Souvenirs des dernières années de service du rabbin Weiß à Teplitz-Schönau, 1933-1938. « Hitler devant les portes »

Résumé 0

Rabbi Friedrich Weiss worked in Teplice from 1920 to 1938. Through his work, he witnessed the rise of Nazism in Sudetenland firsthand, from Hitler’s 1933 ascent to power in neighboring Germany to the annexation that followed the Munich pact. In 1938, the pro-Nazi members of Konrad Henlein’s Sudeten-deutsche Partei (SdP) took control of the government of Teplice, the stronghold of the Social Democrats. This occurred relatively late given that the SdP had held the majority in Sudetenland since 1935. Before the end of the war, Rabbi Weiss, who immigrated to Palestine in 1939, began to record his memories of this period. A copy of the 50-page manuscript he typed out in German is available online in the digital archives of the Leo Baeck Insitute in New York. This document is presented here in French. The manuscript, entitled Erinnerungen aus meinen letzten Amtsjahren in Teplits-Schönau 1933-1938. Hitler vor den Toren, begins with anecdotes from the period between 1933 and 1937 which Rabbi Weiss felt illustrated the gradual rise of Nazism. He goes on to give an in-depth description of the last year that he worked as a rabbi in Teplice, recounting the events of the spring of 1938 and then the community’s mass exodus the following summer. Lastly, Friedrich Weiss goes into great detail when describing how he ultimately returned to Teplice to celebrate Yom Kippur on October 5, 1938, after the German annexation.