Rabbi Weinberg’s Agony

 https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/06/rabbi-weinbergs-agony

   Weinberg’s leadership role at the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary was cruelly tested during the Nazi era. Shapiro offers the shocking revelation that Weinberg acted as an apologist for Hitler in the period immediately following his appointment as chancellor. In March 1933, Weinberg gave an interview to a newspaper in which, as Shapiro summarizes it, “[Weinberg] played down the anti“Semitic nature of the new regime, denied that Jewish political rights or livelihoods were at risk, and expressed optimism for the Jewish future in Germany, a country based on the rule of law.” Shapiro adds tellingly that “Weinberg’s comments differed from those of other Jewish figures in Germany in that he was not subjected to governmental pressure to portray the regime in a positive light. On the contrary, his opinion was expressed voluntarily.” Shapiro is completely baffled by this, and can only attribute Weinberg’s behavior to extraordinary political naiveté. In any case, as the Nazi assault on German Jewry grew in intensity, Weinberg sobered up and acted responsibly in dealing with a host of matters”from trying to preserve some form of kosher slaughter in the country to finding places of refuge for the scholars and students affiliated with the Seminary. Weinberg himself remained in Germany throughout the decade, turning down an offer to become head of the rabbinical court in London.