Benjamin Murmelstein
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Benjamin Israel Murmelstein (9 June 1905 – 27 October 1989) was an Austrian rabbi. He was one of 17 community rabbis in Vienna in 1938 and the only one remaining in Vienna by late 1939. An important figure and board member of the Jewish group in Vienna during the early stages of the war, he was also an "Ältester" (council elder) of the Judenrat in the Theresienstadt concentration camp after 1943. He was the only "Judenältester" to survive the Holocaust and has been credited with saving the lives of thousands of Jews by assisting in their emigration, while also being accused of being a Nazi collaborator.
Murmelstein spent his final years in Rome, repudiated by the Jewish community because of his role in the Holocaust. He was interviewed by Claude Lanzmann in 1975 and was the subject of a posthumous 2013 documentary, The Last of the Unjust, based on the interviews. He died in obscurity, but since the release of the documentary he and his role in the Holocaust have become the subject of increased media and scholarly attention.
