Anti-Semitica & the Holocaust

Famous exchange on the root causes of war by two of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century Freud - Einstein 1933 Dialogue: Why War?

WHY WAR? Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Paris: International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, 1933. Limited to 2000 printed copies. First English edition. Cover soiled, else Good condition.

In 1932 Einstein, invited by the League of Nations to address a letter on any subject to any individual, chose to correspond with Sigmund Freud on the possibilities of avoiding war. Einstein maintained the importance of establishing an independent judiciary body to mediate conflicts. Freud agreed with this idea but also insisted "...that there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity's aggressive tendencies," and that war is the ultimate expression of man's distaste for the restraints of civilization.

A Complete run of the most Inflammatory Anti-Dreyfus Periodical

(ANTI-DREYFUS) PSST...! (Forain, (Jean-Louis) and Caran D'Ache. Complete run of 85 issues. February 5, 1898 through September 16, 1899. Profusely illustrated with photomechanical prints. Paris: Rue Garanciere. In French. Original paper wrappers bound in a marbled folio volume.
$ 1800

THE MOST CONSISTENT WEEKLY ANTI-DREYFUS PUBLICATION. A Weekly journal created specifically as a rallying point against the Alfred Dreyfus Affair. Psst...! Contains no text, only illustrations and captions from the pens of Forain and Caran D'Ache, principal French caricaturists of their day.

The Dreyfus Affair was an explosive, pivotal moment in the history of France's Third Republic. For all of her liberte, egalite, fraternite, France was revealed to be rife with the same unfounded bigotry towards Jews as other less enlightened nations.

Opposing camps of Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards settled in as the long political ordeal raged through, not only, French courtrooms, kitchens and marketplaces but the drawing rooms of the outside world as well. This public interest in the Dreyfus conflagration was a 19th century equivalent to the O.J. Trial! Everyone had an opinion. Psst...! represented the stiletto sharp but badly mislead reiteration of Dreyfus' guilt. This magazine's unswerving aim was clearly based on preserving the respect and power of the French army and not in establishing who really passed military secrets to the German attaché. Widely read during its brief life Psst...! even provoked the creation of another weekly magazine Le Sifflet which sought to maintain Dreyfus' innocence.

This is propaganda distilled to its purest form, directed at the emotions, without words to complicate the reader's mental clarity. It was this type of literature and its compelling anti-Semitic position which prompted Theodor Herzl's call for a Jewish Homeland, as well as Emile Zola's famous burst of intellectual outrage.

First Appearance of Vishniac's Photographs of European Jewry

(VISHNIAC, Roman) Die Farshvundene Velt. The Vanished World, ed. By Rafael Abramovitch. New York Forward Association, 1947. 575pp. + Index. Illustrated. Text and captions in English and Yiddish. Original oblong red cloth, pictorial label. Near Fine copy

FIRST EDITION OF THE EARLIEST AND MOST COMPREHENSIVE GRAPHIC PICTORIAL HISTORY OF LIFE IN EASTERN EUROPE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NAZI ERA. Contains over 500 photographs including many first appearances of images by famed photographer Roman Vishniac.

From the introduction: "In presenting this book to our readers we intend to give them the picture of the Jewish world in Eastern Europe as it existed during the 1920's and 1930's, previous to the Second World War. This world does not exist any longer... it is a vanished world, the world of East European Jewry, that world in which for centuries the greatest concentration of Jewish people in history live and worked."

J'ACCUSE...!

Rare Original of the most famous newspaper headline in the modern fight against anti-Semitism — capping the most electrifying political expose in modern European history

ZOLA, Emile. J'Accuse...! Lettre au President de la Republique. In: L'Aurore, deuxieme annee, no. 87. Paris, 13 January 1898. Complete in 4 pages on single folded folio sheet. Near Fine condition.

On the morning of January 13, 1898, the Paris daily newspaper L'Aurore hit the streets with a front-page banner headline that electrified the world: "J'Accuse...!"

THE MOST FAMOUS POLITICAL TRACT IN FRENCH HISTORY. In this dramatic high-point of the political cause celebre that was already the talk of all Europe and America, the great French writer Emile Zola published an open letter to the President of France which was far more than a protestation of the innocence of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, the French-Jewish Army officer convicted of selling his country's military secrets to Germany and imprisoned for treason on Devil's Island. In this letter, Zola accused the highest officers of the French Army of a conspiracy to justify Dreyfus' conviction on the basis of false evidence and to cover-up the anti-Semitic clique within the General Staff who were shielding the true culprit. Dreyfus himself later called Zola's "noble" letter an "immortal document"—crowned by the inflammatory headline which was chosen for the paper by Georges Clemenceau, future Prime Minister of France. One French Socialist legislator declared that the letter, though penned by a "bourgeois" writer, was "the most important revolutionary act of the century". One month later, Zola was hauled into court on a charge of libel by the French Minister of War. The courtroom was packed with a mob of hostile Army officers who clanked their sabers as the jury deliberated, Zola was found guilty; to escape imprisonment, he fled to England, remaining in exile until new evidence, including information revealed at his own trial, of anti-Dreyfus military forgeries, forced the shaky French Government to convene a second court-martial at which Dreyfus was again convicted of treason. He was at last granted a pardon six years after the publication of J'Accuse.

Echos of the Dreyfus Affair had a lasting impact on modern Jewish history, proving to many securely-assimilated Jews the latent power of anti-Semitic hatred, even in a democratic country. It drove Theodor Herzl from a complacent European liberalism to his conviction of the need for an independent Jewish State. And J'Accuse was the turning point of "l'Affaire"—written and published by non-Jews, it was a landmark in modern Jewish history, signifying the eventual triumph of truth, justice and political freedom over the mostly deeply-rooted anti-Semitic prejudice.

THIS ORIGINAL COPY OF THE NEWSPAPER IS RARE, one of the very few fragile copies to survive that morning, a century ago, when L'Aurore was almost literally devoured by thousands of Parisians with violent feelings on both sides of the issue.

MURMELSTEIN, Benjamin. Geschichte Der Juden, Des Volkes Weltwandern. Wien: Josef Belf, 1938. Thick 4to, 406pp. Text in German. Illustrated. Gilt-stamped cream cloth, backstrip starting; edges lightly bumped.
$ 300

FIRST EDITION containing nearly 60 illustrations, 3 mounted on black cards. Benjamin Murmelstein, rabbi and scholar and public figure of the Holocaust period, became a member of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) when the Nazis occupied Europe in 1938 shortly after the publication of his History of the Jews. In 1943 while in Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, he was appointed chief "Judenaeltester", the head of the Council, and in this position he was accused of misusing his Nazi sanctioned powers and evoked hatred and fear among his fellow Jews. Following the war, he remained in Czech custody until his later liberation because "he had been able to disprove all accusations." Murmelstein settled in Rome where he took no part in Jewish communal life

SUHL, M. A. Yisroel Partizan [Jewish Partisan]. New York: Signal, 1942. Yiddish text. 107 pp. Original grey cloth with front cover illustration by William Gropper of a partisan in the woods with gun in hand. Previous owner's stamp on pastedowns. A Good copy.
$ 225

FIRST EDITION published during the War of an original 44-part Jewish partisan poem. The Jewish partisan movement could receive no help from a Jewish state or a Jewish army, it had no arms. The Warsaw Ghetto revolt of April 1943 was first direct significant act of confrontation, which involved local forces facing the Nazis.

William Gropper, U.S. cartoonist and painter, directed his art toward the betterment of the human condition. After visiting the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1948, he began painting Jewish subject matter. This front cover illustration was one of his earlier Jewish pieces.

MOSENZON, Moshe. Reshimot Chayal Ivri. [Hebrew Soldiers' Impressions]. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1944. 70, (2) pp. Hebrew Text. Booklet measuring 5? x 4". Original grey self wrappers, pictorial red and black vignette on cover showing Jewish Brigade truck with exploding bomb in distance. Very Good.
$ 225

A collection of personal writings by native Palestinian Jewish soldiers of the Jewish Brigade, who fought with the British army in the deserts of North Africa during the Second World War. These articles were originally published in an internal newspaper called the " The Hebrew Soldier". They are being offered here for first time to the general reading public. The publication coincides with the victorious push of the British army across Africa, and with the collapse of Rommel's armies.

First Appearance in print of The Diary of Anne Frank

[DIARY OF ANNE FRANK] Fragmenten Uit Het Dagboek Van Anne Frank appearing in De Nieuwe Stem. Amsterdam: Van Loghum Slaterus'â [June] 1946. Volume 6, comprising pages 385 through 448 (complete). In original wrappers (slight creasing). Complete first year run all in original wrappers, custom clamshell case.Very Good Condition.
$ 4800

FIRST APPEARANCE OF ANY PART OF ANNE FRANK's DIARY TO APPEAR IN PRINT, PRECEDING THE FIRST BOOK EDITION. These 11 pages (432-442) titled Fragmenten Uit Het Dagboek Van Anne Frank, contain five entries to "Kitty" dating from July 1942 until April 1944.

De Nieuwe Stem was a left-wing intellectual Dutch journal published from 1946 until 1967. One of its publishers, Jan Romein, was instrumental in helping to bring Anne's diary into print as a result of an article he wrote in the national Dutch newspaper Het Parool on April 3, 1946. This later led indirectly to her book's publication as Het Achterhuis: Dagboerikbeven (The House Behind) in 1947 which was preceded by the first printed portions of the diary appearing in our volume of De Nieuwe Stem, thus the true first exposure of Anne's words to the world. Romein's wife Anne Romein-Verschoor went on to provide a foreword for the first editions of the Diary.

The Russian "Dreyfus" Case: The Famed Beilis Trial

(BEILIS, Menahem Mendel) Transcriptions from the Beilis Trial. Volumes I-III (Complete). Kiev: 1913. Text in Russian. Original green cloth with black spines. Handwritten titles affixed to covers. Very Rare. Very Good Condition.
$ 2500

FIRST EDITION. Printed in the year and place of the trial. Known more familiarly as the Russian Dreyfus Case, the injustices visited upon Menahem Mendel Beilis (1874-1934) were even more ghastly. When the mutilated body of a 12 year old boy was discovered in a Kiev cave in 1911, the monarchist rightist press seized the chance to launch a vicious anti-Jewish campaign accusing the Jews of using human (Christian) blood for ritual purposes. The case attracted universal attention with protests registered by scientists, public and political leaders, artists, writers, clergymen and other liberal-minded men throughout Europe and the United States. The trial of Beilis took place in Kiev from September 25th through October 28th, 1913. The jury found him not guilty. Menahem Beilis moved with his family to the United States in 1920. Bernard Malamud's novel The Fixer is based on the Beilis case.

The Most Important Book in Modern Jewish History Herzl's "Der Judenstaat"

HERZL, Theodor. Der Judenstaat. Versuch einer Modernen Losung Der Judenfrage. [The Jewish State, An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question.] Leipzig und Wien: M. Breitenstein, 1896. 86pp. Bound in full burgundy cloth. Lacking wrappers as usual. Custom clamshell case.
$ 9500

FIRST EDITION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK IN MODERN JEWISH HISTORY. This is Herzl's epochal call for the establishment of a Jewish State as a national home for the Jewish people. Herzl's position stood in opposition to the two prevailing attitudes of his day: assimilation and isolationism. Herzl's stance differed: "by his work he transformed the Jewish people from a status of passive community into a positive political force." (PMM 381) As a direct result of the impetus provided by this manifesto, the Jewish State was established within almost 50 years in the Land of Israel.