Die Herkunft der sogenannten portugiesischen Juden [The Origins of Those Known as Portuguese Jews], a typewritten, mimeographed booklet, [by Percy Cohen Henriquez]. [The Netherlands, ca. 1942]. German.
This booklet was printed in the midst of World War II, and it contains a detailed research about the allegedly non-Jewish origin of the Portuguese community in the Netherlands (in order to legitimize it in the eyes of the Nazis). The research addresses the origins of the Jewish community in Spain, the extensive scope of conversion to Judaism among the Christian and Muslim population of Spain in early times, the mixed marriages of the converso community after the rise of the Inquisition and the separate social status of the community in the Netherlands. The composition contains many excerpts and quotations by various scholars and historians (the author specifically notes that they are not Jewish) and includes two addendums: a legal opinion by the Dutch lawyer Jacob Maarten van Bemmelen (dated 19.3.1942) and an anthropological report by the Dutch neurologist Ariëns Kappers, demonstrating that the skulls of Portuguese Jews differ from those of Ashkenazic Jews.
The name of the author is not mentioned in the report; however, presumably, he is the Jewish engineer Percy Cohen Henriquez (1909-2000), born in Curaçao, who was staying in the Netherlands during the war and survived since he was not registered as a Jew.
The Portuguese community was one of the most important and ancient Jewish communities in the Netherlands. Due to the state of war between the Netherlands and the true country of origin of the community – Spain, the Jews preferred to call themselves by the name of the neighboring country – Portugal. Over the years, several of the leading rabbis and Jewish intellectuals of Modern history grew up in the community, among them are Rabbi Shlomo di Oliveira, Saul Levi Morteira, Baruch Spinoza and many others.
During World War II, the Germans practiced a unique policy in the occupied Netherlands, enabling the Jews to rebut being registered as Jews. The person responsible for their registration in Hague, the Righteous among Nations, Hans Georg Calmeyer (1903-1972), took advantage of this "breach" of the German law, and changed the registration of thousands from "Jewish" to "half-Jewish". The booklet before us was published as part of these efforts and was possibly submitted to Calmeyer, who in 1942 (the year the booklet was published) composed a list of 370 Jews of "pure" Spanish origin who should be exempted from the Nazi race laws.
34 pp, approx. 33 cm. Good condition. Minor blemishes. Stains on cover. Tears to spine and an open tear to one corner of the cover.
See: Did the Nazis Think that Sephardim were Jews? By Bernd Rother (in Divrei HaCongress Hashnem Assar LeMada'ei HaYahadut, Jerusalem: Magnes, 2001. pp. 105-113).

"Mishloach Manot… 5701" (Hebrew), a handwritten booklet made for the festival of Purim and presented to the head of the Judenrat of the Lodz Ghetto, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski. [Lodz], 1941.
The booklet, presumably made by a resident of the Lodz Ghetto, contains several word plays in the spirit of Purim: the author's name was encoded within a verse written on the title page (some of the letters are marked and when combined reveal the Hebrew name Ya'akov Brickman); the second page features seven blessings, arranged in the form of a Star of David; and the third page features an acrostic poem – the first letters of the lines spell the Hebrew name "Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski". The booklet also features three interesting inscriptions - a Hebrew inscription on the title page reads "From the yeshiva students, [?]irska 43/45" (Hebrew); another Hebrew inscription on the same page reads "I address my verses to the King, my tongue is the pen of a ready writer" (Psalms 45:2); the third inscription, written in Yiddish on the back of the last leaf, reads "to the elder of the Jews of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, Mr. M.C. Rumkowski".
Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski was the chairman of the Judenrat of the Lodz Ghetto during all the years of its existence. Rumkowski, considered one of the most controversial figures in the history of the Holocaust, created a cult of personality around himself during his years as head of the Judenrat: organizing parades, hanging his picture at schools, issuing banknotes and postage stamps with his portrait and more. In 1944, he was sent together with the remaining prisoners of the ghetto to the Auschwitz Extermination Camp.
[4] leaves (two sheets folded in half, stapled to form a booklet). Approx. 30.5 cm. Good condition. Minor stains and creases. Fold lines. Small tears along edges. A small open tear to the first leaf (slightly affecting the text).

Sur MeRa, by Rabbi Leon (Yehudah Aryeh) of Modena. Vilnius: Rozenkrants & Shriftzettser, 1903.
"Sur MeRa", a short composition on gambling written by Rabbi Leon of Modena in his youth – a copy from the Theresienstadt Ghetto library. On the book's back cover there is a paper label with the catalog number of the book in the ghetto library – "IC 3318" (the number also appears on the inside front binding, in handwriting). Two pages are stamped "Bibliothek der jüd. Gemeinde Berlin" – The library of the Berlin Jewish community.
The Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the Nazis in 1941 in the town Terezin in the Czech Republic. The large number of intellectual Jews imprisoned there led to the development of rich cultural life, which was most unusual for the ghettoes, and to the establishment of the Jewish library in the ghetto. The library opened to visitors in November 1942 and was managed by Emil Utitz, a professor of philosophy and psychology from the city of Prague, who held the position until the liberation. At first, it contained a modest collection of 4,000 books; however, it gradually expanded to include more than 65,000 books, in a variety of languages and on a variety of subjects. In 1943, when the Germans decided to turn the ghetto into a "model ghetto" in preparation for the visit of the Red Cross representatives, the library was moved to a large renovated building, where it remained until the end of the war.
40 pp, 13.5 cm. Good condition. Minor stains. Several small tears along the edges of the leaves. Cardboard binding with cloth spine. Stains and blemishes to binding.

Two photographs documenting the arrival of Haj Amin al-Husseini at the military airport in Banja Luka, before his first meeting with the Muslim volunteer unit to the German army. Banja Luka (Bosnia), [1943].
The photographs depict al-Husseini and another Muslim cleric crossing the airport in Banja Luka accompanied by military officers and officials. The photographs are captioned on verso in handwriting (German) and dated 1.4-18.4 (the year is not noted).
The photographs of the Mufti are accompanied by two photographs taken at another military airport – Sarajevo (captioned on verso in similar handwriting). Presumably, these are "unofficial" photographs taken by a pilot or mechanic of the German air force, who happened to be in the airport when the Mufti landed and decided to photograph him.
Muhammad Amin al-Husseini (1895-1974), more commonly known as Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a Muslim Arab leader during the British Mandate, who actively opposed Zionism and embraced anti-Semitic ideology. During the years 1921-1936, he served as the Mufti of Jerusalem. However, after the outbreak of the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine (orchestrated in part by himself), he was forced to escape to Lebanon, from there to fascist Italy and eventually to Nazi Germany. His bonds with leaders of the Nazi party became stronger during his stay in Germany (he even met with Adolf Hitler several times) and in 1943, he assisted in recruiting Muslim fighters from the Balkans to the SS "Handschar" 13th Waffen Mountain Division.
Haj Amin al-Husseini's first visit to the Balkans took place during the months of March and April 1943 and was kept secret, away from the public eye. During the visit, al-Husseini met with local officers, representatives of the Muslim community and soldiers of the Muslim
volunteer unit. After his return to Berlin, he promised the leaders of the Nazi party to help recruit volunteers in return for an improvement in the conditions of the Muslim soldiers and the maintaining of the religious character of the unit. Several months later, al-Husseini again travelled to the Balkans, starting a campaign to recruit Muslim volunteers to the Nazi army.
4 photographs, approx. 6X9 cm. Good condition. Minor blemishes. Traces of glue on verso.

The Black Album. Tel-Aviv: The Anti-Nazi League, Series A, April 1940. Hebrew, English and French.
A complete postcard booklet holding ten postcards.
This booklet is a very early public visual documentation, maybe the first of its kind, of Nazi crimes on European soil, especially in Poland.
The Anti-Nazi League, which published the booklet in April 1940, aimed to set up "propaganda and publicity in Israel and abroad against the Nazi regime, the Nazi spirit and racial hate". These ideas have been realized in this booklet; not only in the photographs printed on the postcards, but also, and especially, in the introduction added by the anti-Nazi league members. Printed on the inside cover: "Hitlerism means return to the savagery of the dark Middle Ages. In Poland, the Jews are compelled to wear on their backs the yellow badge as reproduced on the envelope of the Black Album. The Black Album contains the first series of pictures disclosing Nazi atrocities in Poland. The Black Album gives a vivid description of the Nazi regime and its cruel systems. Everybody is hereby enabled to unmask Hitlerism by sending the post-cards of the Album to his friends and acquaintances all over the world". Similar words appear in the introduction: "… In Hitler's Germany, vast concentration camps have been established where Nazi sadists torture their unfortunate victims to an extent never before conceived by human imagination. In these camps of suffering and death, the prisoners, principally Jewish, are submitted to most cruel corporal and spiritual humiliation, to hard labor, starvation and severe molestation leading to aberration of the mind and death".
Each postcard is titled – "Death in Hitler's step", "Nazi hangmen at work","One of the hundreds of victims in Poland", "Migration of nations into misery", "Nazi victims converted into ashes", and more – and is accompanied by captions specifying some of the methods of Nazi brutality and destruction which were publicly verified and published only years later: death of thousands from disease, cold and hunger; daily execution and hanging of bodies on gallows in central streets of Polish cities; slave labor; cleaning streets with mouths and hands; cremating bodies to ash, etc. The titles are in English. The introduction is in Hebrew and English. The captions are in Hebrew and French.
Booklet: 16X10.5 cm. Postcards: 14X10 cm. Good condition. Two of the postcards are completely detached from the booklet while several others are partly detached. Creases to cover. Several stains on cover and postcards.
Provenance: The Raphael Grünzweig Collection.