Markus Bereisch

Markus Bereisch , also Mordechai Ja (a) kow (Jakob) B (e) reisch , (born May 6, 1895 in Sokal ; died December 6, 1976 in Zurich ) was a rabbi .

biography

Mordechai Bereisch came from the "teaching tradition of the Galician Jewish. Orthodoxy". In April 1929 he moved with his family from Lemberg to Duisburg . Since the First World War, increasing numbers of Jews from Poland had settled there, who had either been recruited or forced to do the hard physical work in mining and industrial companies - especially in the armaments industry - due to a lack of local workers. From 1929 to 1933 Bereisch was head ( Dajan ) of the Eastern Jewish community association Machsike Hadas, founded in 1919, and head of a Talmud - Torah school. In September 1929 he established a Shabbat district ( Eruv ).

On March 18, 1933, Bereisch was mistreated by five SS men (Bereisch later called them messengers of hell in a report ). The Polish consul reported to the district president in Düsseldorf that the police summoned had declared that "they were not there to protect Jews". A week later, Bereisch was driven through the city together with two other Jewish men in front of around 1,000 onlookers, “and none of them would have protested when they saw the humiliations, insults and also beatings they inflicted on me did all the way ”. The SS men had wrapped a black, red and gold flag around Bereisch, which the other two men had to carry like a train. He was verbally abused and beaten, his hair was pulled out and thrown to the audience, and his beard was set on fire. Bereisch was able to take refuge from his tormentors in the parish hall of Rabbi Manass Neumark because, according to Bereisch , a "high official" implored the "wicked criminals" to release him. The “high official” was Police Chief Master Kurt Nabakowski, who arrested Bereisch and the two other men in order to protect them from further attacks by the SS and the crowd.

The degrading treatment of Duisburg's Jews was captured in a photo that was published and sparked international outrage. The National Socialist National-Zeitung claimed that the Jews had "not been twisted a hair", but an Amsterdam newspaper had used the incident for "common agitation against Germanness", whereupon Jews in Amsterdam beat up German maids. On the advice of Nabakowski, Bereisch fled to Zurich via Belgium and France: “It was a pure miracle that I escaped the teeth of beasts in human form and the jaws of predators. I left blood-drenched Germany immediately. ”In June 1935 his wife followed him with the children into exile.

Bereisch applied to be a rabbi in Zurich . A letter of recommendation from Neumark was helpful, in which it said: “He is not only a Jewish scholar of profound Talmudic and rabbinical knowledge, but he also has the beautiful gift of presenting his thoughts clearly, spiritually and with convincing warmth, so that he uplifts and inspires the mind and heart of its listeners. "

On October 28, 1934, Bereisch was elected rabbi by a large majority by the extraordinary assembly of the Agudas Achim congregation in Zurich. From May 1935 he worked there for 40 years and built the local community “into one of the largest Eastern Jewish centers in Europe”. He brought together the Eastern European prayer groups living in Zurich at the time and had a community hall built for them. This is of “special importance” because the National Socialists destroyed the Jewish culture of Eastern Europe and only a few communities remained in the West, according to Brunschwig et al. Bereisch had four daughters and two sons with his wife Pesia, née Zügmann, who came from Sokal like him. He was followed as rabbi in Zurich by his youngest son Schaul, who was born in Duisburg in 1933. He wrote about his father: "His Talmudic works [...] are among the classics of the rabbinical world." Chelkaat Jaakow , which deals with the application of the traditional Jewish way of life in the modern world, is considered to be Bereisch's most important work .

literature

• Annette Brunschwig / Ruth Heinrichs / Karin Huser: History of the Jews in the Canton of Zurich. From the beginning to the present day . Orell Füssli, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-280-06001-X .
• Ludger J. Heid : Eastern Jews in Duisburg. Citizens, petty bourgeois, proletarians. History of a Jewish minority in the Ruhr area . Klartext, Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0536-8 .
• Ludger Heid: "Resilient pastor with cheerful equanimity". The Duisburg Rabbi Manass Neumark . In: Jan-Pieter Barbian, Michael Brocke, Ludger Heid (eds.): Jews in the Ruhr area . Klartext, Essen 1999, ISBN 3-88474-694-4 , p. 47-66 .
• Günter von Roden: History of the Duisburg Jews (=  Duisburg research . Volume 34 ). tape 1 + 2 . Walter Braun, Duisburg 1986, ISBN 3-87096-045-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Heid, Ostjuden , p. 361.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Brunschwig et.al., History of the Jews , p. 415.
3. ↑ Michael Brocke: The Rabbis in the German Empire 1871-1945. Walter de Gruyter, 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44107-3 , p. 67 ( limited preview in Google book search).
4. ↑ ^{a b} von Roden, History of the Duisburg Jews , p. 797.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Heid, Manass Neumark , p. 59.
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Ludger Heid speaks about Mordechai Jakow Bereisch, rabbi of the Eastern Jewish community in Duisburg from 1929 to 1933. In: lokalkompass.de. May 23, 2015, accessed November 11, 2017 . 
7. ↑ von Roden, History of the Duisburg Jews , pp. 79f.
8. ↑ Image 1 from article: Ludger Heid talks about Mordechai Jakow Bereisch, rabbi of the Eastern Jewish community in Duisburg 1929 to 1933. In: lokalkompass.de. Retrieved November 12, 2017 . 
9. ↑ von Roden, History of the Duisburg Jews , p. 408.
10. ↑ Heid, Manass Neumark , p. 57f.
11. ↑ von Roden, History of the Duisburg Jews , p. 408.
12. ↑ Brunschwig et.al., History of the Jews , p. 334.
13. ↑ Heid, Manass Neumark , S. 58th
14. ↑ Heid, Manass Neumark , pp. 58f.
15. ↑ Rabbis and teachers in the Jewish community of Zurich in the 19th and 20th centuries. Century. In: alemannia-judaica.de. Retrieved November 6, 2017 .