Lieben, Salomon
LIEBEN, SALOMON
LIEBEN, SALOMON (1884–1942), Prague physician and communal functionary. A member of *Agudat Israel, Lieben represented Orthodox Jews on the board of the Prague community. With the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918, he cooperated with the Zionists and joined the Jewish National Council. He was one of the moving spirits behind the foundation of the Židovská ústrědna pro sociální péči (Central Jewish Welfare Board) in 1932. As a military physician in Galicia during World War i, he organized Jewish welfare activities there, and then in Prague for refugees from Eastern Europe. He founded a Jewish outpatients clinic and a soup kitchen, and was among the administrators of several charitable institutions. Lieben conducted scientific research in defense of *sheḥitah against the numerous "humanitarian" attacks on it throughout Europe, publishing several papers in veterinary and medical periodicals claiming that sheḥitah is the least cruel method of slaughtering animals. When the Nazis entered Prague in 1939 and ordered the immediate expulsion of Jewish patients from the general hospitals, Lieben organized a hospital in the Jewish orphanage. He also saw to the religious needs of Prague Jews, organizing, for example, the illegal distribution of unleavened bread. In 1942 he was deported with his family to a concentration camp, where he died.
bibliography:
Dos Yidishe Vort, 16:139 (1970), 27–29.
[Meir Lamed]