A FAMILY BIBLE IS RETURNED 80 YEARS LATER
By Nicole Asbury
A father and son in Oberdorf, Bopfingen, Germany, in 1990 were renovating the home they’d just bought when they came across something unusual: a chest hidden behind a double wall in the attic.
Tucked inside the chest was a large, gilded Jewish Bible that looked like it had been carefully placed there.
It was heavy, about 22 pounds, and almost 30 inches long and three inches high. The words “Die Heilige Schrift der Israeliten” — the Holy Scriptures of the Israelites — were embossed on the front.
It seemed valuable and important, and the son held onto it for nearly 30 years. But in April 2017, he decided to sell it on eBay to an art historian for about $75.
The Bible, it turned out, was part of the legacy of Eduard and Ernestine Leiter, a Jewish couple from Stuttgart killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the Leiters’ story was a common and tragic one: The Nazis forced them to move to Oberdorf, Bopfingen, to live with seven other Jewish families. In August 1942, the Germans sent the couple to Theresienstadt, a ghetto and concentration camp outside Prague.
Before the Leiters left the home in Oberdorf, they hid all their valuables and personal items — including their jewelry, some letters and an 1874 edition of the Jewish Bible — in hopes of returning and retrieving their keepsakes...read more
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