Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews [Hardcover]

Leonard Baker (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 396 pages
• Publisher: Macmillan (May 1, 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0025063405
• ISBN-13: 978-0025063402
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,929,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tragedy and Hope in Germany, May 26, 2001

By 

Alice Kingsbury (New Hampshire) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews (Hardcover)

I was impressed by this book and am not surprised that it won the Pultizer Prize. It was a well written telling of the struggles of the German Jews.

I had heard about Rabbi Baeck several years ago but had never read about his life. He was a brilliant scholar and very influential in Reformed Judaism. I'd have liked to know more about his wife. She was an essential companion in his life.

He refused to go to the Gestapo office on his Holy days even when commanded. He remained a great source of courage to the Jewish community and refused to leave them even when offered safe emigration.

He is a great example of a man of peace. I once read in a magazine his moving and controversial prayer for the forgiveness of the Nazis. This is an excellent and readable book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, Tragic, Hopeful, August 31, 2009

By 

K.A.Goldberg (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews (Galaxy Books) (Paperback)

This pulitzer-prize winning biography describes the life of largely-forgotten Rabbi Leo Baeck (1873-1956), one of Germany's most influential Jewish leaders prior to and during the horrific Nazi period. Rabbi Baeck was a noted scholar and author, a German army chaplain during World War I, and a leader in that nation's Jewish community. After the Nazi's seized power in 1933, Baeck worked to defend Jews as president of an umbrella organization of German Jews from 1933-1938. Even after that organization was disbanded and remade by the Nazi government, Baeck remained its active leader, cooperating with the Nazi's (did he have any choice?) and remaining a leader in a community being tragically liquidated along with much of Europe's Jews, Gyspies, and other "undesireables." Deported to a concentration camp in early 1943, Baeck managed to survive until liberation by the Red Army in 1945. Eventually Baeck moved on to England, where he taught, authored, and headed the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Some of his writings, including Essence of Judaism, and This People Israel (penned partly from a concentration camp) are available on Amazon.

Author Leonard Baker (1930?-1984) uses a nicely readable style to describe this remarkable, humane, yet controversial leader - some never forgave his cooperation with Nazi's. The biography is clearly sympathetic, and readers can sense the pressure and heartache Baeck must have felt as a Jewish leader in Berlin during the brutal Nazi reign. Whatever your view, this is a very readable, informative, powerful biography.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Who the hell is Leo Baeck?, June 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews (Hardcover)

Leonard Baker's Pulitzer Prize winning biography is an compilation of the life of one of history's greatest unknowns. In addition to taking the reader through the life of the "seelsorger" known as Leo Baeck, Baker shows the changes in Germany from the beginning of the twentieth century through the horrors of the Second World War. One can see first hand how the bitterness losing in World War I evolved into the greatest and most frightening regimes to ever take power. This book is perfect for those interested in German history, the Holocaust, and anyone who loves biographies. By the end of this book, you will answer Patrick Dolan's question of, "Who the Hell is Leo Baeck?"