Daniel Rufeisen

P. Daniel Rufeisen OCD

Daniel Rufeisen (born as Shmuel Oswald Rufeisen * 1922 in Żywiec , † 1998 in Haifa ) was a Carmelite and religious priest .

Life

Oswald Rufeisen grew up in an educated Jewish family in Poland . German was spoken in his family. He had contact with the Zionist movement early on . When Hitler's troops invaded Poland, the family fled east. However, his parents stayed behind and were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau . Oswald Rufeisen first came to Vilnius in Lithuania and joined the Akiba kibbutz , which was built there based on the Israeli model. After the war and the German occupation reached Lithuania, there was a scheduled murder of the Jews living there, which Oswald Rufeisen survived in an adventurous way. In 1941 he fled further east and came to Mir in Belarus . Since he spoke German without an accent, he managed to pretend to be an ethnic German Pole. He worked as an interpreter for the German police . At the same time he kept in contact with Jewish partisans , informed them about the plans of the Germans and provided them with weapons.

On August 13, 1942, the ghetto in Mir Palace was to be liquidated. Rufeisen lured the gendarmes away with a false partisan report and warned the Jews there so that around three hundred inmates of the ghetto could escape into the woods. Rufeisen was denounced, detained and interrogated. Immediately before his execution he was able to escape and hide in a nunnery . There he read the New Testament , made up his mind to become a Christian , and was baptized. He later joined the partisans.

After the Second World War , Oswald Rufeisen joined the Carmelites as a postulant and was given the religious name Daniel Maria to dress . In 1952 Br. Daniel was ordained a priest. Seven years later he went to Israel as a pastor on behalf of the Order . Although he was a religious priest, he applied for Israeli citizenship due to his Jewish origin and citing the Law of Return , which he was denied. His 1962 lawsuit before the Israeli Supreme Court was unsuccessful; In their majority fundamental judgment, the judges decided that anyone belonging to another religion could not be a Jew . Nonetheless, he was granted Israeli citizenship soon after in recognition of his selfless service to the Jewish people. Even as a Christian, Father Daniel never ceased to feel part of the Jewish people.

In Israel he initially looked after a congregation that consisted predominantly of Polish Catholics who were married to Jews. He also worked as a tour guide. Even before the Second Vatican Council , Father Daniel began to celebrate services in the local language. The Haifa Hebrew- speaking Christian community emerged in addition to the Arab Christians . In addition, she understood herself in the tradition of the early Jerusalem community , which arose from the Jewish faith.

Was supported Father Daniel in church leadership through from Münster Dating Pastoral Officer Elisheva (Elisabeth) Hemker. In 1978 she also initiated the establishment of a senior citizens' home in Nahariya . Here a spiritual home should arise for the elderly members of the community. Many of the residents had helped their Jewish relatives during the persecution and were now dependent on help themselves. Shortly after the death of Father Daniel, the construction of a senior housing complex in Haifa, which now bears his name, was completed.

literature

Literature by and about Daniel Rufeisen in the catalog of the German National Library
Dieter Corbach: Daniel Oswald Rufeisen, the man from the lion's den, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-921232-44-9
Lyudmila Ulitzkaja : Daniel Stein . Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-446-23279-2 (novel about the life story of Rufeisen)
Nechama Tec : In The Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen . University Press: Oxford 1990
O. Daniel Maria Rufeisen OCD Autobiografia. Połknąłem haczyk Królowej Karmelu, Wydawnictwo Karmelitov Bosych, Krakov 2001, ISBN 83-7305-001-9
Mir , in: Guy Miron (Ed.): The Yad Vashem encyclopedia of the ghettos during the Holocaust . Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009 ISBN 978-965-308-345-5 , pp. 484f.

Web links

Euzebia Bartkowiak CR, Historia ojca Daniela Rufeisena (Obituary of the Order in Polish)

Where does Brother Daniel belong? (Comment by Hannes Stein on Rufeisen's life in the Berliner Zeitung of August 6, 1998)

Freiburger Rundbrief 1999/664 (obituary in the Freiburger Rundbrief , magazine for Christian-Jewish encounter)

Daniel Stein's struggles for survival and faith (review of the biographical novel by L. Ulitzkaja and conversation with the author on Deutschlandradio , April 12, 2009)

Die Berliner Literaturkritik (review of the biographical novel by L. Ulitzkaja, published on August 12, 2009)

Individual evidence

↑ Doc. VEJ 8/154 “The head of the gendarmerie post in Mir reported on August 20, 1942 about Oswald Rufeisen, who had warned the local Jews of the impending massacre.” In: Bert Hoppe (edit.): Die Verurfung und Murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 8: Soviet Union with annexed areas II. Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-486-78119-9 , pp. 366–368.

personal data
SURNAME	Rufeisen, Daniel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Rufeisen, Shmuel Oswald (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Polish-Israeli religious priest (Carmelite)
DATE OF BIRTH	1922
PLACE OF BIRTH	Żywiec
DATE OF DEATH	1998
Place of death	Haifa

[1] Doc. VEJ 8/154 “The head of the gendarmerie post in Mir reported on August 20, 1942 about Oswald Rufeisen, who had warned the local Jews of the impending massacre.” In: Bert Hoppe (edit.): Die Verurfung und Murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 8: Soviet Union with annexed areas II. Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-486-78119-9 , pp. 366–368.