- Hermann Maas
Hermann Maas (
5 August ,1877 –27 September 1970 ) was a Protestant minister, a doctor oftheology and named one of the "Righteous Among the Nations ", [Yad Vashem : " [http://yad-vashem.org.il/righteous/bycountry/germany/maas_hermann%20.html "Hermann Maas"] "] a title given by theIsrael i organization for study and remembrance of theHolocaust -Yad Vashem , for people who helped save the lives ofJew s during the Holocaust without seeking to gain thereby.Life
Maas was born in Gegenbach/
Schwarzwald ,Germany .In 1903, he started working as a Protestant minister. 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 inBasel 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 democraticReichspräsident 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 againstantisemitism .In 1933, when theNazi regime introduced the economic boycott of the Jews of Germany, Maas first went toPalestine to meet with some of the Zionist activists, impressing them by speaking fluentHebrew . Upon his return toHeidelberg he faced harsh criticism as a "Jew-lover". After Hitler'sMachtergreifung , he joined thePfarrernotbund and theConfessing Church along with other notable Protestant theologians such asDietrich Bonhoeffer andMartin Niemöller .In the early 1940s, Maas helped many Jews flee from Germany by using his connections to help them obtain exit visas.In mid 1943, he was forced out of office for his activism by the Nazi regime. In 1944, he was sent to a forced-labor camp inFrance , from which he was later released by the US forces.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 the Reverend Hermann Maas as one of the "Righteous Among the Nations".He died on
27 September 1970 inHeidelberg .Notes
External links
*http://www.maasfoundation.com
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