Metadata: Chief Rabbi Wiener archives
Collection
- Country:
- Belgium
- Holding institution:
- Central Jewish Consistory of Belgium
- Holding institution (official language):
- Consistoire central israélite de Belgique
- Postal address:
- Joseph Dupontstraat 2 / Rue Joseph Dupont 2, 1000 Bruxelles
- Phone number:
- +32 (0)2 512 21 90
- Web address:
- http://www.jewishcom.be/
- Reference number:
- CJCons-Brussels-Fonds Grand rabbin Wiener
- Title:
- Chief Rabbi Wiener archives
- Title (official language):
- Fonds Grand rabbin Wiener
- Creator/accumulator:
- Wiener, Joseph
- Date(s):
- 1931/1940
- Language:
- French
- German
- Dutch; Flemish
- Yiddish
- Hebrew
- English
- Extent:
- 9 boxes
- Scope and content:
- This fonds firstly contains correspondence of Chief Rabbi Wiener (boxes with references 7.51), ordered alphabetically by correspondents, generally individuals or organisations asking the Chief Rabbi for help or advice. The correspondence reveals the various groups within the Jewish communities as well as the concerns of migrants with relatives in Belgium or businesses in financial difficulties. They wrote to the Chief Rabbi in the hope of obtaining material assistance, contacts or recommendations. The consequences of the economic crisis of the 1930s as well as the poverty and precarity of many Jews are clearly reflected in these requests. We also find subject files, such as correspondence with the press (1931-1938), correspondence exchanged with rabbis and rabbinates at international level (1931-1940), material concerning divorces, conversions, marriages, a file related to the Caisse Anonyme de Bienfaisance of Chief Rabbi Wiener (1929-1938)(consisting of correspondence, receipts, bookkeeping notebooks), a file of correspondence exchanged with the Communauté Khall Adass Jeschurun in Schaarbeek (1933-1939) and personal documents.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Joseph Wiener was born in Mommenheim (Alsace) in 1870, and started his career as rabbi in Alsace and Lorraine. He was appointed rabbi in Antwerp in 1904. He introduced the courses of Jewish religion at the athenaeum in Antwerp and also served as chaplain in the prisons and state welfare institutions until the Second World War. During the First World War, he had organised a relief committee for Allied war prisoners hospitalised in the Kazerne Saint-Georges in Antwerp. He was also involved in various Jewish charities. Wiener held the function of Chief Rabbi of Belgium from 1931 until 1940. He was arrested in Nice, deported and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. (J.-P. Schreiber, "Wiener, Joseph", in J.-P. Schreiber, Dictionnaire biographique des Juifs de Belgique. Figures du judaïsme belge, XIXe-XXe siècles, Bruxelles, De Boeck, 2002, pp. 362-363.)
- Access points: locations:
- Brussels
- Access points: persons/families:
- Wiener, Joseph
- System of arrangement:
- The letters are ordered alphabetically by correspondent.
- Access, restrictions:
- Access requires the authorisation of the president of the Central Jewish Consistory of Belgium.
- Finding aids:
- There is a summary list.
- Yerusha Network member:
- State Archives of Belgium