Unit 1012
will honor and always remember German Pastor, Hermann Maas, every year on
September 27, as he passed away at the age of 93 on that date in 1970. We will
remember and honor him for saving the lives of many Jews during World War II and
he rightfully deserves to be recognized by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations. His story should be
an inspiration for us to support victims’ rights and defend the use of the
death penalty.
We will
post information about him from Wikipedia and other links.
Hermann Maas
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://maasfoundation.com/en/index.html]
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Hermann Ludwig Maas (5 August 1877, Gengenbach,
Baden – 27 September 1970) was a Protestant minister, a doctor of theology and named
one of the Righteous Among the Nations, a title given by the Israeli
organization for study and remembrance of the Holocaust - Yad Vashem, for
people who helped save the lives of Jews during the Holocaust without seeking
to gain thereby.
Life
Maas was born in Gengenbach/Schwarzwald,
Germany.
In 1903, he started working as a
Protestant minister in a parish of Evangelical Church in Baden. At the
same time he began to make the acquaintance of Zionist Jews, and formed
friendly relations with many of them, having attended the Sixth Zionist
Congress in Basel
that year. Since 1918, he was an active member of the pro-democratic left
liberal DDP. Maas, who had decidedly liberal and
pacifist
views, caused a scandal in 1925 by attending the funeral of social democratic Reichspräsident
Friedrich
Ebert. Conservative German pastors considered this to be an affront to the
church because Ebert had been an outspoken atheist. In 1932, Maas joined an
association for protection against antisemitism.
In 1933, when the Nazi regime introduced the economic boycott of the Jews
of Germany, Maas first went to Palestine to meet with some of the Zionist
activists, impressing them by speaking fluent Hebrew. Upon his
return to Heidelberg
he faced harsh criticism as a "Jew-lover". After Hitler's
Machtergreifung,
he joined the Pfarrernotbund and the Confessing
Church along with other notable Protestant theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemöller and Hans
Ehrenberg. In the early 1940s, Maas helped many Jews flee from Germany by
using his connections to obtain exit visas. In mid 1943, on the instigation of
the Nazi regime the Superior Church Council of the Baden Church forced him out
of office for his activism. In 1944, he was sent to a forced-labor
camp in France,
from which he was later released by the US forces. In 1945 he resumed work as minister
for the Baden Church.
In 1950, Maas was the first non-Jewish
German to be officially invited to the newly formed state of Israel. On July
28, 1964, Yad Vashem decided to recognize Reverend Hermann Maas as one of the Righteous
Among the Nations.
He died on 27 September 1970 in Mainz-Weisenau.
Tree in Honor of Maas Hermann
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INTERNET
SOURCE: http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/maas.asp
Hermann Maas
Germany
Hermann Maas was born on August 5,
1877 in Gegenbach/Schwarzwald. Through both his father’s and mother’s
sides, he was descended from a family of Protestant pastors from Baden.
Having studied theology at the universities of Halle, Strassburg, and
Heidelberg, in the autumn of 1900, he entered the office of curate, which was
the beginning of a life-long career in the Protestant church.
Since the days of the Sixth Zionist
Congress in 1903, which Maas had visited out of curiosity while on a stay in
Basel, he became a friend of the Jewish people and an ardent sympathizer
of the Zionist movement. At the Congress he witnessed the passionate debate
between the proponents of the “Uganda plan” and those faithful to “Zion” and
had the opportunity of meeting with such prominent Jewish political
leaders as Herzl and Weizmann, and with the German-Jewish philosopher Martin
Buber, with whom he maintained a life-long connection. As an adherent of the Christian
oecumenical movement, he became a staunch supporter of the cause of
understanding among the monotheistic religions and, in particular, a champion
of Christian-Jewish reconciliation.
On April 1, 1933, the very day
that the Nazis launched the general economic boycott against the Jews of
Germany, Maas set sail for the Holy Land for a three-month tour financed by a
grant from the “German Palestine Committee.” The encounter with Jewish
Palestine—the sight of the new Jewish settlements, meetings with freshly
arrived German-Jewish emigrants, and contacts with Hebrew scholars—left an
indelible impression on the Protestant theologian who himself was a fluent
Hebrew-speaker.
On his return to Heidelberg at the
beginning of July, Maas was exposed to a concerted campaign of vilification and
threats conducted against him by the local Nazi propaganda leaders and the SA.
Local Nazi party circles demanded that the “pastor of the Jews” be excluded
from the pulpit. However, Maas was a too highly respected figure in the Christian
world oecumenical movement, and the regime was as yet wary not to risk an
international scandal.
This first serious conflict with the
new rulers of Germany seemed only to intensify Maas’s defiance and the extent
of his identification with the Jewish people. He contributed articles to the
German Zionist paper, Jüdische
Rundschau, translated poems of the Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman
Bialik, and did not hesitate to send his eldest daughter to Palestine to teach
young Zionists the art of hand-weaving. He would invite Jewish religious
leaders in Heidelberg to join him on Christmas eve and, in turn, would
participate in the Jewish Passover celebration (Seder). The connection was so strong that
Heidelberg Rabbi Dr. Fritz Pinkuss had to counsel him earnestly against
attending Jewish public prayers so as not to put himself in danger.
Maas was a member of the Pfarrernotbund, the
emergency association for dissident Protestant pastors set up by Niemöller in
September 1933, and joined the “Confessing Church”, the opposition to the
pro-Nazi “German Christians” within the Protestant Church. He was also a
co-founder of the “Büro Grüber” in Berlin. In October 1940, while the Jews of
Baden, the Palatinate and several places in Baden-Württemberg, were being
deported to a concentration camp in sothern France, Maas succeeded in
protecting some of the older and the frail from being included in the
deportation. He kept in contact with those who were deported, using his
connections to help them obtain exit visas abroad.
In March 1942, the Reich Ministry of
Education and Cultural Affairs started a campaign against Maas that ended in
his forced retirement in mid-1943. One of the most incriminating pieces of
evidence against him was the discovery of a bundle of letters in which the
dissident clergyman expressed his abhorrence of the National-Socialist regime
and its racial persecution of the Jews. The vindictiveness of the regime was
not satisfied, however, and, in 1944, the sixty-seven-year-old was sent to a
forced-labor camp in France. Only the entry of the Americans brought about his
release and ended his tribulations.
In 1950, Hermann Maas became the first
German to be officially invited to visit the State of Israel. He wrote
several books about Israel, Judaism, and Christianity. He died in
Heidelberg in 1970.
On July 28, 1964, Yad Vashem decided
to recognize Reverend Hermann Maas as Righteous Among the Nations.
INTERNET
SOURCE: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007951
Hermann Ludwig Maas (1877-1970), a Protestant
pastor in Heidelberg, Germany, was a rescuer and clergyman who stood in
solidarity with the Jewish community to an extraordinary degree.
Maas
grew up in Gernsbach, a small Black Forest city where he played with and went
to school and occasionally to synagogue with Jewish friends. His ordination in
1900 followed study at Halle, Straßburg, and Heidelberg. After a pastorate in
Laufen, Maas moved to Heidelberg in 1915 to take the pulpit of the prestigious
Holy Spirit Church, where he ministered for the next 28 years. In Heidelberg he
cultivated an unusually close relationship with the synagogue, led by Rabbi
Fritz Pinkuss.
SOLIDARITY WITH THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN HEIDELBERG AND
BEYOND
A self-described political liberal, Maas welcomed the democratic Weimar Republic, and for four years held a minor political office in Heidelberg, representing the liberal Deutsch-demokratische Partei. Among the pioneers of the European Protestant ecumenical movement, in 1914 he participated in the founding convention of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches, an organization that during the interwar years cooperated with other established European churches, Quakers, and American denominations to promote disarmament, international cooperation, and world peace.
A self-described political liberal, Maas welcomed the democratic Weimar Republic, and for four years held a minor political office in Heidelberg, representing the liberal Deutsch-demokratische Partei. Among the pioneers of the European Protestant ecumenical movement, in 1914 he participated in the founding convention of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches, an organization that during the interwar years cooperated with other established European churches, Quakers, and American denominations to promote disarmament, international cooperation, and world peace.
Most
unusual of Maas's ecumenical and liberal commitments was his Zionism, which had
crystallized in 1903 when he participated as an observer of the Sixth Zionist
Congress in Basel. At the invitation of the Women's International Zionist
Organization, he visited Palestine in the spring of 1933. That August he
financed his daughter's efforts to establish a weaving school in Jerusalem,
where she trained Jewish refugees. On Maas's return to Heidelberg in June 1933,
the Nazi party denounced him as “the Jew Pastor,” and demanded that the church
suspend him from his Heidelberg pulpit. Bridling at the state's interference in
church affairs, Bishop Julius Kühlewein of Baden successfully deflected the
party's demands.
As
the Nazi
antisemitic measures intensified, Maas began helping Jews escape
persecution. He befriended members of the Heidelberg Jewish community, from
university professors to cobbler's apprentices. He helped obtain the release of
some prisoners from the Gurs concentration camp and provided them with
emigration papers and money. He found foster homes for young people in England.
He arranged for emigrations to Palestine. He found jobs for adults, and produced
legal visas, work permits, and transportation.
His
influence spread beyond Heidelberg. After Rabbi Pinkuss emigrated to Brazil in
1936, Maas led synagogue prayer services in Heidelberg, cared for the Jewish
elderly, and officiated at Jewish weddings and funerals. Pinkuss described Maas
as the de facto rabbi of Heidelberg.
WORK WITH RESCUE ORGANIZATIONS
Through his ecumenical connections in London and Geneva, Maas was able to work with a number of rescue organizations. As a Confessing Church pastor, he worked with his Berlin colleague Dr. Heinrich Grüber and others in the “Büro Grüber”, which helped hundreds of “non-Aryan” Protestants emigrate, in part by cooperating in the Kindertransporte to get endangered children out of the Third Reich.
Through his ecumenical connections in London and Geneva, Maas was able to work with a number of rescue organizations. As a Confessing Church pastor, he worked with his Berlin colleague Dr. Heinrich Grüber and others in the “Büro Grüber”, which helped hundreds of “non-Aryan” Protestants emigrate, in part by cooperating in the Kindertransporte to get endangered children out of the Third Reich.
Because
helping Jews was a crime, Maas was under constant Gestapo scrutiny, but members
of his Holy Spirit Church--some of whom worked within the Gestapo bureaucracy
itself--stood behind him, he said, “like a strong wall.” In addition, his
prominence as a leader in the international ecumenical movement made the
Gestapo cautious about mistreating him. He was able to continue his work for
ten years.
However,
when in 1943 the police found irrefutable evidence against him, the Protestant
church of Baden suspended Maas from all pastoral activity. A year later
authorities sentenced the 67-year old retired pastor to hard labor in France
under OrganisationTodt. After the liberation of France, Maas was able to
flee the camp and was back home in Heidelberg when the US 63rd
Infantry liberated Heidelberg on March 30, 1945.
POSTWAR YEARS
For 25 years after the war, Maas worked tirelessly as a reconciler. Reconciliation began with confession. In April 1946, Maas wrote a confession of Christian guilt that Rabbi Ralph Neuhaus in Frankfurt published in the first postwar edition of the Jüdische Rundschau, and he reiterated that confession at the Council of Christians and Jews in England in the spring of 1946. The new state of Israel, aware of what Maas had done for Jewish Germans, invited him for a state visit, making him the first non-Jewish German to visit the Jewish state, and in 1967 he was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile.
For 25 years after the war, Maas worked tirelessly as a reconciler. Reconciliation began with confession. In April 1946, Maas wrote a confession of Christian guilt that Rabbi Ralph Neuhaus in Frankfurt published in the first postwar edition of the Jüdische Rundschau, and he reiterated that confession at the Council of Christians and Jews in England in the spring of 1946. The new state of Israel, aware of what Maas had done for Jewish Germans, invited him for a state visit, making him the first non-Jewish German to visit the Jewish state, and in 1967 he was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile.
He
became an unofficial ambassador between West Germany and Israel, persuading the
German government to support Israel with money, technology, and diplomatic
support. Maas published three books about his visits to Israel, and made
countless speeches in churches and synagogues, explaining Israel to the
Germans, and the new West Germany to Israelis.
The
Protestant Church of Baden which had forced him into retirement invited Maas to
return to ministry in 1945, this time as a consulting pastor (Prälat) in
North Baden until his second retirement in 1965 at the age of 87.
Hermann
Maas died in his sleep in the night of 26/27 September 1970 while visiting
relatives in Mainz. His body lies in the Handschuhsheim Cemetery in Heidelberg.
Theodore N. Thomas
Milligan College
Copyright © United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
Encyclopedia Last
Updated: June 20, 2014
I first read about Pfarrer Hermann Maas when I was a first year student at University of Vermont in 1950. I wrote to him in Heidelberg and he replied in flowing and fluent Hebrew. We corresponded for about one year. He was truly a Holy Man of God. I worship his memory which is a blessing for people of all faiths and good will.
ReplyDeleteRabbi Dr. Esor Ben-Sorek