1. Joachim Prinz was a German-American rabbi who was an outspoken activist against Nazism in Germany in the 1930s and later became a leader in the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s.
22 Facts About Joachim Prinz
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Joachim Prinz saw common cause between the fight against Nazism with the drive for civil rights in America and was one of the founding chairmen of the 1963 March on Washington.
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Joachim Prinz was born to a Jewish family in 1902 in the village of Burkhardtsdorf in the state of Saxony of the German Empire.
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Joachim Prinz's family had been in Germany for 300 years and like most German Jews, were assimilated into German culture.
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However, Joachim Prinz felt that the German people did not perceive the Jews as German, and much to the chagrin of his father, became an ardent Zionist, joining the Blau-Weiss Zionist youth movement in Germany.
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Joachim Prinz attended the University of Berlin, then received his Ph.
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Joachim Prinz was ordained as a rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau in 1925.
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Joachim Prinz then left his synagogue to advocate against the Hitler regime throughout Germany.
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Joachim Prinz was invited by Rabbi Stephen Wise of the Free Synagogue in New York and a close adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt, to settle in America.
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On his last night in Berlin, Joachim Prinz delivered a farewell sermon that was attended by thousands of people, including Nazis who would regularly attend Joachim Prinz's sermons to monitor what he was saying.
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Joachim Prinz immediately began lecturing throughout the US for the United Palestine Appeal, established in the 1920s as the fund raising arm in the United States for the Jewish Agency for Israel.
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Joachim Prinz served as the congregation's rabbi from 1939 to 1977.
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Joachim Prinz became a leader in American Jewish communal and advocacy organizations.
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Joachim Prinz was essential to establishing what became the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
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In early 1963, Joachim Prinz invited King to give a lecture at his synagogue attended by an overflow crowd, several months before the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
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At the 1960 AJC Convention, Joachim Prinz called for the Jewish community to identify with and participate in the broader struggle for civil rights:.
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Joachim Prinz was one of four white men, along with Mathew Ahmann, Walter Reuther, and Presbyterian Minister Eugene Carson Blake, who joined the "Big Six" to organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
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Joachim Prinz was one of ten speakers in the program.
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Immediately before Joachim Prinz came to the podium, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson performed a stirring spiritual.
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Joachim Prinz attended King's funeral following his assassination in April 1968.
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Joachim Prinz died of a heart attack at St Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, New Jersey in 1988.
22.
Joachim Prinz was buried in the B'nai Abraham Memorial Park.