Rabbis ordained in Wroclaw

Foreign Minister of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmaier speaks at Tuesday's ordination ceremony in Wroclaw. Photo: PAP/Maciej Kulczynski

German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmaier attended the ordination of four rabbis and three cantors as part of joint Polish-German commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the war.

“We are witnesses to an event that would have been inconceivable a few years ago,” Steinmaier said.

“Almost exactly on the 75th anniversary of Germany's criminal attack on Poland, Germans and Poles express joy together at the rebirth of Jewish life in Wroclaw,” he said.

Poland's deputy minister of administration and digitisation Stanislaw Huskowski said that “today it is hard to imagine a pluralistic, democratic society in Poland without the participation of our Jewish fellow citizens.”

The ordination ceremony in Wroclaw's White Stork synagogue, Tuesday. Photo: PAP/Maciej Kulczynski

Wroclaw, which as Breslau had been part of Germany prior to and during the war, has only one synagogue standing today that survived the Holocaust, and the White Stork was rededicated in 2010 after a thorough restoration.

The newly ordained rabbis and cantors were educated at the German city of Potsdam's Abraham Geiger College, which was the first rabbinic seminary to be founded in central Europe after the war.

The seminary is a member of the World Union of Progressive Judaism, and 2014 also marks the 140th anniversary of Abraham Geiger, a founder of Reform Judaism. (nh)

Source: PAP