Bernard Heller ^People

He received a BA. . degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1916, an M.A. degree in 1917 from Columbia University, and was ordained at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1920. After ordination Rabbi Heller served in Scranton, Pennsylvania, from 1920 to 1930 and became widely known for his religious, civic, and communal work. From the Scranton pulpit, he went to serve the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation at the University ofMichigan, where he was awarded a Ph.D. degree in 1932.He was also awarded an honorary Litt.D. degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In 1943 Heller was appointed to a commission established to eliminate prejudicial references to Jews in Catholic and Protestant textbooks.In 1949 he was named director of Restitution of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc, the agency charged with restoration of cultural property seized by the Nazis from Jewish people and institutions. From headquarters in Frankfurt-am-Main, Heller handled the distribution of the more than 30,000 confis- cated volumes, many of them rare and valuable, which the Nazis had assembled for use in antisemitic institutes they hoped to establish after their victory.In the early 1950s Heller traveled to India, where he served as rabbi of the liberal community of Bombay and then to Australia, and other parts of the world, where he lectured on Jewish topics and established Jewish study groups.