Today, 13 October 2026, we remember Dr Arnold Paucker OBE, known to colleagues and friends by his birth name of Arno, on the tenth anniversary of his death. As director of LBI London from 1959 to 2001 and a long-serving editor of the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, he helped shape the Institute and its contribution to the study of German-Jewish history.
Born in Berlin in 1921, Paucker devoted much of his scholarship to Jewish responses to antisemitism and Nazism. His research challenged the assumption that Jews had responded passively to persecution, documenting their efforts to defend their rights, sustain their communities and resist the Nazi regime. His work brought Jewish agency into sharper focus, encouraging a fuller understanding of lives too often viewed only through the history of their persecution.
His legacy also has a home in our library, to which Paucker donated one of the few surviving complete sets of the Bücherei des Schocken Verlags, a series published between 1933 and 1939. It remains part of the Institute’s collection, available to readers studying German-Jewish history and culture.
On 30 March 2017, a memorial evening, ‘Arno Paucker – Scholar and Friend’, brought together colleagues and friends to reflect on his life and work. Following opening words by Pauline Paucker, Peter Pulzer delivered the lecture ‘Arno Paucker, A Scholar Who Reached Out’. A panel with Peter Alter, Simone Erpel and Raphael Gross, chaired by Daniel Wildmann, explored his contribution to German-Jewish history.
Ten years on, we remember Arno with gratitude for his scholarship and his service to the Institute. We invite readers to revisit the memorial evening through the recording of Arno Paucker – Scholar and Friend, and to discover the history he helped preserve and share: https://www.lbilondon.ac.uk/events/special-events/arno-paucker-scholar-…
