Auction 69 - Part I -Rare and Important Items
In June 1933, the American boxer Max Baer beat the German boxer Max Schmeling at the Yankee Stadium in New-York, in front of an audience of about 60,000 people who filled the stadium to capacity. Baer, whose grandfather was Jewish, wore to the match trunks which displayed the Star of David, in a show of solidarity with the Jews who were persecuted by the Nazi regime established in Germany that year. Many considered him a representative of the Jewish people and his victory by a technical knockout in the tenth round was perceived as a kind of symbolic victory over Nazi Germany.
Likewise, Schmeling was identified with Nazi Germany. Due to his success, and especially due to his being the first German to win the title of world champion in heavyweight boxing, he gained much popularity in his country and the support of Hitler. His participation in matches outside Germany was used in German propaganda. Before the match against Baer he was even invited to a meeting with Hitler where he was instructed to deny the persecution of the Jews of Germany in interviews to the American press.
About three years after the loss to Baer, Schmeling regained his fame by defeating the Afro-American boxer Joe Louis, in a match which to this day is considered one of the greatest boxing matches in history. Subsequent to his victory, presented by the Nazis as evidence of the superiority of the Aryan race, Hitler referred to him as "the greatest German boxer". Despite being presented by Nazi propaganda as a model German man, Schmeling himself had reservations about the policy of Nazi Germany. He was a German patriot, yet never joined the Nazi party and opposed the Aryan racial theory. Even under the pressure of the party, he refused to fire his Jewish manager Joe Jacobs and divorce his Czech wife.
In 1938, a rematch was held between Schmeling and Joe Louis. This match, which was titled the "Battle of the Century", reaped unprecedented public and political attention. Louis won by a knockout on the first round, after two minutes and four seconds. About this loss, Schmeling later said: "Looking back, I'm almost happy I lost that fight. Just imagine if I would have come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. After the war I might have been considered a war criminal".
Several months after the match, during Kristallnacht, Schmeling showed extraordinary courage when he hid two Jewish boys in his room in a hotel in Berlin, saving their lives. For this deed he was awarded the Raoul Wallenberg Medal.
In 1934, about eighteen months after the boxing match between Max Schmeling and Max Baer, a film documenting the match was screened at the "Beit HaAm" cinema in Tel-Aviv. This poster, which advertises the screening of the film, reflects the political attempt to introduce the match as a struggle between Nazi Germany and the Jews. The poster reads: "For the First Time in Tel-Aviv… The Sensational Boxing Match between the Jewish Boxing Hero and the German Boxer, Hitler's Hero… The Hands are those of Jacob over the Contemporary Esau", depicting a pair of boxing gloves, one bearing a Star of David and the other a Swastika.
63X95 cm. Good condition. Fold lines and minor blemishes. Small closed and open tears to edges. Stamp in the center. A strip of tape along the upper edge on verso. Presumably, the poster was originally published with an additional part printed separately and dedicated to another screening at the "Beit HaAm" cinema.
Jak zapobiegać chorobom zakaźnym i jak je zwalczać? [How to prevent and fight Infectious diseases?], by Dr. Stefania Silberberg. Krakow: Żydowska Samopomoc Społeczna [JSS – Jewish Social Self-Help organization], 1941. Polish.
Jewish medicine in the ghettoes is considered a one-time phenomenon in history – the establishment of a health system by persecuted victims under the threat of death. Immediately after the establishment of the first ghettos, Jewish physicians (whose percentage in the population was very high – approximately 40% of all Polish physicians on the eve of the war were Jewish) started setting up an extensive health system and before long established an efficient, disciplined infrastructure: hospitals, family healthcare centers, women's and children's medicine, social medicine, pharmacies, medical schools and even research labs.
Throughout the years of the ghettos' existence, right up to their destruction, most of the Jewish physicians continued working, providing their services to the inmates of the ghetto, even when the mortality rate of the physicians, who contracted contagious diseases, reached 20 percent.
This rare booklet provides important documentation of medical activity in the ghettos: a healthcare manual for the Jews of the ghetto, written by a Jewish physician in the Krakow ghetto. The manual, published by the JSS organization (JSS – Juedische Soziale Selbsthilfe, the only Jewish help organization given Nazi permission to operate in the Generalgouvernement area), is one of the only publications printed by Jews in the ghettos with permission (the German authorities forbade almost every Jewish publication in the area of occupied Poland). As early as June 1941, JSS representatives requested German authorities for special permission to print 50,000 copies, and after several months received a limited approval to print 10,000 copies to be distributed through the branches of the organization in the various ghettos (see enclosed material).
The manual begins with a short introduction on the subject of bacteria, epidemics and vaccines, followed by three chapters dedicated each to a different disease: Typhus fever (Tyfus plamisty), Typhoid (Tyfus Brzuszny) and Dysentery (Czerwonka) – three common diseases that killed thousands of the Jews in ghettos throughout the war.
The author, physician Stefania Silberberg, is mentioned in several listings on the "Yad Vashem" and the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum websites, and in a list of deceased from Krakow printed in the medical journal Przeglad Lekarski (issue no. 1, July 1945). The listings indicate that Stefania was born in 1898 in Krakow to parents named Hermann and Adela and was a bacteriologist by training. In 1942 she was presumably sent to her death at the Belzec or Treblinka extermination camp.
Rare booklet. Not in OCLC.
14 pp, approx. 23 cm. Good condition. A few stains and blemishes, mostly to cover. Rusty staples.
The Onchan internment camp was one of the eleven camps established by the British on the Isle of Man during World War II. The camps were established because the British feared that enemy aliens in England – citizens of Germany, Austria and Italy, will remain loyal to their homelands and when the hour of reckoning comes they will turn their back on their new country. Although most of those "enemy aliens" were Jews who escaped the Nazis during the 1930s, the British decided to imprison them indiscriminately and in 1940, started deporting them to the internment camps on the Isle of Man.
The high percentage of intellectuals among the exiles led to a rapid growth of cultural life in the camps on the isle, each of which developed its individual character. In two of the camps, Onchan and Hutchinson, the number of artists was especially high. Although the artists of the Onchan camp were less known, they were politically active (among them were Heinz Edgar Kiewe, Frederick Henri Kay Henrion and Jack Bilbo), arranged exhibitions and even established an art school that gave classes in painting, sculpting, typography and fashion design.
This Hanukkah lamp was made by one of the prisoners at the Onchan camp. The lamp is modern in style and may have been made by a student of the camp's art school. On a wooden plaque on verso, a handwritten English inscription reads: "Just as a little token of friendship (for lack of other expressions), almost your son, Amram Jacobson. Onchan Internment Camp, April 1941".
Maximum height: approx. 13 cm. Maximum width: approx. 29 cm. Good condition. Blemishes and scratches to the wood. Scratches and some rust to the oil fonts.
This collection contains approximately 180 paper items, printed and handwritten, documenting the work of the architect responsible for Jewish property in Epernay during the Aryanization, Pierre Hennequin. The documents are divided into ten numbered files, each dedicated to the property of a different Jewish family, documenting its expropriation.
Each file contains a small booklet, written in a tight, neat hand, containing a detailed appraisal of the properties and information about them – records of the land registry office, previous owners, the value of the land, required repairs and the income expected from the property. Alongside the booklets, the files also contain architectural drawings (drawn in ink on tracing papers), drafts, correspondence with officials of the ministry of Jewish affairs of the Marne district (Préfecture de la Marne – Affaires Juives) and other documents (many of which are stamped with Vichy Government stamps).
Most of the files contain information about the various businesses and the Jewish families, with some also documenting the Jews' responses and their attempts to defend themselves from the expropriation. Thus, for example, in a letter from April 1945, Hennequin informs the authorities that the Loezer family refused him entry to their property, claiming they had closed their store and now the property serves as living quarters; in another letter, Hennequin states that the Emerique family, whose property he was required to appraise, were his clients in the years before the war, requesting not to take part in the appraisal and sale of their house. Among the names of Jewish property owners: Marcel Michel Levy, Gustave Bader, Isidor Dreyfus, Gaston Amselle, Gabriel Simon David, Levy Germain, Samuel Samuel and others.
The collection also includes several documents unrelated to the property of a specific family: an announcement about an appointment from 4.2.1942; an instructional booklet specifying how to make the reports towards the expropriation; an announcement from the period after the war (dated by stamp to 4.12.1945) stating that architects who worked in the property expropriation program will have to return the profits from their work; and more.
Aryanization was the name given in Nazi Germany to the process of removing Jews from the economy and transferring their property to Aryan hands. In France, the Germans started applying the new policy almost immediately after the occupation, and by October 1941 published a regulation ordering the appointment of Aryan supervisors for Jewish businesses. Shortly afterwards, in February 1941, the supervisors were permitted to sell the properties they were responsible for. The new situation attracted many German and French opportunists, who competed for achieving control over Jewish properties (sold for a pittance). In order to assist the buyers in appraising the properties, professional architects were appointed, who made a full examination of the Jewish houses and provided a detailed report. During the Aryanization, most of the Jews of France – craftsmen and owners of small businesses – were disowned of their only source of income and became penniless. Only in late 1944, after the invasion of the Allies and the liberation of Paris, it was decided to return the properties to their original owners. Only half of the Jewish property owners took back their houses by the early 1950s.
A total of approx. 180 paper items. Size and condition vary. Good overall condition.
"Protection certificate" indicating that its owner is under the protection of the Swedish Red Cross. At the bottom of the third page, beneath the names of the owner and his family members, appears the handwritten signature of the Righteous among the Nations Valdemar Langlet.
This "protection certificate", designed like a passport, was diplomatically invalid (the Red Cross organization was not authorized to grant protection and international law did not require the various countries to honor its decisions). Nevertheless, the issuer of the certificate, the chairman of the Swedish Red Cross in Hungary Valdemar Langlet, was able to convince the authorities that they must take into consideration the protection certificates he had granted, and throughout the war, issued thousands of documents of this kind. In order to increase the "official" impression of these certificates, their covers were designed to resemble a passport (with a red cross in its center and the title in three languages), the leaves were stamped with various stamps and a string in the colors of the Swedish nation – yellow and blue – was threaded between them.
Presumably, this certificate was designated to grant protection to its owner's wife, Margit Kohn, and their 12-year-old daughter, Maria, as well. Appearing on the fourth page are the personal details of the owner, and on the rest of the pages, forms for extending the protection (blank). The certificate is numbered 309/944.
Valdemar Langlet (1872-1960), a journalist, diplomat and an early Esperantist. In 1932, he was hired as a lecturer by the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. With the change of the political situation in Hungary, Langlet and his wife, Nina Borovko, decided to offer assistance to their persecuted acquaintances (Jews and non-Jews alike), and dedicated themselves to this cause. At first, they only assisted their acquaintances, but gradually extended their humanitarian work until it became an enterprise that rescued thousands. In March 1944, Langlet succeeded in being appointed the chairman of the Swedish Red Cross, and although the position did not give him any real authority, he started issuing thousands of protection certificates to the persecuted. In order to give the impression that these documents were valid, Langlet used his talent, connections and reputation to design official-looking documents. For his actions to save Jews during the Holocaust, Langlet was recognized, in 1965, as Righteous Among the Nations.
8 pp, 15 cm. Good condition. Stains and creases. Peeling marks to second page (possibly, a photograph or mounted piece of paper were removed from this page). Pencil notations to last page and inside back cover. Abrasions and minor blemishes to cover (mostly to spine and corners).
This ledger is an early documentation of the extermination of European Jewry during the Holocaust. In order to release agunot and agunim, the rabbis were required to thoroughly research the methods of extermination used by the Nazis, and they carefully examined the chances of survival from the various incidents. These rabbis were the first to collect testimonies from Holocaust survivors, very soon after the war ended, while the memories were still fresh and raw (see: E. Farbstein, BeSeter Raam, pp. 311-334).
The marriage permits in the ledger are numbered in ascending order: 476-559. The name of the subject of the permit is inscribed at the top of the page, followed by a transcription of the testimony, signed by the rabbis who received it, and concluding with the permit to remarry, with the signatures of the rabbis issuing it. The signees include: R. Yoel Heilpern, R. Yisrael Aryeh Zelmanovitz, R. Yissachar Berish Rubin and R. Yitzchak Glickman.
These testimonies mention all the types of circumstances and atrocities of the Holocaust: the roundups and selections, ghetto liquidations and death marches, gas chambers and crematoriums, death by starvation and shooting, and more. One of the testimonies describes a fictitious marriage arranged in the ghetto, in an attempt to avoid being deported to the camps. Another one attests that there was not a single survivor from the barrack of sick inmates in Auschwitz. One of the testimonies describes how the husband informed a fellow inmate of his name and origin, moments before he was killed, stating that he has a wife and two children. Another testimony reports of a man who died during a death march, yet they were unable to bury him, since they were compelled to keep on marching, and other atrocious incidents which were the bitter fate of the Jews in the extermination camps. The testimonies document Jews from various cities and areas in Poland and Lithuania: Warsaw, Kraków, Łódź, Lublin, Lviv, Białystok, Piotrków, Chrzanów, Elkish (Olkusz), Vilna and more; who were sent to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Majdanek, Bergen Belsen, Stutthoff, Ravensbrück and other camps. The testimonies also include mentions of the ghettos of Warsaw, Łódź, Białystok and others.
Signature and stamp of R. Yisrael Aryeh Zelmanovitz on the cover, as well as the stamp of the Bergen Belsen Beit Din.
These rabbis worked in collaboration with R. Shlomo David Kahana of Warsaw, who resided in Jerusalem, and was one of the central figures working to release agunot and agunim following the Holocaust. Rav Kahana is mentioned repeatedly in this ledger as the one they consulted in regard to issuing marriage permits.
R. Yoel Heilpern of Jasło, son of Rebbe Matityah Chaim of Dobshitz and son-in-law of R. Elimelech Rubin of Jasło. His three children perished in the Holocaust, and he miraculously survived. Following the Holocaust, he served as rabbi in the Bergen Belsen camp, working industriously to find solutions for the agunot. In 1948, he immigrated to the United States, where he served as rabbi in Brownsville, Brooklyn. He authored Osef Takanot Agunot.
R. Yisrael Aryeh Zelmanovitz, elder Sanz Chassid, one of the first disciples of Rebbe Yekutiel Halberstam of Sanz-Klausenburg. Following the Holocaust, he served as rabbi in the Bergen Belsen camp, and later immigrated to Eretz Israel where he served as rabbi of various cities – first in Yavne, then in Kiryat Sanz, Netanya, in Akko, and finally, in Bnei Brak. He authored the Chayei Nefesh series.
R. Yissachar Berish Rubin, descendant of Rebbe Yeshaya Steiner ("R. Yeshayale of Kerestir") and son-in-law of R. Chaim Meisels of Sarwasch. Following the Holocaust, he immigrated to the United States, where he served as rebbe of Kerestir.
R. Yitzchak Glickman, disciple of leading Polish Torah scholars – R. Meir Shapiro of Lublin and R. Meir Arik. After the Holocaust, he served as rabbi in the Bergen Belsen camp, and following his immigration to Eretz Israel, as rabbi of Holon. His book Resisei Torah (Holon 1992) includes responsa by Rav Kahana on the topic of agunot, from his tenure as member of the Beit Din for agunot in Bergen Belsen. In his book Shoa UTekuma, he published lectures and studies on the Holocaust, and in his book Birkat Emunah, he discusses at length the commandment of Kiddush HaShem and how to relate to the Holocaust and current events.
Additional inscriptions at the beginning and end of the ledger.
Written in a German technical ledger, put here to secondary use.
[68] leaves, over 100 written pages. 29.5 cm. Good-fair condition. Stains and wear. Several tears. Worn and stained cardboard cover.