The 23rd of May marks the birth anniversary of Rabbi Dr Leo Baeck, the namesake of our Institute. A scholar, teacher, and leader, Baeck remains a representative figure of moral resilience and intellectual courage within German-Jewish history.
Born in Lissa (now Leszno), Baeck was a descendant of a long rabbinical line and studied at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. In 1933, as President of the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden, he assumed the task of guiding the community through the onset of National Socialism. Although he recognized as early as the spring of 1933 that the “thousand-year history of German Jewry” had reached its conclusion, he refused several opportunities for safe passage to Britain or the United States, vowing to be the “last Jew” to leave Germany.
Following his deportation to Theresienstadt in 1943, Baeck provided social and spiritual care to his fellow inmates. He organised extensive educational programmes, lecturing on philosophy and history to remind prisoners of their individual dignity beyond the transport numbers assigned to them. His actions were guided by the conviction that survival was a religious and ethical obligation: “We Jews know: it is a commandment from God to live”.
After liberation, Baeck settled in London and became the first international president of the Leo Baeck Institute, established in 1955 to preserve the legacy he had defended. His belief that the history of German-speaking Jewry made a lasting contribution to human thought remains the core of our work today.
As Baeck wrote in a prayer for his community in 1935: “We bow before God, and we stand upright before man”
Image: Charcoal Portrait, Leo Baeck, 1953, by Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966) (LBI)
