Auction 87 - Jewish and Israeli Art, History and Culture
Including: sketches by Ze'ev Raban and Bezalel items, hildren's books, avant-garde books, rare ladino periodicals, and more
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![Документи [Documents, ] edited by Natan Grinberg. Sofia: консистория на евреитѣ въ България [The Jewish Consistory of Bulgari](https://files.kedem-auctions.com/files/Sale87/409.jpg "\"Documents, \" Collected by Natan Grinberg – First Official Documentati")
Документи [Documents, ] edited by Natan Grinberg. Sofia: консистория на евреитѣ въ България [The Jewish Consistory of Bulgaria]: 1945. Bulgarian.
First documentation of official records and papers of the Holocaust in Thrace, Macedonia, and Pirot. Some evidence of the systematic extermination of Jews by the Nazis already surfaced during World War II, but official documentation, originating from the bureaucratic organization of the perpetrators themselves, was scarce. The present booklet is among the first publications of such documents, directly relating to Nazi efforts to exterminate European Jewry.
The booklet comprises re-prints of official Bulgarian documents, related to the deportation of Jews from territories taken from Greece and Yugoslavia, and granted to Bulgaria by the Germans: Thrace, Macedonia, and the Serbian city Pirot. The approx. 80 documents include orders and instructions of deportation, various reports, logistical plans, financial matters related to the operation, and more, all originating from the bureaucratic mechanism of the fascist Bulgarian regime. Several black and white pictures taken during the deportations are printed at the end of the booklet.
The documents were collected by the Natan Grinberg (1903-1988), a Jewish businessman, who during the war was employed by the Bulgarian "Commissariat for Jewish Questions", established to implement anti-Jewish legislation. The present booklet was printed in early 1945 (presumably, it was hastily prepared to be used in the trial against fascist war criminals, held in the Bulgarian People's Court after the war; the present copy's cover is marked with inked stamps and postage stamps from March, 1945.)
After its publication, the booklet did not receive much attention, and was not re-printed until 2015 (one of the reason being that the evidence it contains did not serve Bulgaria's image as protector of its Jews, and could potentially hamper its efforts to evade paying reparations to victims.)
The Holocaust in Thrace, Macedonia, and Pirot
In 1941, the Bulgarian parliament passed the antisemitic "Law for the Protection of the Nation, " which was intended to ostracize Bulgarian Jews from public life, thus promoting a solution to the "Jewish problem." The racial laws included numerus clausus in the universities, expulsion of Jews from public service, a requirement that Jews wear a yellow Star of David on their clothes, various fines, expulsion from larger cities, confiscation of property, forced labor, and imprisonment in concentration camps.
In March 1941 the Kingdom of Bulgaria, led by Boris III and the antisemitic royalist, prime minister Bogdan Filov, had joined the "Tripartite Pact" (a military alliance originally signed between Germany, Italy and Japan.) As part of the pact, Bulgaria agreed to provide support for the Axis powers, but avoided a direct involvement in the war. In return, entering the pact had enabled the regime to capture territories conceived by Bulgarian nationalists as an inseparable part of "Greater Bulgaria."
Jews of these regions did not become Bulgarian citizens, and did not enjoy any legal protections. In 1943 the Germans demanded that Bulgaria send a "quota" of 20,000 Jews to extermination camps. In accordance with the demand, the "Commissariat for Jewish Affairs" organized the deportation of more than 11,000 stateless Jews from the newly acquired regions, to the death camp Treblinka.
The deportation was carried out by the Bulgarian military and police forces, and was financed with money and property robbed from the deportees themselves; according to Gideon Hausner, head prosecutor in the Eichmann trial, Bulgaria was "the only country that signed a written contract 'to supply Jews to Germany, ' undertook to pay for their transport, and stipulated that she would never and under no circumstances request their return."
96, 96-I-96VI, 97-200 pp., 23 cm. With printed errata. Good-fair condition. Stains. Closed and open tears to corners and edges of cover and several leaves. Back cover detached. Open tears to spine. Handwritten inscriptions, postage stamps and inked stamps to cover.
![Niemiecka fabryka śmierci w Lublinie [A German Death Factory in Lublin], by Eugeniusz Krieger. Moscow: Wydawnictwo Literatury](https://files.kedem-auctions.com/files/Sale87/410.jpg "\"A German Death Factory in Lublin\" – Account of the Majdanek Extermina")
An early account of the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp (near Lublin), by the Russian war correspondent Evgeny Krieger (1906-1983), who accompanied the Red Army units who liberated the camp. Illustrated with 8 reproductions of photographs – the crematorium, the barracks, a mound of victims' shoes, a written confession by the Nazi officer Hilmar Moser, and more.
First edition, printed in Polish and circulated during the battles for the liberation of Poland (the original Russian work was published as an article in the Russian newspaper "Izvestia").
38, [2] pp., approx. 14 cm. Good condition. Stains to cover. Some stains to pages. Minor creases. Upper corners bent. Perforation to upper margin of about half the pages (no damage to text or photographs). Perforations and tears to spine. Cover loose.
This booklet is a very early public visual documentation, maybe the first of its kind, of Nazi crimes on European soil, especially in Poland.
The Anti-Nazi League, which published the booklet in April 1940, aimed to set up "propaganda and publicity in Israel and abroad against the Nazi regime, the Nazi spirit and racial hate". These ideas have been realized in this booklet; not only in the photographs printed on the postcards, but also, and especially, in the introduction added by the anti-Nazi league members. Printed on the inside cover: "Hitlerism means return to the savagery of the dark Middle Ages. In Poland, the Jews are compelled to wear on their backs the yellow badge as reproduced on the envelope of the Black Album. The Black Album contains the first series of pictures disclosing Nazi atrocities in Poland. The Black Album gives a vivid description of the Nazi regime and its cruel systems. Everybody is hereby enabled to unmask Hitlerism by sending the post-cards of the Album to his friends and acquaintances all over the world". Similar words appear in the introduction: "… In Hitler's Germany, vast concentration camps have been established where Nazi sadists torture their unfortunate victims to an extent never before conceived by human imagination. In these camps of suffering and death, the prisoners, principally Jewish, are submitted to most cruel corporal and spiritual humiliation, to hard labor, starvation and severe molestation leading to aberration of the mind and death".
Each postcard is titled – "Death in Hitler's step", "Nazi hangmen at work", "One of the hundreds of victims in Poland", "Migration of nations into misery", "Nazi victims converted into ashes", and more – and is accompanied by captions specifying some of the methods of Nazi brutality and destruction which were publicly verified and published only years later: death of thousands from disease, cold and hunger; daily execution and hanging of bodies on gallows in central streets of Polish cities; slave labor; cleaning streets with mouths and hands; cremating bodies to ash, etc. The titles are in English. The introduction is in Hebrew and English. The captions are in Hebrew and French.
[8] pp., [10] postcards, [8] pp. Booklet: 16.5X10.5 cm. Postcards: 14X10 cm. Good condition. Minor stains and blemishes. Staple holes to inner margins (stales removed). The booklet was restored and rebound; strips of paper and acid-free tape to spine and to inner margins of leaves and postcards.
Provenance: The Rimon Family Collection.
1. An Identification document for Jewish craftsmen in the Krakow ghetto (issued by the Verband der jüdischen Handwerker in Krakau – "Association of Jewish Craftsmen in Krakow") With Shoshana's photograph, personal details, and handwritten signature. July, 1940.
Folding card, 12.5 cm. Good condition. Stains. Minor blemishes.
2. Handwritten memoir. Dedicated by Shoshana to her son; the memoir documents Shoshana's Holocaust experiences, recounting in detail the hardships she had to endure during the war.
Eighteen original photographs, taken during the Holocaust, are mounted to the pages of the manuscript. The photographs depict the Taubman family members wearing Jewish armbands, Shoshana as a worker in the ghetto, Shoshana disguised as a Christian girl, and more. One of the photographs was used in her false identification card.
[15] ff. bound with string (24 pp. with text or photograph; last page left blank), approx. 34.5X27 cm. (size varies). Good-fair condition. Stains. Creases and minor blemishes. Tear to first leaf. Pinholes to margins of several leaves.
Enclosed: • A photo identification document, issued to Shoshana by the British mandatory authorities after her immigration to Palestine (1946). • Various documents and letters pertaining to Shoshana and her family, from the years succeeding the war.
Flower vase, painting by Arno Neumann. Theresienstadt, 1944.
Ink and watercolor on thin card. Signed and dated: "Arno Neumann / Terezin 1944". Enclosed is a card mount to which the work was formerly pasted; inked stamp on verso: "Jüdische Selbstverwaltung Theresienstadt" [Jewish self-government, Theresienstadt], and a suspension loop.
8.5X11.5 cm. Good condition. Minor stains. Pinholes to enclosed mount; strips of paper to margins (torn).
The Theresienstadt Ghetto was established in the town of Terezín, north-west Bohemia (today in the Czech Republic), within a former military fortress, dating to the 18th century. The overcrowded ghetto was mainly inhabited by Jewish deportees from central and northern Europe. Many of them were so called "prominent Jews" – artists, authors, composers, performers, and renowned intellectuals; approximately 160,000 Jews passed through the ghetto during WWII, tens of thousands had perished there, and some 88,000 were deported to extermination camps in the east.
Despite the harsh conditions, the ghetto's cultural life thrived. There were theatre performances, cabarets, concerts, lectures, schools for children (which were forbidden by the Nazis) and adult education programs, sport events, and more. Painters, writers, poets and various researchers and thinkers were active in the ghetto.
As a rule, those interned in the ghetto were subjected to forced labor – some in nearby mines and others in workshops within the ghetto, which produced toys, jewelry, bookmarks, various parchment products and paintings. The printing workshops in the ghetto produces a variety of learning materials and printed items required in the ghetto, as well as Nazi propaganda materials.
The Theresienstadt Ghetto played a pivotal part in the broad deception scheme designed by the Nazis to hide the existence of death camps in Poland. The creation of the "model ghetto", which was presented as a town under Jewish self-government, whose inhabitants seemingly lead comfortable, respectable lives, enjoying freedom and material abundance, was meant to serve one purpose: hiding the destruction of European Jewry from the international community, and from the Jews themselves, thus, facilitating their annihilation.
21 pencil drawings and one drawing in ink and colored pencils. Hand-signed and captioned (Italian). The illustrations depict some of the major battles that took place in Europe during the years 1942-1943: the Battle of Stalingrad, the Dieppe Raid, the Battle of Rzhev, the liberation of Kiev, and other battles.
Five of the illustrations are drawn on POW's notepaper, issued to prisoners in camp Notaresco (in Abruzzo; operated until 1944), presumably made during the war, or soon after. Considering the attention to detail and accuracy of execution – of license plates of vehicles and tanks, shapes of various weapons, uniforms, military ranks, etc. – the illustrations were probably made after photographs of the events depicted.
Enclosed: an illustration of two SS soldiers.
Luigi Fleischmann (1928-1999), author and partisan, native of Fiume (present day Rijeka, Croatia). During World War II he went in hiding together with his family, moving between several villages in the Abruzzo region of Southern Italy. He joined the ranks of the anti-fascist underground soon after it was erected, and became a partisan.
Size and condition vary (average size: approx. 29X21 cm; color illustration: 41X29 cm). Stains. Folding marks and minor creases. Marginal tears and pinholes (mostly minor). Large pen tear to top of one leaf (damage to drawing).
Special edition of the Palestine Post, printed on May 7th, 1945, the day the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany was signed in Reims, France (the second of three instruments of surrender signed by German representatives, during late April and early May, 1945.)
The subheading repeats a report by the German Flensburg radio, according to which, the German president, Admiral Doenitz, "has ordered the unconditional surrender of all German fighting troops."
[1] f. (two printed pages), 61.5 cm. Good condition. Horizontal fold line. Tears to margins and along fold line (mostly minor).
Stirring color illustration, with the number "6,000,000" in the center, flanked by a pair of memorial candles soaking in blood, and with the digits of the number filled with images presenting the stages in the destruction of European Jewry, beginning with the digit "6" and proceeding backward from there, alluding to the sequential disappearance of the Jewish population from one stage to the next. On the final "zero" digit, we see an empty street with abandoned buildings, shredded books and Torah scrolls, and a burnt-out menorah. The caption beneath the illustration reads: "For He Who avenges blood remembers them" (Psalms 9:13).
The artist Pinchas Shuldenrein (1912-1998) was born in Poland and studied at the Warsaw Academy of Art. After the war, with the assistance of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), he opened a studio in the vicinity of the displaced persons camp in Zeilsheim, Germany, where, among other things, he created a poster with an illustration identical to the one on the present postcard (see Kedem, Auction No. 80, Lot 200). Shuldenrein taught art to children in the DP camps. In his own works, he focused on the theme of the Holocaust. In 1947 he moved to the United States and settled in New York. A few years later, he changed his name to Paul Sharon. He worked as a graphic designer in New York until his death in 1998.
14X10 cm. Good condition. Notation in pencil on back of postcard.
Included: • approximately 30 "orders, " written on official forms of Betar's company in the Dorfen DP camp (with signatures of the company's commander, inked stamp and the symbol of the seven-branched Menorah). 1947 (Yiddish, in Latin script.) • Handwritten notebook, containing a part of the aforementioned orders. 1947 (Yiddish, and some Hebrew.) • Photograph from the of the establishment of the company. Dedication on verso, dated to May 10, 1946. • Two UNRRA Immunization cards belonging to Menashe Rotberg, and his wife Mindla. 1947. • approximately 20 letters and documents, pertaining to attempts to locate Menashe's uncle, Hermann Rotberg (including negative answers with regards to the question of the uncle's whereabouts, received from the Joint, the Red Cross, the Belgian organization HISO, and other organizations), as well as attempts to receive reparations after it was established that Hermann perished during the war (1940s-1990s.) • Over 50 letters and documents of the correspondence between the Rotbergs and various German authorities, lawyers, and different organizations, regarding the couple's demand for reparations.
Approx. 100 paper items. Size and condition vary.
![Passover Haggadah, Jewish Transport Company 468. [Italy], 5704 [1944]. Hebrew.
Non-Traditional Passover Haggadah, illustrat](https://files.kedem-auctions.com/files/Sale87/418.jpg "Non-Traditional Passover Haggadah – Jewish Transport Company 468 – Ita")
Non-Traditional Passover Haggadah, illustrated. Printed for the benefit of Jewish soldiers belonging to Jewish Transport Company 468 of the British army during WWII. The Haggadah includes traditional segments, and in addition tells the stories of soldiers and their experiences in the course of the war. Alongside accounts of the horrors that transpired across Europe – "I shall say ‘kaddish' for all the faithful and noble [ones]! For the holy and beloved! From the Solomon Islands to Leningrad, from the tortured of the ghettoes to the forced [laborers] and shackled prisoners in the factories, all are Jews, all Children of Israel! See how the blood of all human beings has been intermixed, and it flows from thousands of wounds…" (p. 21) – it also displays expressions of hope for the future: "Yet the chain is unbroken… from the guardians of the Walls of Jerusalem to the Jewish soldiers of our time…" (p. 18; the illustrations on this page show images of Egyptians oppressing Hebrew slaves next to a camp encircled by barbed wire, and opposite this, modern Jewish soldiers standing side-by-side with ancient Jewish fighters).
The General Transport Coy. 468 of the British Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) was established in Egypt in 1942. Its soldiers were alternately deployed in the area of the Suez Canal, Palestine, Italy, Austria, and once again southern Italy, where they lent assistance to refugees housed in displaced persons camps.
40 ff. Final leaf missing. 16X24 cm. Fair condition. Stains, tears, and creases. Minor browning. Leaves trimmed unevenly. Notations on cover. Inked library stamps.
Non-traditional haggadah, mimeographed, with illustrations. Printed for the Jewish soldiers serving in Jewish Transport Company 468 of the British Army in Italy during World War II.
Contains traditional passages, including a special title page: "Masechet Yameinu" (Contemporary Matters), a text written as a play with characters, a chorus, songs and reading passages referring, dramatically and at length, to the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and immigration to Palestine.
[29] ff. (errors in pagination; without back cover, in other copies as well), 20.5X16 cm. Good condition. Stains. Small tears, some repaired with acid-free tape. Resewn with thread. A sticker bearing an image of JNF’s first stamp, containing the word "Zion" at the center of a Star of David, is affixed to the front cover.
Provenance: The Rimon Family Collection.
![Passover Haggadah. [Budapest]: HaOved HaKibbuci Dror HaBonim in Hungary, [1946]. Hebrew and Hungarian.
Non-traditional Hagg](https://files.kedem-auctions.com/files/Sale87/420_1.jpg "Non-Traditional Haggadah – Haoved Hakibbuci, Dror Habonim – Hungary, 1")
![Passover Haggadah. [Budapest]: HaOved HaKibbuci Dror HaBonim in Hungary, [1946]. Hebrew and Hungarian.
Non-traditional Hagg](https://files.kedem-auctions.com/files/Sale87/420_2.jpg "Non-Traditional Haggadah – Haoved Hakibbuci, Dror Habonim – Hungary, 1")
Non-traditional Haggadah, in Hebrew and Hungarian, with many illustrations (by "Zvi Cohen – Moshe Steiner", signed in the plate on the last page). The illustrations depict, among other scenes, the Jewish people leaving Egypt and arriving at modern day Palestine, Jews entering a concentration camp, and a snake with flags of the United Kingdom on his back, climbing up a pole holding the flag of Israel.
[29] ff., 20 cm. Good condition. Stains. Minor blemishes to edges of some leaves. Creases. Blemishes and tears to spine and edges of cover. Pencil notations on back cover.
Not listed in Aviram Paz's book "Exodus from Egypt in Days of Yore, in Recent Times, Selection of Rare Passover Haggadahs from the 1940s…" (Kibbutz Dalia, 2015).