Читать книгу Marking Humanity: Stories, Poems, & Essays by Holocaust Survivors - Shlomit Editor Kriger - Страница 22

Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph by Arnold Kramer.

Rabbi Jacob G. Wiener, PhD, was born in Bremen, Germany, in 1917 and was the eldest of four children. Following high school, he began rabbinical studies in Frankfurt am Main and later attended the Jewish Teachers’ Seminary in Würzburg, Bavaria. During Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) in 1938, the Nazis arrested him and held him in jail for eight days. He returned home to discover that his mother had been murdered in their house and one of his brothers had been sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This led him to travel to Hamburg, where he found his father and a younger brother.

Although antisemitism was on the rise, in 1939 Jacob negotiated with the Gestapo (German Secret State Police) and set up a school for Jewish children. In May of that year he and his family managed to leave Germany and immigrated to Canada.

Jacob later moved to the United States, where he earned rabbinical ordination and worked at the Hebrew National Orphan Home in Yonkers, New York. He also obtained a PhD in Human Development and Social Relations and became a social worker for the New York City Human Resources Administration / Department of Social Services.

In 1948 Jacob married Trudel Farntrog, also a survivor, and they had three children. In 1988 they moved from New York to Silver Spring, Maryland.

In the last several years, Jacob volunteered at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 2010 Trafford Publishing released his memoir, Time of Terror—Road to Revival. He passed away in February 2011.