Auction 86 - Part I - Rare & Important Items
- (-) Remove antisemit filter antisemit
- (-) Remove antisemitism, filter antisemitism,
- holocaust (4) Apply holocaust filter
Between 1507 and 1509, the Jewish apostate Johannes Pfefferkorn published a number of anti-Jewish tracts; considering Jewish books, and especially the Talmud, to be "the source of all evil", he called to have them seized and destroyed. Due to his efforts, in 1509, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I ordered the confiscation of Jewish books by authorized agents. Pfefferkorn, in his capacity as the Frankfurt agent, immediately began carrying out the order. The confiscation of Jewish books aroused the opposition of several German scholars, who claimed that Christian truth was hidden in Jewish sources. The debate that developed eventually led the emperor to rescind the order.
This book is unique in being an anti-Jewish work printed by one of the leading Hebrew printers in Italy, Gershom Soncino. The book, authored by the Friar Minor Pietro Colonna Galatino, shows that Jewish texts contain hints pertaining to the Christian doctrine. Perhaps Soncino agreed to print this work, which attacks his own religion, since it could be used to support the claims of those who opposed Pfefferkorn (thus protecting Jewish books – and in particular the Talmud).
The book contains many Biblical and Talmudic quotes in Hebrew. First page of each chapter within woodcut border (this border was used in the title pages of various Hebrew books printed by Gershom Soncino, such as Kol Bo, Rimini 1525-1526).
Gershom Soncino, one of the leading Hebrew printers, wandered with his printing equipment through various Italian cities. He printed three books in Ortona, including one in Hebrew. This is the first book he printed in Ortona.
CCCXI, [1] leaves. 30 cm. Good condition. Stains. Minor wear. Minor worming. Minor marginal tears to title page. Stamps. Early parchment binding, damaged. Large open tear to front board. Spine and back board (together with several leaves) partially detached.
The book comprises the text of Birkat HaMazon in Hebrew, with Latin translation and commentary, alongside an "emended" Christian version of passages of Birkat HaMazon, in which Jewish motifs were exchanged for Christian-Messianic motifs. This is followed by text in Hebrew and Latin – "What Prevents Jews from Believing", a shortened version of an antisemitic essay published by Paul Fagius in Sepher Aemana.
Paul Fagius (1504-1549), Lutheran scholar and Hebraist, studied theology and Hebrew in the Heidelberg and Strasbourg Universities, and was ordained for priesthood. In 1537, he returned to Isny (where he had served as teacher and principal of the Latin school several years earlier), and dedicated himself to teaching Hebrew to students of theology; the pinnacle of his activities was the establishment of the first printing firm in Germany with Hebrew type, in which he published his books, including commentaries to the Bible and other Torah books, books on Hebrew grammar, and his Latin translations of Hebrew works. The printing firm played an important role in furthering Protestant Hebraic studies, which flourished during the Reformation.
R. Eliyahu Ashkenazi "HaBachur" (1469-1549) served as proofreader in Fagius's press, where he printed HaTishbi and other books on Hebrew grammar. One of the Hebrew books printed by Fagius was the missionary book Sepher Aemana, which is presented as the work of a Jew proving the veracity of Christianity, though it was presumably composed by Fagius himself.
[32] pages (gatherings: A-C4, A4). 21 cm. Good condition. Stains. Many handwritten Latin inscriptions. New leather binding.
The Schutz-Pass attests that the bearer enjoys the protection of the Kingdom of Sweden. Hand signed by the Swedish ambassador Carl Ivan Danielsson and bearing the inked stamps of the Swedish Embassy in Budapest. In the lower left corner there is an additional hand signature – albeit one apparently made swiftly, and not readily decipherable – that of Raoul Wallenberg.
Alongside the certificate is a letter which was issued the same day. The serial number of the certificate – 9582 – also appears in the margin of the letter. The letter contains a clarification in Hungarian, explaining that the bearer of the certificate is to be treated as a Swedish subject, and is therefore exempt from the obligation of wearing an identifying label, namely the notorious Yellow Badge. This letter bears Raoul Wallenberg's full signature.
Evidently, the certificate and letter were held together with a paper clip, and were meant to be carried together.
The actions of the Swedish Embassy in Budapest on behalf of the Jews of Hungary began shortly after the Nazi German conquest of Hungary in 1944. Carl Danielsson, the Swedish ambassador, issued temporary Swedish passports specifically to Hungarian Jews with relatives or commercial relations with Swedish subjects. In July 1944, after large numbers of Hungarian Jews had already been deported to Auschwitz, Raoul Wallenberg was dispatched on behalf of the Swedish Foreign Office to Budapest to assist in the rescue of the city's remaining Jews. For the most part, the Hungarian and German authorities honored the diplomatic standing of the Swedish Embassy, and Wallenberg managed to issue thousands of "Schutz-Passes" that offered reliable protection to their Jewish bearers, despite the fact that they lacked any legal status. Wallenberg did not make do with the issuing of these passes, and resorted to additional measures in his attempts to save Hungarian Jews; among other things, he opened shelters to house Jewish refugees, and applied various forms of pressure upon senior officials in the Nazi regime to halt the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz. According to a number of eyewitness accounts, he would arrive in time at the train stations where Jews were being concentrated for deportation to Auschwitz, and demand that all those ostensibly carrying the "Schutz-Passes" be allowed to get off the train. In 1966, the honorific of "Righteous among the Nations" was bestowed upon Raoul Wallenberg by Israel's Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
The name "Ernő Major" which appears on the present "Schutz-Pass" and its accompanying letter can also be found in the list of Jewish survivors from the city of Budapest in the Database of Holocaust Survivor and Victim Names of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.
"Schutz-Pass": [1] f., approx. 34 cm. Letter: [1] f., approx. 15X21 cm. Good condition. Fold lines and creases. Foxing (from paper clips). Minute tears to edges and along fold lines. "Schutz-Pass" without passport photo, and with abrasions to paper in space allotted for the photo.
Collection comprising some 25 items dealing with various aspects of the story of Leo Frank, an American Jew convicted in the 1913 murder of the young girl Mary Phagan, in Atlanta, Georgia, in the American Deep South, and subsequently lynched by an organized mob. The collection includes a postcard with a photograph showing Frank's hanged body; a piano roll for a player piano, with the melody of a ballad written about the murder; extensive legal correspondence dating from the 1980s regarding the struggle led by the Anti-Defamation League to exonerate Frank (letters and memoranda), and more. United States, 20th century. English.
The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank: A Modern Blood Libel
Lynchings and violent expressions of racial discrimination against Afro-Americans were routine occurrences in the American Deep South in the early 20th century. Savage acts of anti-Semitism such as the Leo Frank Affair were, in contrast, quite rare. A toxic mixture of hatreds – racism, anti-Semitism, tensions between disparate socioeconomic groups, mutual loathing between "traditional Southerners" and "progressive Yankees" from the North – was brought to bear, and Frank's brutal lynching was the tragic result.
The story began to unfold on April 27, 1913, when the body of 13-year-old Mary Phagan was found in the cellar of the pencil factory where she worked and from where she had been fired days earlier. The body was discovered by the factory's night watchman, Newt Lee, and he was the one who summoned the police. One day before that, Phagan had returned to the factory to claim her final salary, only to be robbed, raped, and brutally murdered on the spot. A number of suspects were arrested; the prime suspects were Lee, the night watchman, and Jim Conley, the factory's janitor – both Afro-Americans – and the company manager, Leo Frank, a well-to-do Jew who had been raised and educated in New York. The police investigation was badly mishandled, and was tainted by anti-Northern resentment and anti-Semitism. Following several months of investigation, Frank was put on trial, charged with murder. The prosecution based its case on dubious testimonies regarding Frank's "inappropriate" behavior and his allegedly suspicious conduct the day after the murder, and most notably, on the word of Conley, the janitor, who testified that he had assisted Frank in moving the body from the floor where she was murdered to the cellar.
The trial was the subject of extensive media coverage that reached all parts of the United States. The print media highlighted the sensationalist aspects of the case, and heaped criticism on the police from a number of different directions, on one hand addressing the problematic nature of the process that led to the murder charge, and, on the other hand, putting pressure on the police to bring about a swift conviction. In Georgia itself, the trial – and even more so, the reports and headlines in the news media – led to a surging wave of anti-Semitism, alongside a vitriolic campaign of hatred aimed personally at Frank. The fact that the primary suspects in the murder were all either Jewish or Afro-American created an atmosphere of tension between the two communities.
On August 28, 1913, the trial jury found Leo Frank guilty as charged, and he was sentenced to death. Notwithstanding the outsized influence of public opinion – heavily tainted by anti-Semitic sentiments – on the jury's decision, and despite the many flaws and irregularities in the investigative and judicial proceedings, Frank's appeals were all dismissed, one after another. Frank's death sentence, was, however, commuted by Georgia's governor, John Slaton, to life imprisonment (the commutation infuriated the public, and essentially ended Slaton's political career), and he was consequently sent to prison.
In the summer of 1915, Frank was stabbed by a fellow inmate. He was severely injured, and admitted for treatment at the prison's infirmary. Several days later, following the governor's announcement of the commutation of the death sentence, a "Vigilance Committee" was convened in the city where Mary Phagan was born, Marietta (northwest of Atlanta). The dozens of members of the Committee represented all sectors of society, including prominent public officials (such as Georgia's former governor, policemen, and the mayor). The Committee decided to subject Frank to a lynching in order to show, in their words, "that a sense of justice lives among the people." In a meticulously well-orchestrated and well-executed operation, they broke into the prison, kidnapped Frank – still hospitalized in the prison's infirmary – and brought him to Marietta, where they hanged him in broad daylight. The incident, attended at one point by many hundreds of onlookers, was documented in photographs. The names of the numerous perpetrators were known to all, but not a single one of them was prosecuted. Many viewed the lynching as the natural outcome of "popular justice, " and celebrated it as a notable achievement. Frank's body was sent for burial in New York.
Among other consequences, the incident led to a mass exodus of Jews from Georgia and the establishment of the Anti-Defamation League by the B'nai B'rith organization. But there were darker consequences as well; the lynching also triggered the re-establishment of the Ku Klux Klan at the hands of a group that called itself "The Knights of Mary Phagan." The organization continues to exist in this incarnation till this day.
The Posthumous Pardon
In 1982, an affidavit was published in the American newspaper "The Tennessean." It was given by Alonzo Mann, who, as a teenager, had worked for Leo Frank in the pencil factory, and was one of the witnesses who had testified in the original trial. In the affidavit, Mann provided new details regarding the murder – details that would identify Mary Phagan's true murderer asJim Conley, and thus serve to exonerate Leo Frank. Mann's new testimony set the stage for a long process, initiated by lawyers representing the Anti-Defamation League, aimed at clearing Frank's name. The bulk of the present collection consists of various legal documents and pieces of legal correspondence related to the ADL's initiative. Eventually, in 1986, this initiative reached a successful conclusion with Frank being granted a full posthumous pardon, owing to the failure of the state to fulfill its duty to protect him from his murderers – this despite the fact that he was never actually absolved of his guilty verdict in the murder of Mary Phagan.
Included in the present collection:
• "Souvenir postcard" with photo showing Frank's hanged body shortly after the lynching. Postcards of this sort, featuring different photographs from the scene of the lynching, were sold as souvenirs for years after the incident, as were other forms of "memorabilia, " including strips cut from the clothing worn by Frank at the time, and pieces of the hanging rope or noose (early decades of the 20th century).
• Booklet issued by the Rhodes' Colossus factory of Atlanta in support of Leo Frank, decrying the injustice of his conviction (1915).
• A piano roll for a player piano, with the melody of the ballad "Little Mary Phagan" relating the tale of the murder (1925). The ballad's lyrics are printed alongside the perforations on the rolled sheet.
• Issues of the newspapers "The New York Times" (June 22, 1915) and "The Denver Express" (May 27, 1915) containing news items relating to the incident.
• Vol. No. 10 of "American State Trials, " containing extensive coverage of the trial of Leo Frank. This volume was published as part of a series of books documenting the most famous of America's criminal trials. Edited by John D. Lawson, published by F.H. Thomas Law Book Co., St. Louis, Missouri, 1918.
• Copy of a document containing a list of the names of the members of the legal committee established for the purpose of clearing Frank's name ("Lawyers' Committee – Leo M. Frank"), chaired by Dale Schwartz. [1982?]
• Approximately 20 copies of letters and memoranda (apparently, formerly in the possession of Gary Jackson, an attorney and judge) pertaining to efforts to clear Frank's name – efforts that began roughly seventy years after the lynching: letters and memoranda issued by individuals representing the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and various lawyers, most of them working for the legal firm Troutman, Sanders, Lockerman & Ashmore of Atlanta, Georgia; letters and memoranda written by the attorney Dale Schwartz, as well as letters and memoranda received by him and by others – letters from various legal experts, reports on the progress of the legal proceedings, and legal strategy of the "Lawyers' Committee" (perhaps most notable among them is a letter from attorney Lewis H. Weinstein – renowned for his part in the successful clearing of the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti many years after their execution in Massachusetts – in which he offers advice regarding the legal efforts to clear Frank's name). Taken together, all the above documents clearly reveal the sequence of events in the process leading up to the pardon.
One of the letters sent by attorney Dale Schwartz was addressed to Lewis Slaton, District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia (which includes most of the municipal area of Atlanta) and is dated April 8, 1982. The letter was sent following a meeting that took place the previous day, in which Schwartz and his colleagues – Charles Wittenstein and Sidney Feldman – discussed the matter of clearing Frank's name with the District Attorney. In the letter, Schwartz argues that in light of the recent affidavit delivered by Alonzo Mann, one of the original witnesses in the trial, it has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Leo Frank did not murder Mary Phagan. In an intriguing memorandum dated June, 1982, Dale Schwartz lays out the full course of action to be adopted in the legal campaign seeking Leo Frank's pardon. In another important letter, dated March 21, 1986, attorney Gary Jackson thanks the Governor of the State of Georgia, for granting Leo Frank a posthumous pardon.
• A copy of the official application (dated December 9, 1982) requesting a posthumous pardon, submitted to the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. The application was jointly submitted by three organizations, namely the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the American Jewish Committee, and the Atlanta Jewish Federation.
Also enclosed:
• A glass Coca-Cola bottle bearing the inscription "Leo Frank Innocent" on its label (2015, English).
• A color picture showing the victim of a lynching in the American South, enclosed in an envelope bearing the message "WARNING The enclosed photograph is very disturbing" (contemporary anti-racist promotional material).
Size and condition vary.
References:
• Elaine Alphin, "Unspeakable Crime: the Prosecution and Persecution of Leo Frank, " Carolrhoda Books, Minneapolis / New York, 2014.
• Jeffrey Melnick, "Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South, " University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 2000.