Survival of Jewish Communities in Germany

William Tuohy is to be congratulated for bringing to the public (Times, Aug. 17) the amazing fact that, despite the atrocity of the Holocaust, there is a Jewish community, albeit tiny, in Germany.

I was part of a group of American rabbis that arrived in Germany, on the eve of the anniversary of Kristallnacht , to meet with the very leaders mentioned in the article. It was personally moving, because, on that very day that we arrived, we attended the cornerstone-laying ceremonies of a new Jewish community center for Frankfurt. This was the fruition of work that my own father, Rabbi William Weinberg, had started, as first chief rabbi of Hesse and Frankfurt.

Much of the credit for the fact of revived Jewish life in West Germany must go to the United States and the military government it established in the years after the war. I have, in my possession, an edition of the Talmud, possibly the only one of its kind, dedicated to non-Jews. This edition, the first printed in Europe after the Holocaust, was dedicated to the U.S. Army for its help in aiding the survivors of Nazism.

Because of the good reputation of the American occupation forces and because of fears of Soviet occupation, and renewed anti-Semitism in Poland, survivors from Eastern Europe fled to the U.S.-occupied zone of Germany. While for most, this served as but a way station, for a few it became, as the article described, a permanent home.

As Dr. Hans Lamm, president of the Munich Jewish community, those Jews who are in Germany, stay put because they don’t want to hand Hitler his answer to the “Final solution of the Jewish problem”.

NORBERT WEINBERG

Rabbi, Beth Shalom

Whittier