Holocaust-Era British Rabbi will Receive Award for Rescue of 300 Children
by JNS.org
The UK’s Department for Communities on Monday will posthumously honor a British rabbi who saved about 300 Jewish children during the Second World War as a British hero of the Holocaust.
Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld is known for founding the London Hasmonean High School and for presiding over the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations of England. After the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, Schonfeld traveled back and forth to rescue Jewish children from Europe and bring them to Britain. He also helped shelter 1,000 yeshiva students, rabbis and other Jews. He died in 1984 at the age of 72.
“Before the war, he risked his life going to Germany and Austria even though the Foreign Office told him not to go,” said his son, Dr. Jeremy Schonfeld, according to the London Jewish Chronicle.