By now you should be standing in front of Knausnickstraße 6 and you will see a plaque for Regina Jonas.Her story is well worth telling, and at the end of this app, you’ll find both the written text and an audio file that will tell you more about her.For now, let’s just review the main points.Regina Jonas was born in the heart of Jewish Berlin in 1902. Early on, she displayed a passion for Hebrew, religious texts and Jewish history.Even as a student, she was determined to become a pulpit rabbi, but that was not on offer in Germany in the late 1920s and early 30s—even in the liberal, or reform Jewish community.Starting in 1933, as Jewish families, and rabbis, fled from Germany, Regina Jonas stayed. She ministered in the Jewish hospital, she taught Jewish children, and in time, the official Jewish community employed her as a “pastoral-rabbinic counselor.”They sent her to small towns throughout Germany, which now had communities of desperate, frightened Jews-- and no rabbis.In 1942 Regina Jonas served in forced later in Berlin, but still ministered in the evenings. Then in November 1942, she and her mother were deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto.We have learned that while in Theresienstadt, Regina Jonas met Jews arriving from Germany, and gave lectures regularly. Then on October 12, 1944, in one of the very last transports, Regina Jonas, 42 years old, and her 68 year old mother, were deported to Auschwitz. It is not known just when and how the two of them perished.And so the name Regina Jonas vanished until 1991, when an historian, Katherina von Kellerbach, was conducting research in archives in what had been East Berlin. She came across two photographs of a woman in rabbinical robes. Which came as a shock—who knew that in Germany a woman had been a rabbi?We are indebted to von Kellerbach for rescuing Rabbi Jonas from the obscurity she languished in. We also recommend Elisa Klapheck’s biography of Jonas, which you can find in English and German.