Ernst Ehrlich, 86, Jewish Philosopher
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Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, a Jewish religious philosopher who escaped the Nazis and became a European bridge builder between Christians and Jews, died Sunday in a suburb or Basel, Switzerland. He was 86.
The Berlin-born Ehrlich studied at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies, Rabbi Leo Baeck’s rabbinical seminary, until the Nazis closed it in 1942.
The Nazis forced him into labor until he was able to find shelter with a Berlin couple and was smuggled into Switzerland.
From 1961 to 1994, he was European director of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith.
At the Second Vatican Council in 1965, he served as adviser to German Cardinal Augustin Bea in preparing “Nostra Aetate,” a key document on Roman Catholic-Jewish relations.
Rabbi Walter Homolka, rector of Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam, Germany, eulogized Ehrlich as being “the bridge to Jewish heritage before the Holocaust.”
