Salomon Ullman

Rabbi and historian of Belgian Judaism (1940-1957)

Salomon Ullman, born in Hungary, spent a first period in Belgium between 1884 and 1896, before returning to Hungary to attend a yechivah, a Talmudic school. After his studies at the University of Frankfurt am Main, he went to the University of Bern, where he defended a doctoral thesis in history on the Geschichte des Spanish-Portugesischen Juden in Amsterdam in XVII. Jahrhundert (1906). Salomon Ullmann continued his rabbinical studies in Hungary from 1907 to 1909 and began his career as rabbi of the Ashkenazi community in Cairo from 1909 to 1914. After a stay in the Netherlands (1914-1921), he was chosen by the Mashsike-Hadass Orthodox Community of Antwerp to take charge of its secretariat, before becoming its rabbi some years later. He was military chaplain of the Belgian Armed Forces (1937-1957) and Grand Rabbi of Belgium from 1940 to 1957. Arrested in September 1942 by the occupying forces, he was imprisoned for a few days in the Breendonk concentration camp, from which he was released thanks to numerous political interventions. In the absence of Joseph Wiener, he was appointed Chief Rabbi of Belgium in October 1940, and was forced by the occupying forces to accept the presidency of the Association of Jews in Belgium (AJB), from which he resigned following the raids of August 1942. He was the author of Studien zur Geschichte der Juden in Belgien bis zum XVIII. Jahrhundert (Antwerp, 1909), translated into French after the war. He left Belgium for Israel in 1957, resigning from his position as Chief Rabbi, which he had held on an interim basis between 1940 and 1945, and then fully from 1945 to 1957.

Extract from : Jean-Philippe Schreiber, Dictionnaire biographique des Juifs de Belgique. Figures du judaïsme belge XIXe-XXe siècles, De Boeck & Larcier, 2002, pp. 343-344.