Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

where he remained until his emigration in 1939. He was a member of the
Allgemeiner Rabbinerverband Deutschlands and the Vereinigung der liberalen
Rabbiner Deutschlands. 141 Wilde also served with distinction on numerous boards
of several religious, cultural and welfare organisations. His selfless dedication to
all of his wider roles in the community is corroborated both by documentation and
by the number of acknowledged honorary positions he held.
A valuable insight into Wilde’s character and his life in the community can be
established from oral history, which additionally provides an important insight
into the religious life of the community. A unanimous opinion from all of the
interviewees was that the rabbi was very much an intellectual and a very affable,
gentle individual. He was very popular and a well-respected public figure in both
the Jewish and wider communities as a religious leader, as a citizen of Magdeburg
and as a proud German of the Jewish faith.
Wilde also possessed a particularly special place in the community, due to the
longevity of his tenure and the generational relationships he nurtured. Sigrid
Freeman recalled with great fondness and pride that the rabbi had married her
parents, buried her sister, officiated at her husband’s Bar Mitzvah and given the
speech under the Chuppah at her wedding. 142 His commanding physical presence,
personal dignity and noble demeanour also featured in the memories of
interviewees. Both the young Gerhard Levy and Hansgünter Jeruchem also felt, as
young children at the time, that the rabbi appeared to them to be like someone out
of a biblical story. Gerry Levy recalled:
He was a very fine person, quite liberal; also a very fine-looking person. He
had a long, white, flowing beard. I always thought that he looked like G-d! 143
141 Landesverband Jüdischer Gemeinden Sachsen-Anhalt, ed., op. cit., p. 197.
142 S. Freeman, op. cit., 13 May 1998.
143 Levy, op. cit., 16 December 1997.
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