The Rabbiner-Seminar zu Berlin's library under Nazi Rule

 Within an archive of a noted American Rabbi I recently acquired, one letter I found stood out to me, shedding light on life under the Nazis several years before the world the horrors of the Holocaust were unleashed. Written in May of 1936, the letter was sent from the famed Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin to Rabbi Ben Zion Eisenstadt in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York. The writer of the letter, Azriel Hildesheimer, presumably a grandson of the founder Rabbi Dr. Israel Hildesheimer, requests that Rabbi Eisenstadt gift a copy of his recent publication Kol Bechi published in New York in 1935 to the Yeshiva so that the students can benefit and learn from the sefer.

The writer of the letter described the dire situation of the Yeshiva, which precludes them from spending any money on acquiring books for their library. This forced them to request from publishing authors, that they send their books to the library as a donation.

The Rabbiner-Seminar zu Berlin was founded and led by Rabbi Dr. Israel Hildesheimer in 1873, and under his leadership and his successors, R. David Zvi Hoffman. R. Avraham Eliyahu Kaplan and R. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg the Yeshiva produced the majority of the Orthodox Rabbinate in Germany thru the Nazi Era. Due to increasing anti-semitism, and oppression by the Nazis, the Yeshiva closed its doors in 1938.