Werner Weinberg (1915–1997)

Werner Weinberg was born to a Jewish family in Rheda, Germany. In 1934, when he graduated from high school, Jews were barred from university education by the Nazi regime, so he attended the Orthodox Israelitische Lehrerbildungsanstalt in Würzberg. There he obtained certification as a religious school teacher. He taught first in Rheda, then in Hannover, also acting as the unofficial cantor and rabbi for the community. He married Lisl Halberstadt, a fellow student in Würzberg, with whom he would have two daughters. In 1939, the Weinberg family moved to The Netherlands, where he worked as a part-time teacher. Following the German invasion of the country the following year in World War II, the Weinbergs moved from place to place, sometimes living in hiding. In 1943, Werner and Lisl were sent to the Dutch transit camp at Westerbrok and then deported to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. The couple survived the war and emigrated to the USA in 1948. Weinberg served as education director at a synagogue in Louisville, Kentucky, and earned an M.A. in English, creative writing and linguistics. He then got a job in Dayton, Ohio, and began his studies at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where he earned a Ph.D. in Hebrew language and literature in 1961. He was appointed to the Hebrew Union College faculty, a post he held until his retirement in 1984. A prolific scholar, writer and lecturer, Weinberg published more than 80 scholarly articles and six books, including How Do You Spell Chanukah? A General-Purpose Romanization of Hebrew for Speakers of English (1976), and his autobiography, Self-Portrait of a Holocaust Survivor (1985).