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 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.
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).
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.