THE HOLOCAUST AND THE UNITED NATIONS OUTREACH PROGRAMME

109
Rabbi Leo Baeck and
the Leo Baeck Institute:
A Response to Nazi
Persecution and Displacement
and Post-Holocaust Memory
by William H. Weitzer, Executive Director of the Leo Baeck Institute
In December 1945, Rabbi Leo Baeck, who had survived two years in
the concentration camp at Theresienstadt (Terezin), stated that “the
history of German Jews has definitely come to an end” after more
than half a million Jews in Germany were either forced to flee or
had been killed in the Nazi concentration camps. 1 However, despite
his harsh judgment following the Holocaust, Rabbi Leo Baeck did
not turn his back on the history of German Jews. He was instrumental
in founding the Leo Baeck Institute, which for 60 years has kept
the German-Jewish historical narrative alive.
The German-Jewish story did not end with the Second World War.
A significant number of German-speaking Jews had escaped Europe
before the Second World War and smaller numbers had survived
the horrors of the camps. Today, Jews with German-speaking backgrounds
live all over the world, with large populations in the United
States, Israel, the United Kingdom and Australia. After 1945, Jews
and many other displaced persons encountered persecution in their
former Eastern European home countries and went to Germany.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and another significant westward