David Kranzler

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David H. Kranzler
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
DiedNovember 29, 2007(2007-11-29) (aged 77)
Poughkeepsie, New York
CitizenshipAmerican
Education
Occupation(s)Professor of library science, Queensborough Community College
Known forHolocaust research
Notable workThe Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz (2001)

David H. Kranzler (May 19, 1930 – November 29, 2007)

Holocaust.[2]

Early life and education

Kranzler was born in Germany, one of seven children, to Yerachmiel and Chana Kranzler of

Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and in 1953 he obtained his BA from Brooklyn College, followed by an MA in 1958, also from Brooklyn, and an MLS degree in 1957 from Columbia University.[1]

In 1971 Kranzler was awarded a doctorate by Yeshiva University,[1][6] for a thesis entitled The History of the Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai: 1938–1945,[7] the result of a seven-year study of the 17,000 Jews who fled to Shanghai from Nazi Germany. His dissertation mentor was Dr. Abraham G. Duker.[8] Duker, who had prepared his own dissertation under Salo W. Baron at Columbia University, was University Professor of Jewish History and Social Institutions and Director of Libraries at Yeshiva from 1962 to 1972, and a long-time editor of Jewish Social Studies.[9] Kranzler's manuscript was published by Yeshiva University Press in 1976 as Japanese, Nazis & Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938–1945.[2][10] Reviewing the book for The American Historical Review, Leona S. Forman called it a "painstaking documentation of a vignette in Jewish history".[11]

Career

Positions held

After working as a school librarian, Kranzler joined the faculty of Queensborough Community College (QCC) of the City University of New York in 1969, and was a professor in the library department until his retirement in 1988. He was one of the founders and the first director of QCC's Holocaust Resource Center and Archives.[1]

He served as scholar-in-residence in numerous congregations, college campuses, and centers, including the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue (under Rabbi Marc D. Angel) in Manhattan; Kodima Synagogue in Springfield, Massachusetts (under his brother-in-law Rabbi Alex Weisfogel);[12] and the Ohio State University Holocaust Center (under Professor Saul S. Friedman).[citation needed] From October 2002 to January 2003, Kranzler was a Baron Friedrich Carl von Oppenheim Research Fellow for the Study of Racism, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust at Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research; the title of his research project was "A Comparative Study on the Worldwide Rescue Effort by Orthodox Jewry During the Holocaust Within the Context of Rescue in General".[1][13]

Research

Kranzler became the leading historian on the subject of Jews aiding and rescuing the Jews during

Arthur J. Goldberg.[15]

Kranzler lectured on the subject in America, Israel, Europe and the Far East. He interviewed and recorded over a thousand people, including some of the major Jewish rescuers, such as

Michael Ber Weissmandl and Recha Sternbuch. He established a research archive of about a million pages and interviews (mostly audio on about 1,000 cassettes) which were at his Brooklyn home. By 1978 the archive held over 10,000 documents on Jewish residents of Shanghai.[16] After Dr. Kranzler's death the archive was transferred to Yad Vashem.[17]

In his book Thy Brother's Blood: The Orthodox Jewish Response During the Holocaust (1987), Kranzler argued that more lives could have been saved if American-Jewish leaders had lent more support to efforts in Europe to halt the deportations, including the attempts, in Slovakia and Hungary, to bribe and/or pay ransom to the SS. Criticizing the book's factual accuracy, Efraim Zuroff described it as "an extremely one-sided polemic" and "a popular invective of limited scholarly value".[18] In the view of historian Robert Moses Shapiro, the book's defects, particularly its bitter tone and poor editing, undermined its "important and gripping story".[19]

The mid-1944 grassroots protests in Switzerland, including street demonstrations, Sunday sermons and the

Bratislava Working Group, provided a detailed account of the mass murder taking place inside the Auschwitz concentration camp. Kranzler was convinced that Mantello's campaign to publicize the report led to the stopping of the mass transports of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz in July 1944, and enabled the Raoul Wallenberg mission and other important initiatives in Hungary and elsewhere.[20] The manuscript won the 1998 Egit Prize from the Histadrut for the best manuscript on the Holocaust.[21]

During his fellowship with Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research in 2002–2003, Kranzler engaged in a research project entitled "A Comparative Study on the Worldwide Rescue Effort by Orthodox Jewry During the Holocaust Within the Context of Rescue in General."[1]

Recorded talks

Some of David Kranzler's talks about rescue are on YouTube:

  • Rabbi Weissmandl (ed) [1]
  • George Mantello & the Swiss people stopping the Hungarian Auschwitz transports (At Hebrew University) [2]
  • Rescue by El Salvador, its diplomat George Mantello & Swiss People (Feb 2003) [3]
  • Recha Sternbuch - Heroine of Rescue [4]
  • Rabbi Solomon Schoenfeld [5]
  • Interview with Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld (London) [6]
  • Interview with Hillel Kook (New York) [7]

Selected publications

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Research Fellow Remembered" (PDF). Institute News (11). The International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem: 42. December 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 12, 2016.
  2. ^
    JSTOR 5620957
    .
  3. ISBN 978-0-8156-2873-6
    .
  4. ^ For Würzburg, see Kranzler, David (2003). Holocaust Hero: The Untold Story of Solomon Schonfeld, an Orthodox British Rabbi. Brooklyn: Ktav Publishing House. p. xv.
  5. ^ For Brooklyn, see Kranzler (2003), p. xv.
  6. ^ "David Kranzler". Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2001.
  7. OCLC 247255963
  8. ^ ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global database.
  9. JSTOR 4467384
    .
  10. ^ Kanzler, David (1976). Japanese, Nazis & Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938–1945. New York: Yeshiva University Press.
  11. JSTOR 1851058
    .
  12. ^ For brother-in-law, see Kranzler (2003), p. xv.
  13. ^ "Past Research Fellows". Yad Vashem.
  14. ^ Grobman, Alex (2003). Battling for Souls: The Vaad Hatzala Rescue Committee in Post-Holocaust Europe. Brooklyn: Ktav Publishing House, p. iii.
  15. ^ Tomlin, Chanan (2006). Protest and Prayer. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 40, 41, n. 71.
    Goodman, Walter (21 March 1984). "American Jewish groups faulted on a report on Holocaust victims". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 21 November 2017. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
    Finger, Seymour M., ed. (1984). American Jewry During the Holocaust. New York: American Jewish Commission on the Holocaust.
  16. ^ Strauss, Herbert Albert (1978). Jewish immigrants of the Nazi period in the USA. K.G. Saur, p. 76.
  17. ^ Yad Vashem (2012, March). "Genève: Journée Internationale du Souvenir de la Shoah et hommage à Carl Ludz". Le Lien Francophone, N°40, 13. Retrieved 19 September 2019.
  18. JSTOR 23883292
    .
  19. JSTOR 42941357
    .
  20. ^ Kranzler (2000), p. 87.
  21. ^ Kranzler (2000), p. xv; "The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz: George Mantello, El Salvador, and Switzerland's Finest Hour". Holocaust Teacher Resource Center.

External links

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