Diskussion:Frederick Grubel

New York Times, October 11, 1998

Fred Grubel, 89, Who Headed A Jewish Research Institute

By MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN

Fred Grubel, who as executive director of the Leo Baeck Institute expanded the organization into a respected historical research center for the study of German-speaking Jewry, died Oct. 4 at Lenox Hill Hospital. He was three weeks shy of 90 and lived in Riverdale, the Bronx.

Mr. Grubel had worked until three years ago when, his family said, failing health forced him to give up his position of three decades.

The institute was first conceived after World War II at a meeting in the Jerusalem apartment of the philosopher Martin Buber, and was named for Leo Baeck, the Reform rabbi and theologian who, as head of the National Agency of Jews in Germany, struggled to protect Germany's Jews against intensifying Nazi oppression in the 1930's. Rabbi Baeck was among those liberated from the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1945.

Shortly before Rabbi Baeck died in London in 1956, the institute was set up with branches in London, Jerusalem and New York for the purpose of promoting the study of Jewish life. In the 1960's the New York branch acquired a mansion at 129 East 73d Street, and under Mr. Grubel's leadership its archives and library were expanded.

Mr. Grubel's accomplishment, said Carol Kahn Strauss, the current executive director, was that he turned the institute into an international research facility that provided material not only on the period since 1933, when Jews virtually perished under the Nazis, but also on the long period when German-speaking Jews were so significantly involved in European history.

Mr. Grubel was already 60 years old when he took over as executive director in 1968. From childhood in his native Leipzig, he had wanted to study and teach history, but according to his daughter Lucille Goldsmith, he was thwarted in this ambition by anti-Semitic quotas and turned instead to the study of law. But as he was completing his law studies he was expelled from his university under Nazi laws.

In 1936, Mr. Grubel became the director of the Jewish community of Leipzig, a position that brought him together with Rabbi Baeck. It also brought him in tense contact with the Gestapo, which was then imposing greater and greater restrictions on Jews. In 1938, he was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp for six months.

A few months before the outbreak of the war, Mr. Grubel obtained a British visa, which enabled him and his wife, Lisa, and their infant son, Henry, to emigrate to Britain. For two years, both husband and wife worked as domestic servants in a parsonage until 1940, when they were able to enter the United States as refugees.

Mr. Grubel worked as an accountant for the Joint Distribution Committee, an amalgam of Jewish relief organizations. At the end of the war, he traveled through much of ravaged Europe, monitoring assistance for displaced persons. He later worked as a certified accountant at Maimonides and Montefiore hospitals.

But it was not until 1968 that he attained his youthful dream, working to promote historical research. In his time at the institute, the library became one of the largest collections anywhere concerning German Jews. Officials and scholars in Germany and the rest of the world increasingly visited the institute.

In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by Ms. Goldsmith and another daughter, Eva Fischer, both of New York City, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.