The Undercover Operation to Rescue the Crown of Damascus
The incredible story of how a priceless Hebrew manuscript written nearly 600 years ago was smuggled out of Syria and eventually brought to the National Library of Israel
Had someone predicted decades ago that Judy Feld Carr would help to smuggle an invaluable, centuries-old book out of Syria — to say nothing of delivering thousands of the country’s Jews from a dictatorship to freedom — “I’d tell you you’re mad,” the Toronto resident said in a telephone call in the waning days of 2024. “I taught the music of the Catholic church of the 14th century. If you could tell me how that [leads] to Syria, you’re better than me!”
Feld Carr utilized similarly colorful language when asked whether she has any Syrian heritage.
“Are you kidding? My father was from Russia, my mother was from Brooklyn, Ashkenazi, and I grew up in northern Canada,” she said.
Judy Feld Carr and the Damascus Keter she helped rescue from Syria, photographed by Orah Buck in Toronto, 1993
Yet Feld Carr, a musicologist by training, became indispensable in facilitating the smuggling of the book, an artistic Hebrew manuscript of the Bible, from Syria to Canada and on to Israel in 1993.
This particular book was originally written in Italy in the 15th century. It was transferred to Spain shortly afterwards, but after the edict of expulsion the book made its way to the Ottoman Empire. It was sold among the communities of Jewish exiles and eventually ended up in Damascus.
It is one of twelve Hebrew manuscripts that have come to be known as the Damascus Keters. Today the Keters are part of the National Library of Israel’s permanent exhibition, “A Treasury of Words,” where culturally priceless works reside. The word keter is Hebrew for “crown.”
Feld Carr first learned of the Damascus Keter in July 1993 while in Jerusalem with her husband, Don Carr — the couple had an apartment in the city — when they met a curator at the Israel Museum as the renowned Aleppo Codex was being restored.
The curator asked Feld Carr if she knew about the Damascus Keter or had any ideas for getting it out of Syria. Feld Carr called Shlomo Gal, a senior Mossad official, at his home on a Friday afternoon. He berated her, urging her instead to continue bringing Syrian Jews to freedom. (Harold Troper’s 2007 book about her, The Rescuer: The Amazing True Story of How One Woman Helped Save the Jews of Syria, can also be found at the National Library.)
Feld Carr recalled that she heard “from my underground sources” that the Keter resided in a shul in Damascus. That launched her quest to bring it out of Syria, since she understood that the Jewish community there would soon be almost non-existent. “The issue was to find it and get it out. My husband said, ‘You’re crazy. How can you get it?’ That was July. In September, I had it,” Feld Carr said.
A page from the Damascus Keter that Judy Feld Carr helped rescue
How did she do it? During two phone calls and subsequent e-mails, Feld Carr provided few names or details, but did say she worked her contacts in Canada’s foreign ministry and communicated with the Damascus Jewish community’s chief rabbi, Avraham Hamra. Feld Carr said she “paid nothing to anybody to get out the Keter.”
A Middle East specialist in the Canadian government agreed to be the conduit, she said. On a visit to Damascus, he passed Hamra on a street. Hamra surreptitiously handed off the Keter, and the man put it in his raincoat and continued on. The man then visited at least one other Arab country before returning to Canada, the Keter resting in a black shopping bag. Feld Carr went in November to Ottawa, where they met in the man’s office and then headed to lunch.
That’s when Feld Carr first saw the book and held it. It seemed too modest to be the heralded Keter. “I showed disappointment,” she conceded. “ ‘This is what it is?’ It was small” — about 11”x14” — “on the thinnest vellum paper.”
She went on to the Israeli embassy to see Itzhak Shelef, the ambassador. She didn’t have an appointment. He held the book and “was sobbing like a baby,” she recalled. “He said, ‘This may be the Damascus Keter.’”
Feld Carr flew back to Toronto and asked a photographer to come to her home to take pictures of the Keter — without a flash, outdoors. She mailed the photographs to the Israel Museum. After Gal saw the pictures, he “sent me a lovely written message that it was the Keter,” she said.
Hamra, on a visit to Toronto, visited Feld Carr. She gave him the Keter and urged him to donate it to the National Library when he moved to Israel in 1994, which he did.
The text of this particular keter is arranged in two columns, each with 36 lines. It features quadratic Sephardic script, with the text of the Masorah arranged in beautiful geometric patterns around the biblical text.
A page from the Damascus Keter that Judy Feld Carr helped rescue
Interestingly, the Book of Esther is known here as the Book of Ahasuerus, named after the Persian king featured in the story (Xerxes, אחשורוש).
The Book of Ahasuerus, instead of the Book of Esther
Hamra later sought to retrieve the Keter and took the case to court in Israel, but the decision in 2020 went in favor of the NLI. The dispute led Hamra to cut off contact with Feld Carr. Hamra died in 2021.
“He was like a brother — that’s how close we were,” she said. “I lost his friendship.”
Feld Carr said she has no regrets.
“The Keter is here for eternity, in terms of Jewish life,” she said. “The book is where it should be. It has to be in the library.”
Another one of the twelve Damascus Keters, currently on display as part of the National Library of Israel’s permanent exhibition – “A Treasury of Words“
A page torn from the manuscript of Franz Kafka’s "The Castle" has been revealed for the first time. What is written on that missing page? Who tore it out? Why would anyone want to keep it hidden?
A portrait of Franz Kafka and an AI-generated castle
Franz Kafka passed away from tuberculosis in a sanatorium in 1924, leaving behind a note addressed to his best friend, Max Brod.
Kafka’s “will”, which was found on that note, was unequivocal: Brod was to collect all of his writings and burn them. He was not to leave a trace behind. However, when the moment came, Brod betrayed Kafka. Though Kafka’s suffered from low self-esteem and did not think much of his own writing, Brod recognized Kafka’s genius from the very first time they met as university students. Not only did Brod not burn the manuscripts – he began editing them and preparing them for publication.
One of these was the manuscript that would become the novel The Castle, a story that would change the way we write about and describe modern life. Had it not been for Brod’s intervention, it would have vanished into oblivion.
Just as Brod and Kafka were intertwined in life, so too were their archives – both of them eventually arriving at the National Library of Israel, after a lengthy legal saga. Among the many items now being revealed to the public for the first time in the exhibition “Kafka: Metamorphosis of an Author“, is a rare page containing a scene that was omitted from The Castle, shedding further light on this influential work.
Kafka’s first will.The Max Brod Archive at the National Library of Israel, photographed by Ardon Bar-Hama, with the generous support of George Blumenthal, New York.
Behind the Castle Walls
The plot of The Castle focuses on K., a land surveyor who is sent to take up a post in a tiny village nestled in a mountainous landscape. The village is located at the foot of a high castle that manages all the bureaucracy of the village and its surroundings but is completely inaccessible to the villagers.
K. tries to figure out who he needs to speak with in order to carry out his duty but finds himself running around between various strange functionaries– from the village council chairman to a clerk named Klamm, and to the other villagers who are all completely disconnected from what goes on in the castle but are eager to offer their own speculative interpretations. K. becomes increasingly convinced that he must approach the castle, but his ideas are not well-received by the villagers, who believe that the people in the castle must be justified in their actions and should not be disturbed with trivial matters. K. continues to try, in vain, to understand what exactly he is expected to do, why he was sent to this village, and who he is supposed to speak with in order to understand these details.
A figure riding on the edge of a cliff, drawn by Franz Kafka, the Max Brod Archive at the National Library of Israel, photographed by Ardon Bar-Hama, with the generous support of George Blumenthal, New York
The Wheels of Bureaucracy Grind Slowly
A torn page found in the archives describes a scene that was omitted from the Kafkaesque plot of The Castle. In this scene, K. arrives at the home of the village council chairman, who is there lying in bed because he is ill. The chairman delivers a speech about the importance of bureaucracy, which cannot make mistakes because the entire bureaucratic system is designed to facilitate the best possible decision being taken. And if it does not produce the best decision, the oversight office is there to ensure that the bureaucratic mechanism continues to grind on. Or, in Kafka’s sharp words, the purpose of bureaucracy is to continue striving toward the most correct decision, but never actually reach it:
Then K. said, as he rose and held in his hand the crumpled letter from Klamm: “I wish I had enthusiastic supporters or enthusiastic enemies up in the castle, but unfortunately, there is no one from whom I can hear an unequivocal ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ And even so, I must find such a person. You’ve already given me a few ideas about how I can do so.”
“I had no such intention,” the village chairman said to K. with a laugh, as he shook hands in farewell. “But it was very nice to talk with you. It really eases my conscience. Perhaps we will meet again soon.”
“It’s safe to assume that there will be a need for me to come,” K. said, bending down toward Mitzi the cat. He cautiously reached out to pet her, but Mitzí backed away with a small meow of fear and hid under a pillow.
The chairman petted Mitzi lovingly. “You’re always welcome,” he said, perhaps to help K. cope with Mitzí’s behavior, but then he added, “Especially now, when I am ill. When I recover and can return to my desk, we can assume that my official work will require all my attention.”
“Do you mean to say,” K. asked, “that you weren’t speaking with me officially even today?” The chairman replied, “Of course I wasn’t speaking with you officially. You could call it a semi-official conversation.”
“You don’t appreciate unofficial matters enough, as I’ve already said, but you also underestimate official matters,” the village chairman said. “An official decision is not like this bottle of medicine that sits here on the table. You can’t just take it and get your answer. A true official decision requires countless small considerations, deliberations, and checks. That requires years of work by the very best clerks, even if in some cases, the clerks already know at the start what the final decision will be.
And will there even be a final decision? That’s why there are oversight offices, to prevent the possibility of one appearing.”
“Well, fine,” said K., “everything is exceptionally organized, who could doubt that? You described it in such an enticing manner that now I can’t help but make every effort to learn about it to the finest detail.”
K. left after saying goodbye to the staff, and as he did, a wave of whispers and hushed laughter was heard behind him.
He returned to the inn. In his room, he found a surprise: The room had been thoroughly cleaned. Frieda had worked diligently and greeted him with a kiss on the threshold of the door. The room was well-ventilated, the stove was emanating heat, the floor had been washed, the bed was made, and the servants’ belongings, including their pictures, were gone. A new picture was now hanging on the wall above the bed.
K. approached the new picture hanging on the wall.
A page from the manuscript of the novel The Castle, 1922, the National Library, Max Brod Archive, photographed by Ardon Bar-Hama, with the generous support of George Blumenthal, New York
“We believe that the person who tore out the page was Max Brod himself,” says Stefan Litt, curator of the Humanities Collection at the National Library of Israel. “Because it was torn out at a very early stage. You can understand why—the scene is a bit subversive and strongly criticizes the bureaucratic apparatus.”
The scene not only describes the futility of the bureaucratic system as a whole but also criticizes the oversight mechanisms that are supposedly there to prevent mistakes but in reality, only feed into the inefficient process that crushes and tramples the average citizen.
“The reason why this scene wasn’t included in the final work,” says Litt, “might be that Brod was trying to ensure the draft remained faithful to the final product, and therefore, this page was torn out of Kafka’s notebook.”
Despite the attempts to erase it, the torn page and the omitted scene were preserved in the archives, and are now being displayed to the public for the first time, as part of the unique exhibition entitled “Kafka: Metamorphosis of an Author” at the National Library. The exhibition showcases rare handwritten items, drafts and letters by Franz Kafka, an author who changed the very face of Western literature.
Ghosts, Evil Spirits and Kabbalistic Teachings: A Very Ashkenazi Christmas
"Nittel Nacht" is an Ashkenazi Jewish term for Christmas Eve. Although it is certainly not a Jewish holiday, it has, in very particular Jewish communities, become a night marked by strange and even provocative customs. Where did these Nittel Nacht traditions come from, and how are they connected to historical attempts to protect oneself from the forces of darkness?
As much of the world celebrates Christmas, certain Hasidic communities will mark “Nittel Nacht.” The term “Nittel” derives from the Latin natalis for “Christmas.” These Nittel customs were once widespread among Ashkenazi Jews and have been documented for at least 500 years. However, following immigration to Israel, these traditions have mostly been preserved by only a handful of Hasidic groups.
Centuries ago, on Christmas Eve, Ashkenazi Jews would typically gather in brightly lit communal spaces, play cards until sunrise, eat garlic, and avoid studying Torah. Even those who didn’t make it to the communal events and stayed home refrained from engaging in marital relations, and in some places, ritual baths (mikvehs) were locked beforehand. Another custom involved avoiding going to the outhouse, which was a separate and distant structure from one’s home back then.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, playing chess in his youth with his father-in-law Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohnin in Perchtoldsdorf, Austria, a resort town near Vienna, 1937.
Playing Cards Until Dawn
If you’re wondering where these customs originated, you’re not alone. For centuries, rabbis, scholars, and even anonymous antisemites on the internet have tried to understand them. The most common explanation is that they were intended as a display of contempt for the Christian holiday and the birth of Jesus, though he was generally not mentioned by name. However, upon deeper reflection, there are probably many more effective ways to show contempt for Christmas, even more effective than playing poker all night.
Interestingly, some of those who actually practiced “Nittel” traditions often cited a different reason: Kabbalistic teachings suggested that on that night, unholy spiritual forces were at the height of their powers, making it a very dangerous night indeed. The gatherings, light, games, and garlic were meant to repel these dark forces. It was also important to avoid engaging in Torah study during such times, because doing so when these impure forces were in the ascendance could inadvertently empower them even more.
Over the centuries, various Christian authorities often censored and erased unflattering or disrespectful references to Christian doctrine within Jewish texts, such as the Talmud. But some of these sources which remained untouched by Christian censorship explicitly stated that these forces of darkness included none other than Jesus himself. According to these traditions, on that night, Jesus would rise from the dead to roam the world and try to harm Jews who weren’t cautious. He could hurt anyone wandering alone or heading to the outhouse. They warned that a child conceived on that night would be under Jesus’ influence for life. Jesus was particularly drawn to Torah study, having been a Torah student himself during his lifetime. Therefore, since learning Torah could attract him, it was avoided on Nittel Nacht. He was said to lurk in darkness and recoil from light, laughter, and the smell of garlic. Anyone particularly observant will identify the link between classic vampire traits to the image of Jesus, as one rising from the dead.
And yet, there is something a bit strange about the description of Jesus as a vampire.
A card game at Luba’s. Photo by Boris Carmi, the Meitar Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel
The Ghost of Christmas Past?
According to scholar Rebecca Scharbach, the solution to these mysteries lies in medieval and early modern Christian Christmas customs. The cheerful, family-oriented Christmas we know today is a 19th-century British invention. Until then, Christmas Eve was considered a time when the spirits of dead sinners returned to the earth, a night when witches and demons haunted the streets trying to harm people.
On that night, Christians avoided churches and holy sites, believing these spaces were where the spirits held their own holiday services. Prayer, in general, was deemed ineffective and even dangerous. Instead, Christian believers gathered in well-lit public spaces, eating garlic and playing card games until the morning light to ward off spirits. They avoided intimacy, but a popular belief also spread that children conceived on Christmas Eve would belong to the forces of darkness or possess supernatural powers, like the ability to see ghosts.
In many places, these beliefs gave rise to some odd customs, with selected townsfolk dressing up as ghosts, witches, and various “resurrected” sinners. They would go house to house ringing bells, testing children’s knowledge of religious texts. Good children received sweets, while rumor had it that bad children were dismembered and cooked in boiling water. If this reminds you of Halloween, that’s no coincidence – the customs are indeed related. And if this brings to mind an early version of Santa Claus, that’s because it likely is.
It might seem that the unique Jewish element in these customs was the linkage of Jesus with demonic, impure forces. But surprisingly, even this was not a Jewish invention.
In many countries, a custom was practiced according to which one person would dress up as the Christkind (the Christ-Child or Baby Jesus) and roam about on Christmas Eve. In certain villages, these customs blended with local traditions, and the figure dressed as Jesus would join the demons and spirits in the streets. While Jesus would often be dressed in white, this was not always the case, as described below by Max Toeppen and cited by Scharbach in her article:
On Christmas Eve, the so-called ‘Holy Christ’ goes around – that is, a fellow dressed in a fur pelt turned inside out and armed with a club …[or] very often he appears as a Bear, likewise wearing an inside-out fur with a sleeve left dragging as a tail. […] [He] examines the trembling children [ as to whether they know their prayers]. Those who are studious […] and can answer him well receive gifts upon his departure.
From the Dani Hadani Archive, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel
Baby Jesus Will Catch Your Big Toe
It appears that Jewish folklore recognized, adopted, and even preserved the older Christmas traditions long after they had faded from most of the world.
The German Reformation, the English Industrial Revolution, and American capitalism transformed Christmas into the holiday we know today, almost unrecognizable from what it once was, and almost all of the customs known today only go back to the last 200 years or so. Ironically, some of the only people who still observe these ancient holiday traditions belong to certain Ashkenazi Jewish communities, for whom the practices of their ancestors remain sacred. After all, as the old Jewish joke goes – what do Christians know about Christmas?
From Hitler’s Beer Hall to the National Library in Jerusalem
In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, a large number of Jewish books were discovered by the Jewish Brigade in a famous Munich beer hall considered to be the cradle of Nazism. How did the books end up there? And after they were discovered, where did some of them disappear to?
Italy, March 1945. Following a training period and many delays, thousands of soldiers from the Jewish Brigade finally arrived in northern Italy. They managed to take part in the fight against the Nazis for several weeks before World War II came to an end. Their next mission was no less important. From combat, they transitioned into carrying out rescue operations.
The Brigade (officially the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group) established its base in Tarvisio, located in the tri-border region of Italy, Austria, and Yugoslavia. Very quickly, Jewish survivors of the Holocaust began streaming into the area, having heard that there were Jewish soldiers stationed there who could help them. During June and July 1945, the Brigade soldiers worked tirelessly to help their fellow Jews and facilitate their immigration to the Land of Israel. The “Center for Europe” initiative was established, under which the Brigade units operated to rescue the remnants of European Jewry. In the Tarvisio camp, the “House for Olim” was founded to provide refugees with clothing, food, rest, encouragement, and guidance [Olim – Hebrew for Jewish immigrants to the Land of Israel]. From there, with the help of Jewish Brigade drivers, the refugees were transported to training centers in Italy and to ports where they could board Jewish immigrant ships bound for what was still Mandatory Palestine at the time.
Soldiers of the Jewish Brigade in a group photo taken during training, Fiuggi, Italy, 1944. This item is part of the Archive Network Israel project and is made available thanks to the collaborative efforts of Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage, and the National Library of Israel.
The Jewish Brigade didn’t wait for the refugees to come to them. Several delegations from the “Center for Europe” set out across liberated Europe searching for additional survivors, to help them and guide them to Italy. The first delegation embarked on June 20, 1945, for a 10-day journey during which Brigade representatives visited Bavaria and Salzburg. They went to the displaced persons camps and spoke with the Jewish residents about Zionism and immigration to the Land of Israel.
The delegation participated in a large Zionist assembly in Munich, where a survivors’ committee was established to raise awareness about aid for displaced Jews and immigration to Mandatory Palestine. Stages were constructed, flags of the Zionist movement were flown, and the pictures of the founders of Zionism were hung with slogans such as “If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem” and “If You Will It, It Is No Dream.” The Jewish audience drank it all in and listened attentively to the organizers. The many Holocaust survivors marveled at the sight of Jewish soldiers, but also expressed frustration that help had not come sooner.
The Jewish Brigade organized another assembly towards the end of July in the hospital of St. Ottilien Archabbey near Munich. The Brigade’s vehicles gathered about 100 Jewish representatives from dozens of displaced persons camps across Germany and Austria. There were also U.S. Army chaplain rabbis and Zionist representatives from the Land of Israel. Some of the speakers had harsh words about the policies of the occupying armies and their poor treatment of the survivors, who were destitute and battered. Representatives of the camps described the conditions in these facilities, and the assembly concluded with the singing of Hatikvah. After the assembly, the delegation traveled to Munich and stopped at what was known as “Hitler’s Beer Hall.”
What was the delegation looking for in Hitler’s beer hall?
The large and famous beer hall known as Bürgerbräukeller was one of a great many beer halls in the city of Munich. Some of these establishments could host thousands of people and served as meeting places for discussions, events, or political and social debates.
On the night of November 8, 1923, Adolf Hitler and his associates stormed into the Bürgerbräukeller, where the leaders of the Bavarian government were gathered. Hitler fired a shot into the air to silence the crowd, stood on a chair, and declared a “national revolution,” hoping that Munich would serve as a launching point for a swift takeover of all of Germany. From the beer hall, Hitler and his followers—accompanied by about 2,000 supporters and SA members (Nazi stormtroopers)—marched toward the Bavarian Ministry of Defense. In the ensuing gunfight with soldiers, 16 Nazis were killed. Two days after the failed coup attempt, Hitler was captured. He was tried and imprisoned in Landsberg Prison alongside other associates. During his months in prison, he devoted some of his time to writing his book Mein Kampf.
Hitler and his associates in Landsberg “Prison,” 1924
“Scattered on the floor”
The beer hall became a highly symbolic place for the Nazis, and they held annual ceremonies there to commemorate the historic event known as the “Beer Hall Putsch.” During one of these events in 1939, there was an assassination attempt on Hitler. The would-be assassin planted explosives in a column near where Hitler was standing and delivering a speech. Hitler survived because he left the beer hall earlier than scheduled. However, the explosion caused significant damage, and the hall was no longer used afterward.
The beer hall during a Nazi Party event.
The delegation of the Jewish Brigade along with the other conference participants made their way to this location, the cradle of Nazism, in July 1945. They concluded their visit with a written declaration:
“We, the survivors of the masses of European Jewry, who were exterminated as a people, whose sons and daughters fought the enemy in the forests of Europe, in the bunkers of the ghettos, in the underground movements, within the ranks of the Allied forces, the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group, and the armed service units of the Land of Israel, raise our voices as a nation and demand the immediate establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, the recognition of the Jewish People as an equal member among all the Allied nations, and its inclusion in the Peace Conference” (from The Book of the Jewish Brigade, page 384).
The document, written in Yiddish, was signed by some of those present at the beer hall in Munich.
Upon leaving the beer hall, the soldiers of the delegation held up the flag of the Zionist movement before the entrance gate. However, they did not leave empty-handed.
Soldiers of the Jewish Brigade by the entrance to the beer hall (from Aharon Hoter-Yishai’s book The Brigade and the She’erit Haplita [surviving remnant]).
One of the participants of the conference that ended in the beer hall was Rabbi Ya’akov Lipschitz, the chaplain rabbi of the Jewish Brigade, who described the event in his book The Book of the Jewish Brigade, which he wrote after the war. In a letter from July 9, 1945, which is preserved in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel, Rabbi Lipschitz wrote to the president of the Hebrew University Judah Magnes about books that he found “scattered on the floor of Hitler’s beer hall in Munich.” Most of these books apparently belonged to the Ezra Judaic Library in the city of Kraków. In his letter, Rabbi Lipschitz listed several items he collected from the beer hall and sent to the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem (which later became the National Library of Israel). He wrote:
“Our brothers and sisters in Jerusalem will study these books and fondly remember the 18,000 pure souls of the Kraków community who were annihilated by the Nazi murderers.”
Rabbi Lipschitz’s letter to Magnes
The reply from Magnes to Rabbi Lipschitz emphasizes the importance of the books that were found in the beer hall and asks the rabbi and the soldiers of the Jewish Brigade to continue with their attempts to locate books, manuscripts, archives, documents, and any other sacred objects that survived the war.
The reply from Magnes to Lipschitz
The first book listed by Rabbi Lipschitz is a Talmud – the tractates of Shabbat and Eruvin in one volume – printed in Vienna in 1806–1807. This book is indeed now part of the National Library’s collection, and in the dedication on the cover page, Rabbi Lipschitz recounts the story of how it was discovered:
“I found this book on the 17th of Tammuz, 5705, lying on the floor of Hitler’s beer hall in Munich, looted by the Nazis from the Jewish community in Kraków. Dedicated to the National and University Library in Jerusalem, as the property of the Jewish People.
Dr. Yaakov Lipschitz, Rabbi of the Jewish Brigade, Tarvisio, 28th of Tammuz, 5705”
Inside cover of the Talmud that was found in the beer hall and sent to the National Library of Israel
“Found in the office of that wicked one”
Many years passed, and in 2023, I was contacted by Yad Vashem regarding a donation that President Isaac Herzog decided to make to the organization. The item in question was a Talmud, the tractate of Pesachim, also printed in Vienna in the same year and by the same printer (Anton von Schmid). This book, too, was found in the same beer hall during the same gathering in July 1945. However, the person who retrieved this Talmud volume was Eliyahu Dobkin, a leader of the Jewish Agency who was present at the event.
Dobkin reported on the gathering during a meeting with David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann in London.
He took the Talmud from the beer hall and presented it to Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, who at the time was the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Mandatory Palestine. The Talmud remained in the family collection until the current president, Rabbi Herzog’s grandson, expressed his wish to entrust it to Yad Vashem. The inside cover of this Talmud does not have a dedication like the one in the National Library, but has a note handwritten by Rabbi Herzog:
“This book was found in the office of that wicked one—may his name and memory be erased… It was given to me by Mr. Dobkin… Two books were found there, this one and a copy of the Yad HaChazakah (the Mishneh Torah) by Rambam, of blessed memory, which was given to Dr. Chaim Weizmann, of blessed memory.”
The team at Yad Vashem tried to locate the Mishneh Torah in the Chaim Weizmann Archive, but their search yielded no results. Yad Vashem staff also visited us at the National Library to examine the book preserved here, which was also rescued from the beer hall, and to compare it with the volume in their possession.
The Talmud that President Herzog donated is currently displayed at the Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem.
The Talmud at Yad Vashem (photo from the Yad Vashem website)
The Talmud that the Herzog family entrusted to Yad Vashem reignited my curiosity about the Jewish books collected and rescued from Hitler’s beer hall. I tried to locate the other items that Rabbi Lipschitz sent to us at the National Library, according to his letter. I found several copies of the mentioned books, but none bore the stamps of the Ezra Library or had any identifying marks that could definitively link them to the items that were sent. The list also included pieces of parchment taken from a Torah scroll (containing everything from the Bereishit portion to the Vayetzei portion). The Library holds many parchment fragments of partial Torah scrolls, but we found none matching the description in the letter.
I then searched the bibliographic journal Kiryat Sefer, published by the National Library of Israel. In 1945, it mentions donations arriving from around the world, but unfortunately, there was no reference to a donation by Rabbi Lipschitz and the Jewish Brigade—not for the Torah scroll nor for the other books. Honestly, this is somewhat surprising, given that the journal lists various donations that seem far less remarkable. I tried checking the Library’s manuscript registration records. I did find that in 1945, “pages from a Torah manuscript on parchment” were received. For a moment, I was excited to see that the pages had been sent from Munich, but my enthusiasm quickly faded. The pages were found in Berlin and merely shipped from Munich. Moreover, these were handwritten pages of a Book of Torah, not fragments of a Torah scroll.
It is possible that the scroll fragments from the beer hall never made it to the Library or were sent elsewhere.
This dead end led me to a more fundamental question: How did books from the Ezra Library in Kraków even end up in Hitler’s beer hall in Munich?
To the best of our knowledge, there is no documentation of this transfer. While it is true that the Germans looted millions of books from libraries across Europe, many of them Jewish, these books were typically sent to organized and recognized research institutions in Berlin, Frankfurt, and other locations—not to destroyed beer halls. The National Library brought hundreds of thousands of books that had been stolen to Israel, tens of thousands of which are now part of our collection.
So, what do we know about the books from the Ezra Library? The Ezra Library was established in Kraków in 1899 and served the Jewish community until the Nazis occupied the city and shut down its educational and cultural institutions. With its 6,000 books, it was considered the largest public Jewish library in Kraków.
The Nazis burned numerous libraries, including those belonging to schools and synagogues. However, some of the larger collections were preserved and transferred to the Staatsbibliothek, the State Library that was opened in Kraków in April 1941 as part of an effort to bring German culture and education to the occupied territories. Most of the Jewish books from the Ezra Library were moved to the Oriental Studies Department of this library. While 2,100 books from the Ezra Library were lost in the early stages of the war, 65% survived and were transferred after the war to the Old Synagogue in Kraków.
Stamp of the Ezra Library in Kraków
What about the 2,100 lost books from the Ezra Library? It is assumed that they were stolen or destroyed. Here are some attempts to explain their disappearance:
In October 1939, Professor Peter Paulsen from the University of Berlin arrived in Poland. Over several months, he and his team looted works of art from Polish cities and sent them to Germany. He also stole books and sent them to the library of the Reich Main Security Office – the SS office that managed all internal security matters. This vast library was situated in Berlin, so even if books from the Ezra Library were taken this way, they were likely not sent to Munich. Another academic institution that stole books from Jewish libraries was the Institute for the Study of the History of the New Germany in Berlin. This institution’s department for “Research on the Jewish Question” operated in Munich. However, that still doesn’t explain whether this institution received books from Kraków, and if so, how they got there and why they would have been sent to the beer hall.
We may never know.
One of the people who was at that same event in the beer hall was Aharon Hoter-Yishai, an officer in the Jewish Brigade. In his book, The Brigade and the She’erit Haplita [surviving remnant], he writes:
“…In the basement, they discovered piles of holy books, edition upon edition, bound in beautiful, expensive leather. There was such a quantity that, in my estimation, it would have required two or three train cars and several trucks to collect them [the books].”
Hoter-Yishai suggested that the looted books might have been used for an exhibition and served as a sort of record of Nazi activity and Hitler’s extensive efforts “to make Europe Judenrein (free of Jews).”
Today, the Talmud in the Library’s collection, along with the additional copy at Yad Vashem, tells an entirely different story. Instead of being desecrated on the floor of a Nazi landmark in Munich, the books serve as an eternal testimony in Israeli institutions in Jerusalem.
