before.

Edward S. Maney, the American consul in charge, demanded documentation on the congregation’s financial ability to properly support a rabbi and a statement that the rabbi would be filling a need, as indicated, for example, by a growing membership or the recent resignation of another rabbi.⁷¹ Horovitz’s case was not the only one in which consular staff created problems, as few of the rabbis who had received a placement based on Burnstein’s lists were actually hired for the positions. These lists and available personal recollections and stories document instead that after the initial appointment, the visa process posed a significant challenge for refugees. Even though the nonquota visa provided a loophole, the visa process included plenty of bureaucratic ways for refugees to fail.

Other hurdles for the placement and the successful transition into American Jewry were the language barrier and a lack of familiarity with American Jewish congregations and the American rabbinate. The modern rabbi was expected to present a meaningful and articulate sermon at the pulpit, a task that few of the refugees were able to master upon arrival. Many had barely any command of English.

Therefore, an essential tool for the new arrivals from Germany was the English-language courses at the Teacher’s College of Columbia University, organized by the CRJM. At the same location, the committee prepared lectures on the challenges and expectations the refugees would encounter in American Judaism. The speakers were prominent American rabbis such as Leo Jung, Max Arzt, Benedict Glazer, and David de Sola Pool.⁷²

Besides rabbinical associations, religious movements, and seminaries, the CRJM continued to work with the NCC and its mostly Jewish member organizations. The NCC’s main goal was to remove as many refugees as possible from the New York area to prevent a concentration of refugees that might trigger anti-Jewish sentiments.

A key personality in setting up efficient aid for the refugees continued to be Cecilia Razovsky. She mobilized Jewish organizations and groups to support and work with the new arrivals in their local chapters beyond the service of merely providing general information. Some of these organizations included the National Council of Jewish Women, HIAS, B’nai B’rith, and the Zionist Organization of America. They joined forces to help the new arrivals and their families learn English, find a job, locate an apartment, and deal with their visa situation. Those with temporary visas especially depended on informed assistance to avoid deportation to Germany. Others were trying to bring over family members from Europe or elsewhere. Razovsky served as an experienced and engaged liaison to the State Department and traveled to Washington from New York City to settle cases on an almost weekly basis.

From 1938 on, the exclusively Jewish-sponsored National Coordinating Committee Fund supported the work of Jewish organizations dealing solely with the overwhelming numbers of new refugees and spent over $813,000 that year for that purpose. This was just the beginning of a complete reorganization of the efforts on behalf of refugees, and it launched the replacement of the NCC with the newly founded National Refugee Service (NRS), a Jewish aid organization that was created to handle the ever-growing emergency. The NRS continued to support the rising numbers of refugees from Germany, Austria, and parts of Czechoslovakia until the flow ebbed in the fall of 1941 when the expansion of the Second World War and the ramifications of the Holocaust stopped emigration from central Europe for the duration of the war. When the war ended in 1945, the NRS was challenged by the next wave of immigrants, displaced persons, the refugees from war-torn countries in eastern Europe.⁷³