Courage of the Spirit II commemorates human resilience despite Nazi prison and Soviet exile
Eight
decades after his liberation from the Nazis and the Soviets, the account of
Rabbi Dr. William Weinberg imprisonments and escapes has been reissued in a
new, expanded edition
Faith in both the divine and the human spirit
makes survival against all odds possible. Courage of the Spirit II (hardcover
ISBN 979-8180897619; papeerback ISBN 979-8257337536)
demonstrates that power. It portrays the spiritual struggle of one man during
the first half of the twentieth century—the author’s father, Rabbi Dr. William
Weinberg, who survived under Nazi and Communist tyranny to become the first State
Rabbi of the community of Holocaust survivors in the German State of Hesse. This
edition is issued a decade after the initial publication and incorporates new
material.
It is fitting that the first edition
became available to the public just 75 years after Rabbi Weinberg was arrested
and incarcerated by the Nazis in the notorious Fortress Spilberk in Brno
following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and this second edition appears eight decades
after his liberation and adds documents that shed light on those first years of
survival.
Rabbi Weinberg’s saga serves as a tour
of the ideologies and principles of the contemporary world, but it also
encompasses the movements that shape Judaism today: Orthodox, Reform, and
Conservative, as well as political Zionism. It is a story that spans thousands
of physical miles, by freight train and on foot, from the Galician Shtetl to
cosmopolitan Vienna and Berlin, and to Stalingrad and central Asia and back as
Rabbi Weinberg kept one step ahead of the Nazi armies. It traverses the mental
and emotional journey from the medieval Shtetl, the great empires, and the weak
democracies and totalitarian regimes that followed, and finally, to liberation.
Along the way, we meet significant
figures in Rabbi Weinberg’s life: Martin Buber and Mannes Sperber, the founders
of Israel’s Marxist-Socialist party, Rabbi Leo Baeck, and Albert Einstein. We
are shown a window into life in a Nazi prison and concentration camp, the
day-to-day life of Jews in Nazi Berlin, and the vagaries of survival under
Stalin’s totalitarian shelter.
The new edition adds three essays,
translated from the German, by Rabbi
Weinberg, published in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust that highlight
the battles that lay ahead of the handful of survivors of the Nazi horrors.
“This book reconstructs these events
from conversations with my father, from family notes, and from historical
documentation,” says the author, Rabbi Norbert Weinberg. The author is
currently involved in a research project, Memory in Action documenting events
of the now vanished region of Galicia (
now part of Ukraine), as well as a history of Hollywood’s first temple.
Courage of the Spirit is the first part of a trilogy. The second part will follow
the account of Irene Gottdenker, the author’s mother, who openly survived the
Holocaust in the guise of a Pole of German descent and witnessed the
destruction of the Jews in Lwow and Warsaw. The third part will examine the
rebirth of Jewish life in the refugee camps in Austria and then in the city of
Frankfurt, Germany, and the environs.
Courage
of the Spirit is now available through Amazon,
https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Spirit-II-Twentieth-Documents/dp/B0H51SC93D/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0
.
The author’s page can be accessed at www.amazon.com/author/nweinberg.
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