| Born: | 07-20-1913 |
| Faculty: | Philosophical School |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Menachem Beir ŞAFRAN, born on July 20th, 1913 in Bacău/Romania (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Bacău/Romania, citizenship 1938: Romania), son of Belzalel Şafran (Chief Rabbi of Bacău, deceased) and Finkel Şafran (Bacău/Romania), lived in Vienna's 5th district, Kohlgasse 21 (1937) and in the 2nd district, Hollandstraße 7/11 (1938). He had already studied for several years at the Jewish Theological Academy in Vienna and graduated there before he started studying history, philosophy and history of religion at the University of Vienna in 1934. He was enrolled finally in spring term 1938 at the Philosophical School in the 4th and last year of his studies and took courses in History, Philosophy, Oriental Studies and Geography.
In 1938, after the takeover of power of National-Socialism he was forced to quit his studies for racist reason and to leave the University of Vienna.
After completing his dissertation, which he had already begun in Vienna - The Internal and Cultural Conditions in Bukovina 1825-1861 - he submitted it to the University of Basel/Switzerland, where he received his doctorate in 1939. (An obligatory copy of the dissertation is still held by the Vienna University Library and the Austrian National Library). The book was published in 1939 by Argus-Verlag in Botoşani / Romania.
His late father was the Chief Rabbi of Bacău, his older brother Alexandru Şafran (1910-2006) became the youngest Chief Rabbi of Romania in 1940 (until 1947) and after his expulsion by the communist regime to Switzerland, he became Chief Rabbi of Geneva in 1948, where he worked until his death (he had been appointed "Dr. phil." at the University of Vienna in 1933 and was extremely successful in Romania during the war in protecting thousend's of Romanian Jews from persecution). His other brother, Joseph Şafran, was Chief Rabbi of Iaşi. With these prominent Jewish roots, he worked on Romanian nationalism and its history in the midst of the rampant and violent racism and anti-Semitism of the 1930s.
The publication can still be found in numerous European and American libraries and is still received today, yet little is known about Menachem Beir Şafrans further life and career.
He is remembered at the University of Vienna here in the "Memorial Book for the Victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna in 1938" since 2009 and at the "Memorial to the History Students and Teachers of the University of Vienna Expelled under National Socialism | When Names Shine" since 2022.
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") PHIL 1937-1938; Alexandre Safran, Resisting the Storm: Romania 1940-1947. Memoirs (ed. Jean Ancel), Jerusalem:Yad Vashem 1987; Nécrologie Alexandre Safran, in: Le Monde, 31 Juli 2006; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 462; H. F. VAN DRUNEN, "A sanguine bunch". Regional identification in Habsburg Bukovina, 1774-1919, Amsterdam 2013, 58-60, Herbert POSCH, Menachem Beir Safran, in: Herbert Posch u. Martina Fuchs (ed.), Wenn Namen leuchten. Von der Universität Wien 1938 bis 1945 vertriebene Geschichte-Studierende und -Lehrende: ein Denkmal, Vienna 2022, 141.
Herbert Posch
