Courage of the Spirit II commemorates human resilience despite Nazi prison and Soviet exile

 

 

         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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