Zvi Asaria

Zvi Asaria ( Tsevi Azaryah ); born September 8, 1913 as Hermann Helfgott in Beodra / Beudra (after 1945 united with Karlowo to form Novo Miloševo ), Okrug Srednji Banat , Austria-Hungary ; died May 22, 2002 was a Yugoslav-Israeli rabbi and author.

Life

Hermann Helfgott was the son of the peddler Kolman Helfgott. He studied theology in the rabbinical seminary in Sarajevo and from around 1934 to 1938 Semitic philology in Vienna (lectures in history, geography and oriental studies). After he had passed his first Rigorosum at the beginning of 1938 , he broke off the examination procedure after the annexation of Austria and fled to Budapest , where he obtained his theological diploma and became a Dr. phil. PhD. For a short time he worked as a rabbi in Zrenjanin ( Veliki Bečkerek ) before he joined the Yugoslav army as a chaplain. In 1941 he was captured as a captain in Germany. He spent three years in camps in Strasbourg, Nuremberg and Pomerania. Finally he was sent to the Oflag VI C officers' camp in Osnabrück . He reported about this in We Are Witnesses .

After the liberation by the British army, he was initially a rabbi in Nienburg for a short time , and then - together with Christian clergy - assisted the survivors and dying of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp . In 1945 he founded the Kazett-Theater there with the director Sami Feder . With the rabbinical council, he supervised religious life in the Belsen DP camp.

In February 1947 he was appointed representative of the World Jewish Congress on Education, Culture and Religion in London . At the end of May 1947, the Council of Jewish Communities in the British zone of occupation appointed him Chief Rabbi. In the summer of 1948, on behalf of the Jewish Agency, he visited Jewish communities in the British occupation zone and promoted the “Jewish People's Service”, that is, for young Jews to immigrate to the newly declared state of Israel and register for service in the Israeli army . In the same year he fought with the rank of major in the Palestine War . With the acceptance of the Israeli citizenship, he took the name Zvi Asaria .

In 1953 he returned to Germany as head of the cultural department of the Israel Mission and at the same time worked as a community rabbi in Cologne until 1962.

From around 1965, he divided his time between the Israeli communities in Savjon ( central district ) and communities in Lower Saxony. He was a co-founder of the She'erit Hapletah movement (The Last Survivors). From 1966 to 1970 he was the state rabbi of Lower Saxony.

estate

After his death, Malka Asaria-Helfgot, b. Bodner, his collection in the Yad Vashem Archive . Other parts of his estate are in the Central Archives for Research into the History of Jews in Germany and in the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum .

Cologne synagogue graffiti 1959

→ Main article : Desecration of the synagogue in Cologne

On the night of Christmas Day 1959 in Cologne, two 25-year-olds who had joined the DRP two years earlier and had announced their crime at their Christmas party, painted over an unpopular saying on a Gestapo memorial and the synagogue that had been consecrated three months earlier Cologne on Roonstrasse smeared with the slogan “Jews out” and four 10-25 cm swastikas. While the discoverers, a senior citizen with his grandmother who called the police, wanted to wipe away the smear, the rabbi Asaria who was summoned first wanted to consult Sally Kessler , the SPD city councilor and deputy chairman of the Cologne synagogue community , who then decided that the Graffiti can only be removed after the Sabbath. After that, it could only be erased inadequately even with a sandblasting blower . Faithful brothers from abroad had advised Asaria to let the mess stand as a warning sign for a while.

By the end of January 1960, 470 similar incidents had been registered, which went down in the history of the Federal Republic as " anti-Semitic smear waves". The Eastern Bloc protested, and there were demonstrations in London and New York with up to 15,000 participants. The new version of Section 130 of the Criminal Code ( incitement to hatred), which had previously been suspended for an indefinite period due to the objection of Franz Böhm , was now advanced and passed in March 1960. There was also a new Section 96a of the Criminal Code for the public use of National Socialist marks or symbols of forbidden parties.

Fonts

• Sámuel második konyve Targumának viszonya a maszórai szöveghez. Bölcsészdoktori értekeszés . 1940.
• The Jews in Cologne. From the oldest times to the present . Bachem, Cologne 1959 (therein pp. 290–297: The Jewish cemeteries in Cologne ).
• The Jewish calendar. Celebrations and customs . DuMont, Cologne 1960 (and other editions).
• Tolerated or equal? Two conversations on the current situation of Jews in Germany . Germania Judaica, Cologne 1960
• Festschrift for the consecration of the synagogue and the Jewish cultural center in Osnabrück. 15th Sivan 5729 - June 1st, 1969 .
• Samson Raphael Hirsch . His legal position as a regional rabbi and his beneficial work in the state of Lower Saxony . Sponholtz, Hameln 1970.
• We are witnesses. Experience report of a Jew from German camps . Lower Saxony State Center for Political Education, Braunschweig 1975.
• The Jews in Lower Saxony. From the oldest times to the present . Rautenberg, Leer 1979, ISBN 3-7921-0214-5 .

literature

• Julius Carlebach : From Liberation to Freedom: Zvi Asaria (Hermann Helfgott) and Abraham J. Klausner as rabbis in post-war Germany. In: Ashkenaz. Journal of the History and Culture of the Jews. ISSN  1016-4987 , Vol. 5, 1995, pp. 387-412.
• Elke-Helen Szarf, Michael Brenner (arr.): Material collection of state rabbi Dr. Zvi Asaria on the history of the Jews in Lower Saxony . Central archive for research into the history of Jews in Germany, 1995.
• Alisa Douer : New territory. Israeli artists of Austrian origin. Picus, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-85452-407-2 , pp. 74f. (Book accompanying the exhibition of the same name).

Web links

• Hermann Helfgott - Zvi Asaria. A transnational rabbinical life in the age of extremes (research project at the University of Osnabrück)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rabbi Dr. Zvi Asaria-Helfgott. Pastor, thinker and writer. (No longer available online.) In: isro-press.net. Archived from the original on February 22, 2013 ; accessed on December 31, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Hermann Helfgot ( Memento from September 10, 2012 on WebCite )
3. ↑ Nicola Schlichting: "Open the gates of Erez Israel". The Jewish DP camp in Belsen 1945–1948 . Antogo-Verlag, Nuremberg 2005, ISBN 3-9806636-9-8 , p. 83.
4. ^ Zvi Asaria. In: cologne-info.de. Accessed December 31, 2016 . 
5. ^ Rainer Lahmann-Lammert: Förderverein wants to set up a memorial in the Osnabrück-Eversheide camp. In: noz.de. April 2, 2011, accessed December 31, 2016 . 
6. ↑ GBB - memorial site. In: bergen-belsen.stiftung-ng.de. Accessed December 31, 2016 . 
7. ↑ Zvi Asaria: We are witnesses. Experience report of a Jew from German camps . Lower Saxony State Center for Political Education, Braunschweig 1975, pp. 171–172.
8. ^ Yad Vashem : Rabbi Dr. Zvi Asaria-Hermann Helfgott , accessed on October 18, 2019.
9. ^ Yad Vashem: Immigration to Israel and Public Activities , accessed October 18, 2019.
10. ↑ Anke Quast: After the Liberation. Jewish communities in Lower Saxony since 1945. The example of Hanover . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-89244-447-1 , p. 413.
11. ↑ Central archive for research into the history of the Jews in Germany, finding aid for the holdings B.1 / 6: Material collection of state rabbi Dr. Zvi Asaria on the history of the Jews in Lower Saxony .
12. ↑ Central archive for research into the history of the Jews in Germany, finding aid for the holdings B.1 / 6: Material collection of state rabbi Dr. Zvi Asaria on the history of the Jews in Lower Saxony , p. II.
13. ^ Desecration of synagogues: The night of Cologne . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 1960 ( online ).
14. ↑ Incitement to the people: The rubber act . In: Der Spiegel . No. 14 , 1960 ( online ).