Exhibit of the month

 

The Book of Prophets and the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel were found among the bodies of Jews killed in Kaunas during World War II. A leaflet with text in Hebrew and German glued from the inside to both sides of the top cover reads that the book is a gift from a respected widow to Wilhelm von Rothschild from the legacy of her beloved husband in 1901 in Hamburg. The year of publication of the book is not indicated on it. Comparison of the names of the publisher and the printer with the ones in bibliographic reference books, leads to the assumption that the book was published around 1586–1603.

 

The book is buckled with the help of two agraphas inserted under the leather covers. This book belonged to the post-war Jewish Museum in Vilnius: there is a stamp in Russian on the inside bottom corner of the cover saying: Jevreskij muzej v Vilniuse. Above this stamp there is a stamp of the Central State Archives of the Lithuanian SSR in Lithuanian with the inventory numbers of the book. The book entered the central state archives of the LSSR when the Jewish Museum was closed down in Vilnius in 1949. The publication was returned to the restored museum in 1992.