Sali Levi

Sali Levi (born November 2, 1883 in Walldorf (Baden) ; † April 25, 1941 in Berlin ) was the last rabbi of the Jewish community in Mainz .

Life

Sali Levi was born in Walldorf in 1883 as the son of the merchant and mayor Wilhelm Sali and his wife Johanna geb. Sternweiler born. From 1902 he attended the theological seminary in Breslau and the University of Breslau. In 1905 he received his doctorate in Erlangen with a thesis on Hermann Lotze's concept of substance. From 1909 he was the second rabbi in Breslau. During the First World War he was a chaplain on the Eastern Front and stationed in Vilnius . In 1918 he succeeded Siegmund Salfeld as rabbi of the Jewish community in Mainz. Sali took an active part in political life in Mainz. He was also one of the co-founders of the Mainz Adult Education Center.

Sali also made a contribution to researching the history of Jewish Mainz, e.g. B. through the establishment of a memorial cemetery, the Judensand , and a museum of Jewish antiquities in the synagogue of the liberal Jewish community at Hindenburgstrasse 44. In 1925 he became chairman of the Association for the Care of Jewish Antiquities in Mainz.

tomb

In 1934 Levi was put in charge of the Jewish district school in Mainz, which was housed in the synagogue on Hindenburgstrasse and was reserved exclusively for Jewish students. He held this office until May 1936. After visiting the United States in 1938, he returned to Mainz to continue supporting his community. Sali Levi stayed in Mainz until the spring of 1941. Then he decided to emigrate. Before leaving, he asked Michel Oppenheim to be available as a liaison between the Gestapo and the Jewish community. He traveled to Berlin in order to prepare his emigration to the USA from there. He waited for weeks for a visa and died there on April 25, 1941 of complications from a heart attack. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee .

Publications

• Contributions to the history of the oldest Jewish gravestones in Mainz, published on the occasion of the return of these stones to the old "Judensand" . Mainz 1926.

literature

• Katrin Nele Jansen: The Rabbis in the German Empire 1871-1945 (= Biographical Handbook of Rabbis, Part 2). KG Saur, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-11-916663-4 , Vol. 2, pp.