Medieval Bible returned to Vienna’s Jewish community

10 November 2009

A Hebrew Bible from the 16th century and looted by the Nazis six decades ago has been returned to Vienna's Jewish community. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials turned over the two-volume Bible to Ariel Muzicant, head of the Austrian Jewish community, and Ernst-Peter Brezovsky, Austria’s consul-general in New York, during a ceremony at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan. Published in Venice in 1516/17, the Bible once was part of the well-known medieval manuscripts collection of S.H. Halberstam, officials said. In 1908, it was donated to the Vienna Jewish community’s library.

After Austria had been annexed by Nazi Germany, soldiers confiscated the Bible in a seizure of the Jewish community's library during the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938. It later wound up in Berlin and was illegally imported into the United States in March 2009, authorities said.

In June, a New York auction house offered the Bible for sale. An investigation by US immigration officials concluded that it belonged to the Viennese library. The auctioneer had been unaware of its history and withdrew it from the sale, and an unidentified Swiss man in whose possession it was agreed to return the Bible after being told of its history. The books include an Aramaic summary and a series of commentaries by medieval rabbinic figures.