Are online sales of pre-Holocaust communal records their doom or salvation?

NEW YORK – Last month, federal attorneys in Brooklyn confiscated a treasure trove of pre-Holocaust Jewish records for sale by Kestenbaum & Company, a Judaica-specialized “boutique auction house”.

The ledgers, known as Pinkasim, come from communities in Romania, Hungary, Ukraine, and Slovakia. From the 16th century onwards, rabbis in this part of Europe began to keep these handwritten records of births, marriages and deaths, with some of the books being “illuminated” by artists.

The confiscation in Brooklyn is not an isolated case: In February, the Israeli genealologist Mattan Segev-Frank stumbled upon a so-called “folder” that was sold on the auction house platform Bidspirit. The collection of Hungarian-Jewish Pinkasim included letters and contracts signed by members of the imperial dynasty to which the activist is related. The family is also the subject of Segev-Frank’s master’s thesis at Tel Aviv University.

After Segev-Frank found the signatures, he decided to use the auction to raise awareness in Israel and around the world. Unfortunately for its cause, Pinkasim’s online auctions are usually conducted lawfully – including under Jewish religious laws regarding abandoned property.

“This is the loophole that international regulations should close,” Segev-Frank told the Times of Israel. “People should be encouraged to give such items that are in their homes to official institutions or to be fined for privately hoarding them,” he said.

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In Segev-Frank’s opinion, Pinkasim’s online auction sales should be banned. But in the absence of international regulations, many Jewish community books remained in private collections.

‘Notepad of the Maggid of Horodna, the Gaon Rabbi Aryeh Leib Bernstein,’ an item sold on Bidspirit (Courtesy of the Gaon

“There is a need for international regulations that recognize books and documents of the European Jewish community as cultural heritage, a by-product of the genocide suffered by the Jewish people during the Holocaust,” said Segev-Frank. “We have to preserve the documents through digitization and make them accessible to the public online.”

However, not all experts agree that new laws can “save” Pinkasim from private collections.

“First of all, there is no clear way that all auctions and dealers in Judaica are monitored,” said Wesley Fisher, research director for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO). ).

Chevra Kadisha Pinkas of the Ujhel Congregation, both from the years before the Holocaust and the names of those who perished in the Holocaust, were added after the war. (Piping)

“This is a much more complex issue than just one of theft and restitution,” Fisher told the Times of Israel. “We don’t even know how big what’s missing,” he said.

“The problem is when individual collectors get them”

Thousands of Pinkasim collections were stolen, lost, or abandoned during and after the Holocaust. In contrast to real estate and works of art stolen by Nazi Germany, however, stolen Pinkasim never received much legal or media attention.

“But the lost community books are an” untold chapter in restitution history, “said Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference and WJRO operations. “They are the real treasures of Jewish memory because they capture everyday life and what these communities really were like,” he told the Times of Israel.

The Zeulz Pinkas, with notes on “Crime and Punishment” in the city by prominent rabbis (National Library of Israel)

The fate of Pinkasim in the postwar period was largely determined by the regulations in each zone of occupation, Fisher said. For example, in areas occupied by the United States, regulations helped ensure that Pinkasim be returned to surviving Jewish communities or sent to centers of Jewish education in Israel, the United States, and elsewhere.

In Soviet-occupied territories, however, few Jewish community books were restituted in this way, Fisher said. Centuries-old ledgers, which should never be the property of an individual but belonged to large communities, fell into private collections.

Gideon Taylor, Operations Manager of the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO), in the Times of Israel Jerusalem office on June 7, 2016. (Amanda Borschel-Dan / Times of Israel)

“This is a private market with no regulation, and [the items sold often have] no origin, ”said Taylor. “But I’m not sure if it’s law or law enforcement. There has to be a lot more transparency because Pinkasim shouldn’t be sitting in someone’s home, ”he said.

The July seizure of Pinkasim in Brooklyn came after WJRO initially objected to the auction at Kestenbaum & Company in February, Fisher said. In part because US law makes it difficult for people to get a “good title” for stolen property, federal agencies have been able to investigate and confiscate the books.

This pinkas (record book) from the Talmud Torah religious school in the town of Kopychintsy in eastern Galicia, Ukraine, reflects the activity of a religious school in the late 19th century.

“The problem is when individual collectors get them,” said Fisher. “Although collectors sometimes see themselves as the saviors of these manuscripts,” he said.

To address the problem, Fisher said officials should raise awareness of existing statements and protocols. For example, he said, 47 countries supported the Terezin Declaration on Holocaust-Era Assets and Related Issues. In that 2009 agreement, governments agreed to “emphasize the importance of restoring communal and individual immovable property,” according to WJRO.

And there are subtle signs of change: in early August, the Israeli and New York auction house Genazym announced the sale of the Tomashvar Funeral Company’s “sacred ledger.” [Timisoara]“, A Jewish community in Romania. In response to suggestions made in a letter from WJRO to Genazym, the auction house said it would investigate the provenance of the collection.

Whose notebooks are they anyway?

There are restored Jewish communities across Europe with their own claims to Pinkasim collections, Fisher said, and these should come first.

“There are many Jewish communities in Europe that would love to get their Pinkasim back,” said Fisher. “Ideally, all Pinkasim should be digitized and their content made widely available, while the original manuscripts – if they are in private hands – should be returned to these communities.”

Pinkas (record) of the Jewish community in Pitigliano, Tuscany (Colombia University Libraries)

According to Dudu Amitai, chairman of the Israeli Archivists Association, the Jewish state’s official archivist – Ruti Abramovitch – wrote a letter to several online auction houses, including Bidspirit and Kedem, earlier this year.

“She asked them not to sell [the communal books]“Amitai told the Times of Israel. “But without success.”

In early August, Kedem put a new series of Pinkasim “lots” up for auction. The finds included birth and death registers from several Hungarian communities as well as marriage and circumcision registers. Most of the lots had opening bids in the $ 300 to $ 500 range.

“The people are saving this piece of history”

In late 2020, Mattan Segev-Frank responded to a call from the Israeli Ministry of Justice to evaluate public opinion on changes to the data protection law.

Mattan Segev-Frank speaks at an LGBTQ activism event in Israel (Courtesy)

Inspired by a New York-based campaign called Reclaim the Records, Segev-Frank wrote to the ministry on behalf of The Israeli Genealogy Hub, a 3,400-member Facebook group he founded. The letter called on the government to disclose genealogical records and censuses, and to create publicly available directories.

“If this information is made public, we could claim municipal documents as cultural heritage that way,” said Segev-Frank, who is also helping build Israel’s first LGBTQ digital archive. “Why not help people find their family’s past in a country where so many survivors, traumatized by the Holocaust, took their family stories to the grave,” he said.

According to most reports, Israel’s data protection law was not designed to deal with Pinkasim. However, when changes are made to the data protection law, a balance has to be struck between rights to privacy and other interests, said Naama Matarasso-Karpel, CEO of the Privacy Israel advocacy group.

Naama Matarasso-Karpel, CEO of Privacy Israel (Courtesy)

“I believe the law should recognize that in some cases there is a public interest in allowing personal data to be kept permanently for the long-term benefit of society,” Matarasso-Karpel told the Times of Israel.

“But the law must carefully define the exceptions for the processing of personal data for archiving purposes,” said Matarasso-Karpel. “Unfortunately, Israel’s outdated data protection law does not provide adequate tools to address this important issue,” she said.

There’s another side to the company’s role in sourcing Pinkasim, according to a Bidspirit representative. Since launching the online auction platform in 2012, Bidspirit has raised awareness of pinkasim by putting some of its content online, said Nitzan Dikshtein, director of marketing and development for the company.

“The fact that these items are up for sale means that they have value, and thanks to that, people are saving that piece of history and going to great lengths to find them instead of throwing them in the trash or the like. “Dikshtein told the Times of Israel.

Renowned institutions that Pinkasim has acquired through online auctions include the National Library of Israel and university libraries at Harvard and Yale. From Bidspirit’s point of view, the Pinkasim company saves for posterity by making it easier to hand over to organizations of this caliber.

In February 2021, Kestenbaum & Company, a Brooklyn-based firm specializing in Judaica, pulled out their catalog, which according to the Cluj Jewish Community is a 19th-century ledger from their Jewish funeral company. (Kestenbaum & Company via JTA)

“Please keep in mind that many collectors who purchase these lots donate or lend them to museums during their lifetime or after their death,” said Dikshtein. “Thanks to Bidspirit, thousands of Jewish and Israeli important / historical papers / documents were discovered and made visible online.”

Aside from Pinkasim, similar regulatory challenges – and transparency issues – surround other forms of Judaica that were lost during the Holocaust, Taylor said.

“There is a growing trend that treasures that were owned by Jewish communities devastated by the Holocaust are falling into private hands,” he said. “We will try to work with Jewish communities, collectors, institutions and traders to bring transparency to our history in the months and years to come.”