Ansbacher, Jonas

Rabbi, Author

Born: 07.10.1879 in Nuremberg

died: 08.03.1967 in London

Ansbacher was appointed rabbi by the Old Israelite Community in Wiesbaden on July 1, 1925. He had previously made a name for himself as the author of several commentaries on Bible interpretation. As the son of the private language teacher Salomon Ansbacher and his wife Eva, he studied at several universities after leaving school, obtained his doctorate in Erlangen in 1905 and married Rosa Menke, who came from Polewitz in Poland.

Ansbacher served as rabbi of the Jewish community of Labischin in Pomerania for five years, then in Heilbronn and in Stuttgart from 1920-25. From 1925, he worked as a rabbi in Wiesbaden until the dissolution of the Old Jewish Community in 1938.

During the so-called Reichskristallnacht on November 10, 1938, he was arrested and interned in Buchenwald concentration camp for over a month. Ansbacher was able to flee to England with his family on January 10, 1939. In London, he managed to get a job as a rabbi at the Sara Klausner Synagogue in 1941.

His son Josef, who also became a rabbi, emigrated with his family to the USA - he worked as a rabbi in North Carolina, Florida and California and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1989.