DUCKESZ, EDUARD

DUCKESZ, EDUARD (Yecheskel; 1868–1944), rabbi and scholar. Duckesz was born in Szelepcsény, Hungary, and studied at the Pressburg (Bratislava) yeshivah. In 1889 he became rabbi at the Klaus synagogue and dayyan in Altona, Germany. His scholarly efforts were devoted to the history of the three sister communities Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbeck (אה״ו). He fled to Holland in 1939 but was interned in Westerbork by the Nazis in 1943 and sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp in 1944 where he perished. Among Duckesz' published works are Ivah le-Moshav, the first volume of which contains biographies and tombstone inscriptions of the rabbis who served in the three communities, with annotations by S. Buber, and the second, entitled Chachme Ahu, biographies of the dayyanim and rabbinical authors of these communities, partly in German (2 vols., 1903–08); and Zur Geschichte und Genealogie der ersten Familien der hochdeutschen israelitischen Gemeinden in Hamburg-Altona (1914). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: T. Preschel, in: N.Y. Institute of Religious Jewry, Elleh Ezkerah, 4 (1961), 58–64; H. Schwab, Chachme Ashkenaz (Eng., 1964), 47.