Manfred Erich Swarsensky was born in Marienfliess, Germany, on October 22, 1906 to a rural family whose ancestors had lived in that area of Pomerania for many generations. During his primary school years in Marienfliess Swarsensky received a thorough education in Lutheran theology. From 1925 to 1932 he attended the Hochschule fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Academy of Jewish Studies) in Berlin for rabbinical study, while simultaneously pursuing a Ph.D. in Semitics at the University of Wurzburg. Among his teachers was the renowned rabbi, scholar and leader, Leo Baeck, upon whose recommendation Swarsensky was appointed one of Berlin's twelve communal rabbis, a rare honor for such a young man.
Swarsensky spoke out in his sermons against the National Socialist regime from the time of its accession in 1933, but he believed that justice would eventually prevail in Germany. He witnessed first-hand the burning of his own, and other, Berlin Jewish synagogues by Nazi stormtroopers on the night of November 9-10, 1939, The day after the burning and looting of “Kristallnacht” (the so-called “night of shattered glass”), Swarsensky was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In Sachsenhausen, amid labor, humiliation and torture, Swarsensky comforted his fellow inmates. After three months, the rabbi was released from the camp, a freedom he accepted only after the second time it was offered.
Swarsensky immigrated to the United States in July 1939. In 1940, after a brief stay with his brother in Chicago, Swarsensky accepted a pulpit with the newly organized Madison Reform congregation, Temple Beth El. From small beginnings he built the Temple into a large and leading congregation whose membership includes one of the highest proportions of college professors in the country.
Rabbi Swarsensky was a widely sought-after speaker before Jewish and non-Jewish civic and religious organizations. He received many academic and humanitarian awards, and served on several key city, state, and national committees. In 1967, he received an award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews for his contribution to interfaith understanding, and for several years he chaired the influential Inter-faith Dialogue Committee of Madison Area Clergymen. He was a member of the Equal Rights Commission, Wisconsin Department of Industry, Labor and Human Relations, and served on the boards of the United Way, Red Cross, Dane County Mental Health Association, and Madison General Hospital, whose doctor-clergy committee he headed.
In 1970, with very mixed emotions, Rabbi Swarsensky accepted an invitation to return to Berlin to observe the 25th anniversary of the reconstitution of Berlin's Jewish community. As he noted later, he could not push away a hand stretched out in reconciliation. He made a second trip to Berlin in 1979.
His Jewish affiliations included the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Madison Jewish Community Council, and the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning. He was the moving force behind Madison's program to settle Holocaust survivors after they left Displaced Persons Camps. In 1971 Rabbi Swarsensky was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati. In 1973 Edgewood College, Madison, awarded him an honorary doctorate of philosophy, and the University of Wisconsin presented him with an honorary degree of doctor of humane letters in 1979. His publications include books in German, numerous articles in scholarly journals and encyclopedias, as well as A History of the Madison Jewish Community - From Generation to Generation, and Intimates and Ultimates, an anthology of 20 of Swarsensky's addresses (published by Edgewood College after his death).
In 1952 Swarsensky married Ida Weiner of Chicago. They had two children, Gerald and Sharon.
Swarsensky became Rabbi Emeritus at Beth El in July 1976, After his retirement from Beth El, Swarsensky taught in the Department of Religious Studies at Edgewood College until his death on November 10, 1981, the 43rd anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Researchers should also see Rabbi Swarsensky's biography (from which much of this biography was taken) and interview abstracts available in the Guide to Wisconsin Survivors of the Holocaust. (See also Tape 797A.)
