Biography
Jacob Wiener (born Gerd Zwienicki) is the son of Selma Stiefel and Josef Zwienicki. He was born in 1917 in Bremen, where his family owned a bicycle shop. Gerd had three siblings: a brother Benno (b. 1918), a sister Liesel (b. 1921), and a brother Alfred (b. 1925). Gerd left home in 1936 to study at the Breuer yeshiva in Frankfurt. A year later he began his studies at the Wuerzburg Jewish teachers seminary. On the night of Kristallnacht the students of the rabbinical seminary, including Gerd, were arrested and placed in protective custody, where they remained for eight days. Meanwhile, Gerd's family was facing tragedy in Bremen. His father was sufficiently aware of the threat posed by the Nazis that he fled from his home during the pogrom. However, he did not anticipate what they might do to his family in his absence. That night when members of the SA came looking for him at his home and failed to find him, they shot and killed his wife and arrested his son, Benno, who was then sent to Sachsenhausen. Following Benno's release, the family departed for Canada, leaving Germany on May 31, 1939.
Rabbi Joseph Breuer was born in Papa, Hungary and came to Frankfort as a child. Descended from along line of rabbis, he was the grandson of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the founder of the Modern Orthodox movement. His father, Rabbi Solomon Breuer headed the Frankfurt Yeshiva, and Rabbi Joseph Breuer assumed his post after his death in 1926. Following Kristallnacht, the Nazis shut down the yeshiva, and Rabbi Breuer immigrated to the United States by way of Italy in 1939. He became head of the Kahal Adat Jeshurun congregation in Washington Heights, New York.
