"Yizkor 1939-1945". Poster Illustrated by Pinchas Schuldenrein (signed in the plate). Zeilsheim (Germany): P. Schuldenrein, [ca. 1946]. Hebrew.
Impressive color illustration, showing the number 6,000,000 and two memorial candles soaking in blood, with images of the atrocities of the holocaust. The caption beneath the illustration reads: "When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them" (Psalms 9:13).
The artist Pinchas Shuldenrein was born in Poland and studied in the Warsaw Art Academy. After the Holocaust, he opened a studio outside the Zeilsheim DP Camp with the assistance of the Joint, and there he created this poster. Shuldenrein taught art to children in DP camps and created works inspired by the Holocaust. In 1947 he moved to the USA, settled in New York and a couple of years later changed his name to Paul Sharon. He worked as a graphic designer in New York until his death in 1998.
37.5X51.5 cm. Fair condition. Fold lines, creases and stains. Tears to edges, slightly affecting illustration. Abrasions and minor blemishes to illustration. Traces of mounting to verso.

Collection of photographs of members of Zionist youth movements and residents of DP camps in Europe; presumably, taken by Micha Paz – a Holocaust survivor who escaped from Germany to Palestine, joined the British Army and returned to Europe as a soldier of the Jewish Brigade. Bergen Belsen, Hamburg, Lodz, Lower Silesia and elsewhere, 1946-1947 (one photograph is from 1948).
36 photographs: trainees of a Nocham ("No'ar Chalutzi Meuchad", United Pioneer Youth) seminar dancing the Horah (1946); a trip of the children of the "Children's Home in Blankenese" (Hamburg, 1946); varied pictures from the Bergen Belsen DP camp (the Jewish school, a festive diner, a gym class for girls); the trainees of a seminar in Lodz; and more. One of the photographs depicts members of youth movements at Cyprus internment camps (1948).
Micha Paz was born in Berlin in 1924. In 1940 he escaped via the Austrian border to Yugoslavia, as part of an operation organized by Recha Freier, and eventually reached Palestine through Greece, Turkey and Lebanon. In Palestine, he joined the British Army, was sent to Italy, and fought in the Jewish Brigade. After the war he remained in Europe under an alias, working as a representative of the Haganah to locate Holocaust survivors and prepare them for immigration to Palestine.
Approx. half of the photographs are captioned and dated by hand (Hebrew and English). One photograph is stamped with Micha Paz's stamp.
36 photographs. Size and condition vary. Good overall condition. Stains, creases and blemishes. Small tears to margins. An open tear to the corner of one of the photographs (slightly affecting the picture).
Enclosed: • Yashresh, by Recha Freier (Tel-Aviv: Tamar, [1953?]). Inscribed: "To Micha Paz, with friendship, Recha Freier" (Hebrew). • A personal details form (presumably, for an applicant for the Israeli civil service), filled-in by Paz, with his personal details and résumé.

Krieges Tagebuch eines jungen Emigranten [War Diary of a Young Emigrant], by Heinz Wisla. Typewritten. Jerusalem, 1944. German.
Memoir by Heinz Wisla (1920-2004), a Berlin-born Jew, recounting the story of his escape from Nazi Germany and his arduous journey to Palestine. Typewritten, with a handwritten title page, signed by Wisla (noted on title page: "Berlin 1940"). Corrections in pen and pencil on many leaves. Enclosed with the book are three pictures of the author, two taped to title page and on back endpaper. Handwritten beneath the picture on the endpaper: "Jerusalem – 1944".
A Hebrew adaptation of the book, "Ba-derekh le-Erets-Yisra'el", was published in 1945 by "Am Oved", under the pseudonym Ben-Zvi Kalischer (translated from a German manuscript by Shalom Kremer).
According to the memoir, Wisla escaped Nazi Germany in the beginning of the war, after a period of imprisonment in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. His long journey to Palestine, passing through many countries – Slovakia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Portugal and elsewhere, was laden with adventures. Among other things, Wisla describes swimming to escape the gunshots of Romanian border guards, drifting to a lonely island in the Aegean Sea, and meeting with Pope Pius XII in the Vatican. In February 1944, Wisla reached Palestine on board the illegal immigrant ship Nyassa.
The description of the meeting between Wisla and the Pope is one of the most astounding passages in the diary. Wisla writes that upon reaching Rome from the Italian detention camp in Rhodes, he was able to arrange an audience with the Pope, alongside several German-Catholic paratroopers, who were on their way to the North-African front. During this audience, Wisla requested the Pope's aid in improving the situation of Jewish refugees. The Pope promised to do whatever he could and even announced to Wisla, the German soldiers still within earshot: "My friend, you are a Jew and must be proud […] always be proud of being a Jew!". This story was published in April 1944 in the Jerusalem Post (anonymously). Some used this story to disprove the claims that Pope Pius XII adopted a policy of non-involvement during the destruction of European Jewry.
The credibility of this memoir is questionable (though presumably Wisla indeed escape from Germany, some of the details in his memoir are imprecise or unverifiable).
[135] leaves, 27.5 cm. Good-fair condition. Stains. Wear and small tears to margins (not affecting text). Fold lines and creases. One leaf cut in its lower part (one third of leaf is missing). Worn, loose card binding.