Sefer HaDvarim [The Book of Things], sixteen poems by Chaim Nachman Bialik and sixteen illustrations by Tom Seidmann-Freud. Jerusalem-Berlin: "Ophir", 1922.
Sixteen short illustrated poems, the fruit of collaboration between Tom Seidmann-Freud, her spouse, the industrialist and publisher Ya'akov Seidmann, and Chaim Nachman Bialik. The three established the "Ophir" publishing house for Hebrew children's books in Berlin. This book was one of the few books written by Bialik and illustrated by Seidmann-Freud to be published before the closure of the publishing house.
The illustrations of Tom Seidmann-Freud (1892-1930), a Jewish Vienna-born writer and illustrator, were characterized by their stylistic simplicity and wealth of expression. The clean, serious illustrations, colored using the pochoir technique which gives them the transparency of watercolors, heralded the Art Deco style. In few lines, which are simultaneously not childish but easily understood by children, they tell a complete story.
[35] pp, 21 cm. Good-fair condition. Re-bound by sewing with the original boards. The first leaf (with the logo of the publishing house and its details) was glued to the binding. Trimmed margins. Blemishes caused by gluing on the inside of the first leaf. Library stamps. Pen notation on the title page. Minor blemishes. Stains. Abrasions to the binding and several places inside the book. Color stickers on several of the illustration leaves.
Literature: Hebrew Illustrations, the Illustrated Hebrew Book for Children, the International Era 1900-1925 (Hebrew), by Ayala Gordon. Tel-Aviv: Nachum Gutman Museum, 2005. pp. 127-141.
Provenance: The Raphael Grünzweig Collection.

The Pentateuch. Berlin: Soncino, [1930-1933].
A fine bibliophile folio edition, printed in 850 copies. The letters and initials were designed by Marcus Behmer "after the letters used in the printing press of Gershom Cohen in Prague".
The Soncino Society of Friends of the Jewish Book was founded in Berlin in 1924 and published books with meticulous attention to typographic design. The society was dismantled by order of the Nazi authorities in 1937.
The Soncino Society meant to continue and print all the other books of the bible, but the dramatic political changes in Germany at the time led to the early termination of the project.
[134] leaves, 40 cm. Thick, high-quality paper. Wide margins. Good condition. Stains on several leaves. Minor blemishes to binding.

Schwarzbard. Paris: I. Grodzensky, [1928?]. Yiddish and French.
An album documenting the trial of Sholem Schwarzbard who assassinated Symon Petliura as revenge for the pogroms against the Jews of Ukraine. The album contains portraits of Sholem Schwarzbard, Symon Petliura, the defense lawyers and the prosecutors, the witnesses, the journalists and others, alongside photographs of the crime scene, Schwarzbard's shop, the court and trial, some of them captioned in Yiddish and French.
The album also contains short biographies of Schwarzbard and Petliura, a quote from Schwarzbard's lawyer, Henri Torrès, about the comradeship he feels for Schwarzbard, and quotes from journalist Bernard Lecache, writers Sholem Asch and Romain Rolland and socialist Jean Longuet about the guilt of the Ukrainians in general and Petliura specifically. Cover design by Marc Chagall; depicting an angel with its sword drawn hovering above a Torah Scroll.
Sholem Schwarzbard (1886-1938), "the avenger", a Serbian-born watchmaker, anarchist and Yiddish poet. He took part in revolutionary activity in his town and upon the outbreak of World War I, enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. Returning to Ukraine towards the end of the war, he organized Jewish militias for self-defense. In 1919, he returned to Paris, where he heard rumors about the Petliura pogroms, in which soldiers, most of them soldiers of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, massacred tens of thousands, some would say hundreds of thousands, Jews, including Schwarzbard's family. Symon Petliura, who headed the Ukrainian People's Republic, was blamed for ignoring the army's actions. In response to a Jewish delegation which appealed to him with a request to restrain his army, he said "The riots strengthen discipline among my ranks…".
In May 1926, Schwarzbard assassinated Petliura, who was then in political exile in Paris. Schwarzbard stood trial for murder in October 1927; yet the court was persuaded that Petliura was indeed responsible for the pogroms and acquitted Schwarzbard, despite his unhesitatingly admitting his guilt.
[19] photographs (printed on paper) and [4] text leaves, tipped in to the album. Approx. 38 cm. Good-fair condition. Tears and open tears to cover and to the edges of the album's leaves. Most of the album's leaves are detached. Several photographs are detached or partly detached from the album's leaves (with small tears along their edges). Stains to cover.