In 1903 Rabbi Dr. Siegfried Grzymisch became the kehillah's rabbi for the duration of one year.  He was born 4 August 1875 in Pleschen and had been educated 1894-1902 at the Jüdisch Theologisches Seminar in Breslau. From 1911 until 1940 he had the position of Bezirksrabbiner and served on the executive board of the Badisches Israelitisches Waisenhaus, the Jewish orphanage of Baden, in Bruchsal.     On 22 October 1940, Rabbi Dr. Siegfried Grzymisch was deported, first to the concentration camp Gurs in France and later to the Drancy, from where he and his wife were finally deported to Auschwitz on 7 March 1944.	From 1904 until 1913 Rabbi Dr. Julius Lewkowitz was the spiritual leader of the community of  Schneidemühl when the kehillah counted 800 members. Born 8 April 1876 in Georgenberg, Upper Silesia, he was a descendant of a religious family steeped in tradition. At the university of Berlin he attained his Ph.D. while simultaneously studying at the rabbinical seminary. One year before graduating he moved to Breslau where he completed his studies at the local Jüdisch Theologisches Seminar; he was ordained in 1903. In 1913 he was offered to lead the liberal congregation of the new 2,000-seat synagogue at Levetzowstrasse in Berlin.     On 8 March 1943 Rabbi Lewkowitz and his wife were dragged from their home and deported to Auschwitz on the 36th transport of 12 March 1943.
Rabbi Dr. Israel Nobel was an ardent Zionist. He became the rabbi of Schneidemühl in 1914. Born 9 July 1878 in Totis (Tata), Hungary, he was like so many of his predecessors, a man whose family comprised of illustrious rabbis and scholars. He had completed schooling at the gymnasium of Halberstadt, at the same time receiving his early Talmudic education from his father as well as from the local Rabbi Dr. Auerbach. His academic training began in Leipzig and continued in Bonn, Giessen and Berlin where he received his rabbinic training at the Jüdisch Theologisches Seminar. His first position was in Berlin in 1902 as Prediger and Schuldirigent. In 1903 he served in the military and the following year he became director of the Jewish high school in Antwerp, Belgium. There, while holding his position, the rabbi was also teaching religion at the local Lyceum and the Gymnasium, apart from serving on a local commission for the poor.     After the First World War the rabbi's ten-year tenure with the community ended, following an acrimonious dispute with liberal elements of the kehillah, involving the introduction of an organ during services. In 1924 he settled with his family in Berlin and became active in the circle around Martin Buber, in Lisenstrasse.  In time he became director of the Jewish school at Grosse Hamburgerstrasse and served as rabbi at the Rykestrasse synagogue in the Prenzlauer Berg district.     In 1939 Rabbi Israel Nobel and his wife Ida, née Goldstein, made Aliyah. He died in his 84th year and was buried in Jerusalem on 20 April 1962, the first day of Chol Hamoed Pesach.  His widow died in Haifa the same year.	After Rabbi Nobel's departure, the rabbinate remained vacant for a period of two years before the choice for a new spiritual leader fell upon Rabbi Dr. Arthur Rosenzweig. Born 27 March 1883 in Teplitz, he was the son of the well respected Rabbi Dr. Adolf Rosenzweig, who had been called to Berlin in 1887 and officiated there at the Tempel Neue Synagoge on Oranienburgerstrasse until his death in 1918.     Arthur Rosenzweig had matriculated at the Friedrich Gymnasium in Berlin in 1902, studied six semesters in Berlin and received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg, Germany’s oldest, before studying at Breslau’s conservative Jüdisch Theologisches Seminar. His first position was in Aussig, Bohemia, while serving as an officer in the Austrian army during the First World War. His next appointment as Bezirksrabbiner was 1920–22 in Stuttgart, South West Germany, before he took up his rabbinical position in 1926 in Schneidemühl.     In the liberal leanings of Rabbi Arthur Rosenzweig the community had found a charismatic man and a fine orator who had the gift to inspire young people. As Bezirksrabbiner, Rabbi Rosenzweig also held simultaneous positions in small communities of other towns in the newly formed Grenzmark Posen-Westpreussen, such as Preussisch Friedland, Schlochau and Schloppe, communities that could no longer afford a full-time rabbi.      His tenure in Schneidemühl extended until August 1934, whereafter he accepted a position in a congregation in Prague in September of that year at the Alt Schul, also known as the Spanische Synagoge. Following a brief illness, Rabbi Rosenzweig died suddenly in Prague in January 1936 at the relatively young age of fifty-two.
On Sunday, 2 December 1934, the first day of Chanukah, Rabbi Dr. Alfred Jospe took over vacant the position of Bezirksrabbiner in Schneidemühl, a congregation of just over five hundred members.  Born 31 March 1909 in Berlin, his lineage reveals an ancestry that had pursued chazzanut, the tradition of cantors, for generations. His father, Joseph Jospe, had been cantor and was married to Rosa Cerini, daughter of a cantor. Rabbi Alfred Jospe’s grandfather was Israel Jospe who had served as cantor in various congregations, his final position being at the Orthodox Adass Jisrael Synagogue in Berlin. Rabbi Dr. Alfred Jospe was also a committed Zionist, although in a different direction to one of his predecessors, Rabbi Dr. Israel Nobel. In the years 1928–34 he had studied at the Jüdisch Theologisches Seminar in Breslau and was ordained in 1932 while concurrently studying at the University of Breslau, where he received his Ph.D.     In the 1930s, the duties of a district rabbi encompassed more than spiritual and theological guidance, and while in Schneidemühl Rabbi Jospe was in charge of religious teachers throughout his area and, whenever the need arose, he had to mediate between them and their communities. As his predecessors, apart from being expected to give regular sermons, attendance at funerals in the district and the rare wedding or bar mitzvah, his congregation also sought his help in matters of emigration, Hachschara and practical problems associated therewith; Rabbi Jospe’s organizational skills to deal with these tasks were excellent. However, in the autumn of 1936 Rabbi Jospe was called to Berlin where he was elected to one of the rabbinates of the Berlin Jewish community as Rabbiner and Prediger at the Tempel Neue Synagoge on Oranienburgerstrasse. Following the pogrom of 9 November 1938 and his release from incarceration in Sachsenhausen, Rabbi Jospe obtained a one-year visa for Great Britain and in June of the following year, he was able to secure a non-quota visa for the United States, allowing him to emigrate with his wife and daughter.     In the United States, Rabbi Jospe followed a 35-year career as director with the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation which had begun in 1940, first at the University of West Virginia, later moving to Indiana University, 1944–49. Rabbi Alfred Jospe died on 19 November 1994 in Washington, DC.	Following Rabbi Jospe’s call to Berlin, the vacant position of Bezirksrabbiner fell to another brilliant scholar, Rabbi Dr. Fritz David Plotke, born 7 June 1906 in Berlin. He had graduated magna cum laude in Semitic languages and received his Ph.D. from the University of Würzburg in 1928.  Following theological studies at the Jüdisch Theologisches Seminar in Breslau and at the liberal rabbinical seminary Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin under the distinguished Rabbi Leo Baeck, Fritz Plotke was ordained on 5 February 1936; notable for the times, his rabbinic thesis was ‘The concept of Chukat haGoi in rabbinic literature.’     Rabbi Plotke’s first appointment in Landsberg an der Warthe was brief before taking over the pulpit in Schneidemühl, a position then generally regarded as particularly difficult. He arrived there in September 1936, in time to lead the service for Rosh Hashanah on 17 September 1936.     Under worse conditions than those of his predecessor, the young rabbi’s tenure in Schneidemühl was destined to be short lived as well. Two years after taking over the pulpit in Schneidemühl, Rabbi Plotke was faced with the prospect of being forced to leave his community. It is not known what particular threats from the Nazi regime led him to this momentous decision or what words of courage Rabbi Plotke may have had for his shrinking congregation. His final service was possibly on Simchat Torah on 18 October 1938. The following week, just steps ahead of the Gestapo who were about to arrest him at his synagogue, the rabbi fled Schneidemühl for the relative anonymity of Berlin. Rabbi Plotke was eventually able to immigrate to the USA where, with great difficulty, he obtained a position in a small congregation in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, reunited with his wife and three-year-old son.     In the USA he became known as Rabbi Frank Plotke and, although formerly leaning toward Liberal Judaism,  joined the Conservative movement. After his first brief position in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, and in 1943 obtained a position in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the same year he became a member of the Rabbinical Assembly, the national organization of Conservative rabbis. From 1945 to 1949, he led a congregation in Kingston, New York, until his final appointment at Congregation Knesset Israel in Hammond, Indiana.     Rabbi Plotke, an accomplished artist, scholar, linguist, composer and musician, worked with synagogue choirs and organized and participated in countless festivals of Jewish music. Rabbi Plotke died in Florida on 28 November 1994, the second day of Chanukah, (25 Kislev 5755) in his eighty-ninth year.