Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History

Leo Baeck Institute (LBI) was founded in 1955 and named for the rabbi who was the last leader of the Jewish community in Nazi Germany. Rabbi Leo Baeck survived the concentration camp Theresienstadt to become the first president of the Institute. LBI began as, and remains, an effort by German-Jewish émigrés to document the vibrant culture of modern, assimilated German Jewry that was destroyed in the Holocaust. It has also grown into a vital resource for understanding the roots of that tragedy and for highlighting German-Jewish community members’ breakthrough developments in the arts, science and philosophy. More than 50 years after its founding, LBI continues to add significant new materials to the world’s premier research library devoted to the history of German-speaking Jewry.