Original Schindler's List Offered At $3,000,000

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Don't miss your chance to own a piece of history that has inspired many on the difference one person can make in the face of great danger. This exceedingly rare original Schindler’s List is the only one ever on the market. It emanates from the family of Itzhak Stern, Schindler’s accountant and right hand man (played by Ben Kingsley in the Academy Award-winning film). There are 3 others known which are in institutional hands. It is 14 pages in length and lists 801 male names, dated April 18, 1945. It is guaranteed authentic… Itzhak Stern typed up the 14 page list on onion skin paper. Up for auction is not a copy of that list, but the actual one. It was sold by Itzhak Stern's nephew to the current owner. It is dated in pencil on the first page, April 18, 1945."

An original of Oscar Schindler's list of factory workers to be saved from Nazi gas chambers was offered through an online auction that ended Sunday July 28th at 9PM EDT. On eBay. For  $3,000,000. That's three million george w's. It did not sell.

I, as most professional antiquarian booksellers, am customarily dubious about rare books and documents sold through eBay. Prices often appear to be calculated within a Martian atmosphere with little connection to market realities by sellers who are often amateurs, at best, and authentication can be a challenge. So, when I learned of this offer I simply shook my head: another wacko episode on eBay, the auction network at the bottom of the ratings.

However, when I casually mentioned this offer to a highly respected trade colleague here in Los Angeles he told me that he knew the seller. Not only that but the seller, Gazin Auctions/Auction Cause, was his next door neighbor.

Prior to the auction's end, I contacted Eric Gazin to find out if this is real or if I can share the opium pipe he's been sucking on.

SJG: How did you arrive at the offering price? Can you tell me something about the owner? How did the owner find you? I ask the last because I find it curious that it is being offered on eBay and not through Sotheby's, Christie's, or any other major auction house.

EG: The owner [in Israel] wishes to remain anonymous. This came to me through Gary Zimet, owner of Moments in Time, a document dealer. He is the one who arrived at this price. Contrary to conventional wisdom, eBay is a great location to offer these kinds of rare pieces. Our clients and buyers love the fact there is no 10% buyer's premium too, means more funds to spend on the auction item.

We sold the Rush Limbaugh - Harry Reid letter there for $2.1 million, the highest price ever achieved for a modern document. We have an active base of high net worth individuals who often make purchases from us.

SJG: At that price any serious collector will want to personally view it before committing to buy. What arrangements do you have for previewing the List?

EG: Yes, the winner will be able to see the List in person in Israel while his/her funds are in an escrow account and can bring along their expert.

SJG: If you have no bidders what's your next step?

EG: We have a few interested parties that may or may not bid, and if it ends without them bidding, we will be continuing the purchase discussions with them.

SJG: What sort of business do you have? What do you trade in?

EG: My company is a high profile auction management agency. We help mainly celebrities, charities, corporate brands, TV shows, and individuals with unique auction offerings which need design, promotion, bidder screening, logistic services, research, and consulting. Personally, I love historical items, rare books, and other paper pieces. We are always happy to assist a collector looking for a non traditional auction house alternative.

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So, there you have it. Schindler's Original List, yours for only $3,000,000, private sale pending upon negotiation. When you can sell a letter from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to Limbaugh's boss, Mark P. Mays, CEO of Clear Channel Communications, excoriating Limbaugh for intemperate comments (read it here), and co-signed by forty-one Democratic senators for $2.1 million, all of a sudden $3 mil for an original of Schindler's List doesn't seem an insane price, nor eBay an inane place for rare books and historical paper from a respectable, high-end dealer..

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Images courtesy of Gazin Auctions, with our thanks.
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Three Visually Arresting Modernist Judaica Posters

by Stephen J. Gertz

Designer Unknown.
"M". c. 1931.

We revisit the Swann Galleries Modernist Poster sale held May 13, 2013.

The linocut poster above is for the original release of film director Fritz Lang's "M" at the Moghrabi Theatre (built in 1930) in Tel Aviv.

After a distinguished career during the silent film era, Lang's first talkie - considered to be his best film - starred Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert, a hunted, haunted by "this evil thing inside me" child murderer who whistles Grieg's ominous In the Hall of the Mountain King when approaching his prey. 

Due to the lurid nature of film's subject matter Lang, who had made his films at the celebrated and artistically influential German studio, UFA (Universum Film AG), worked with Nero Films for this movie to deflect the political pressure bearing down upon him from UFA, a government-supported entity. When sound arrived UFA routinely released versions of major films in several languages. Given that Jews were  persecuted in Germany soon after the movie's release and, later, exterminated wherever Nazis found them, it is fascinating to learn that UFA felt the need to release a version in Hebrew to cater to the audience in then Palestine. It was strictly a financial decision. With the advent of sound movies and language barriers the studio could no longer depend on easy distribution and box-office receipts throughout the world.

Designer unknown.

This same, stark image of a hand, emblazoned with a red "M," appeared on the original German poster but did not have the repeating motif of the letter against the background.

Abram Games (1914-1996).
Give Clothing For Liberated Jewry. 1945.

As a Jew who had been exposed to Nazi atrocities through British war films, Abram Games (1914-1996) was in a unique position to be able to channel his horror in a manner which could potentially assist the decimated Jewish communities of Europe. His Give Clothing For Liberated Jewry (1945) starkly and dramatically captures the desperate plight of concentration camp survivors. (Abram Games: His Life and Work, fig 219).

Abram Games, one of the twentieth century's most influential British graphic designers, believed in using the simplest possible design to create the greatest possible impact.

Beginning as a commercial artist, when WWII broke out he was recruited as an Official War Artist and in that capacity designed over a hundred posters, later creating the symbols of the BBC and the Festival of Britain.

He experimented with "unusual juxtapositions of illustration and typography. Games strove to ensure that his wartime posters were as striking and seductive as the best commercial art.

The "Blonde Bombshell."

"Sometimes Games’ work was deemed too seductive, notably the glamorous ATS girl dubbed the 'Blonde Bombshell' which was criticized by the House of Commons for being too glamorous. Games favored stark, simple and, therefore, all the more arresting images produced by sticking to his philosophy of deriving 'maximum meaning' from 'minimum means'" (Design Museum).

Abram Games (1914-1996)
DP / Over 200,000 Displaced Jews Look To You. 1946.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Games designed "posters which demanded, rather than appealed to, the Jewish public to give aid to the refugees . . . [In Displaced Persons] two eyes stare out of the initials DP with an appalling urgency; the vestige of a face an embodiment of despair. The lettering underneath . . . is by contrast plain and tiny: no words are really necessary. This is Games at his most powerful" (Abram Games: His Life and Work, p. 177, and fig. 220).  

“All Abram Games’ designs were recognizably his own. They had vigor, imagination, passion and individuality...And he was lucky - and clever - in contriving, over a long and creative working life, to keep on doing what he did best” (David Gentleman).
 

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Images courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.
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Just Say Da: Unique Rare Books With Original Russian Watercolors At Auction

By Stephen J. Gertz

Original watercolor by Georges Kars Kralupy for David Golder.

Lots to love at Christie's in its upcoming Fine Books and Manuscripts sale at London-South Kensington June 19, 2012.

Lot 192 is a singleton. a richly illustrated first edition copy of Iréne Némirovsky's (1903-1942) David Golder (Paris: 1929) featuring sixty-seven original watercolors by artist Georges Kars Kralupy (1882-1945).

Némirovsky is primarily known as the author of Suite Française, duet novels portraying life in France between June 4, 1940 and July 1, 1941, the period in which the Nazis occupied Paris.

After the author's death in Auschwitz the manuscript of  Suite Française was kept by her eldest daughter for fifty years until it was donated to a French archive that had it published: it became a bestseller in 2004. The present copy is no. 56 of a limited edition of 100 copies and is inscribed  by the artist to Robert Ellissen.

Original watercolor by Hermine David for Gourmont's Oeuvres.

Next up, lot 193 is a unique copy of the limited edition of Remy de Gourmont's (1858-1915) Oeuvres (Paris: 1930) elegantly illustrated with ninety-eight original watercolors by Hermine David (1886-1970). It, too, is inscribed to Robert Ellissen by the artist.

A trend is developing...

Is it the woman or the moon? It's both, lot 194, another unique and superbly illustrated book, no. 12 of a limited edition of only eighteen copies of Gil Robin's (1893-1967) novel Le Femme et la Lune (Paris: 1925).

It features sixty-eight original watercolors by Sonia Lewitska (1874-1937). 

Yet again, it is inscribed, here to Mme. Robert Ellissen by Lewitska.

Original watercolor by Alice Halicka for Tragédies de Ghetto.

Finally, artist Alice Halicka (1895-1975) illustrated lot 195, a copy of Israel Zangwill's (1864-1926) Tragédies du Ghetto (Paris: 1928), with fifty-seven original watercolors.

You guessed it: inscribed by the artist to Robert Ellissen.

Who were the Ellissens and how did they manage to get the artists to devote their time and talent to illustrate these books for them?

Robert Ellissen was the author of Le Gaz dans la vie moderne (1933); Les villes et l'Etat contre l'industrie privée (1908); Le Concours Sartine 1763-1766 (1922), and a translator. He and his wife were art patrons who befriended and aided the Russian and Eastern European artist-exiles who had emigrated to Paris to escape the anti-Semitism in their homelands, settled in Montparnasse, and established the 1918-1939 Judaic aspect of the Ecole de Paris, its heyday the 'Twenties.

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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Rare Holocaust Books & Art Come To Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland. London: Hutchinson, [1943].
Octavo (216 x 140mm). 16 pp, printed in red and black.

Estimate: £500-£800 ($785-$1256)

A rare cache of nine books, including a very early official report of the Holocaust addressed,  in 1943, to the impotent League of Nations, exposing the extermination of Jews in Poland by the Nazi occupiers, is being offered today, March 21, 2012, at Christie's Fine Printed Books sale.

The report was based upon the brave work of Jan Karski-Kozielski, a Polish Government emissary in occupied Poland, who bribed his way into a German concentration camp and witnessed the mass extermination of Jews. The report was written in 1942 and printed in 1943 on behalf of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs "In the hope that the civilised world will draw the appropriate conclusion, the Polish Government desire to bring to the notice of the public, by means of the present White Paper, these renewed German efforts at mass extermination, with the employment of fresh horrifying methods."

HASS, Leo (1901-1983). 12 puvodnich litografii z nemeckych
koncentracnich taboru.
[12 Original Lithographs from the German Concentration Camps.]
Prague: Svaz Osvobozenych Politickych Venzu, 1947.
Oblong 2° (343 x 480mm). 12 lithographs.
Original printed paper wrappers.

Estimate: £2000-£3000 ($3140-$4710).

A fine copy of Leo Hass' 12 puvodnih litografii z nemeckych koncentracnich taboru, a collection of images illustrating life in Auschwitz, is part of the cache. It is signed by Czech poet, essayist, translator, and resistance fighter, Frantisek Halas.

Leo Haas was an important Czech-Jewish graphic designer and book illustrator of who survived Terezin, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen where he was classified as a political prisoner. This is an extremely rare volume, with only four copies recorded by OCLC.

MATOUSEK, Ota (1890-1977).
Krezby Z Koncentraku: 61 Puvodnich Litografii.
[Drawings from a Concentration Camp: 61 Original Lithographs.]
Prague: Sdruzeni Jihoceskych Vytvarniku, 1946.
Quarto (307 x 208mm). 61 lithographs.
Original linen-backed boards.

Estimate: £2000-£3000 ($3140-$4710)

A fine first edition, limited to 200 copies signed by the artist, of Ota Matousek's Krezby Z Koncentraku: 61 Puvodnich Litografii (Drawings from the Concentration Camp), features sixty-one lithographs of everyday life at Flossenburg concentration camp.

Matousek was widely exhibited in Central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Flossenburg. After liberation a set of images depicting everyday life in the camp was exhibited in Prague. Only two copies are recorded by OCLC.

STIBOR, Bohumil. Soubor Drevorytu Z Koncentracniho Tabora.
[N.p.]: by the author, 1946.
Oblong octavo (300 x 210mm). 10 woodcuts.
Original paper wrappers by Emil Spongl.
Provenance: Bohumil Stibor (inscription dated 1946).

Estimate:  £1000-£1500 ($1570-$2355).

Soubor Drevorytu Z Koncentracniho Tabora, a collection of ten woodcuts privately printed by artist Bohumil Stibor and bound at the Emil Spongl bindery in the town of Pelhrimov, Bohemia in March, 1946, will also fall under the hammer. A fine copy inscribed by Stibor, the book is quite rare, with only two copies recorded in Worldcat and none in Copac.

TUMA, Mirko. Ghetto Nasich Dnu. [Ghetto of Our Days].
Prague: Salivar, 1946. Octavo (257 x 180mm). 12 plates.
Original printed wrappers.

Estimate: £500-£800 ($785-$1256.

An excellent copy of Mirko Tuma's Ghetto Nasich Dnu (Ghetto of Our Days), his personal account of daily life in Terezin concentration camp, with illustrations by Leo Haas, his friend and fellow captive, is another rare literary and artistic spark to emerge from the Holocaust's flame.

During his three and a half years in the Czech ghetto, better known by the German name Theresienstadt, Mirko Tuma wrote numerous poems, translated Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, and adapted Calderon's The Judge of Zalamea. After the war he emigrated to the U.S.

From: Ghetto Nasich Dnu.
Illustration by Leo Hass.

Material of this nature, of this quality, in this condition rarely comes into the marketplace in multiple lots within one auction sale. This is an unusual opportunity to "never forget" with unforgettable books.

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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Hitler's Mein Kampf Is Grist For Global Art Project

From Notre Combat by Linda Ellia;
one of 600 works on paper;
artist: Antonia Aimini;
8 ¾ x 5 ½ inches;
Paris, France; 2007.
(All Images Courtesy of the Contemporary Jewish Museum.)

"What should we do with such a book? Ban it? Some would still pass it around on the sly. Forget it? It would be an insult to the millions who died because of it. Burn it? It would be resorting to the methods used by the Nazis..." Ominous words from Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor, Simone Veil, about one of history's most evil books, Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf (My Struggle) .

From Notre Combat by Linda Ellia;
one of six hundred works on paper;
artist: Jean Dobritz;
8 ¾ x 5 ½ inches;
Paris, France; 2007

Veil's words appear in the preface of a 2007 book entitled Notre Combat (Our Struggle). The book is French artist's Linda Ellia's answer to the questions posed by Veil. When Ellia was confronted with a copy of a new French translation of Mein Kampf, she turned it into raw material for a global art project. The results were published in book form, and the original works are now on display at San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum.

Artist Linda Ellia Holding A Page From
The French Translation Of Mein Kampf,
And An Artist's Alteration Of The Same Page.

As Linda Ellia held the copy of Mein Kampf given to her daughter by a friend, she felt as if she were holding the Holocaust-- in all of its unfathomable horror--in her hands. While Ellia passed a sleepless night wondering how to explain the inflammatory book to her child, she had a brainstorm: what if each page of Mein Kampf were transformed into a work of art? How would each artist express the rage, revulsion, shock, sadness, or devastation created by a single, hate-filled page?

From Notre Combat by Linda Ellia;
one of six hundred works on paper;
artist: Philippe Marchand;
8 ¾ x 5 ½ inches;
Paris, France; 2007

Ellia began by altering a page herself: she found a large, red marker, and drew the anguished face of a woman screaming over the text. "I felt such pleasure, that I continued on about 30 pages,” says Ellia. "I covered them with my words, with my drawings, with my paintings. I cut them up. It’s then that I thought about the others. Why not share the experience that I was in the process of living?"

From Notre Combat by Linda Ellia;
one of six hundred works on paper;
artist: Unknown;
8 ¾ x 5 ½ inches;
Paris, France; 2007.

Ellia wound up sharing the experience with over 600 people from 17 countries. Some were professional artists, but many were writers, poets, musicians, film makers, journalists, victims of the Holocaust, students, teachers, or simply people who learned of the project and wanted to participate. From the beginning, Ellia felt that people from all professions and social classes had something to express when faced with extreme injustice. "I stopped perfect strangers,” she says. "I would go into a café, and based solely on intuition, I would approach people that I thought could create an emotional, artistic page."

From Notre Combat by Linda Ellia;
one of six hundred works on paper;
artist: Anais Eberspecher;
8 ¾ x 5 ½ inches;
Paris, France; 2007

Each person involved in the project was given a single page of Mein Kampf to cut, paste, spindle, fold, mutilate, blacken, whiten, color, or otherwise alter and reshape, into a depiction of their reaction to the original text. "The objective was to express on each page the emotion it evokes," says Ellia. "Every page returned to me provoked a profound response. I felt together we could recreate the book and experience a new reading of the pages. It would become Our Struggle." The hundreds of pages photographed for the book Notre Combat, and the original works now on display in San Francisco, cover nearly every artistic style imaginable, and the reactions of the artists run the gamut from sorrow and sympathy, to outrage and anger, to horror and hope, and even to the blackest of black humor.

From Notre Combat by Linda Ellia;
one of six hundred works on paper;
artist: Vilem;
8 ¾ x 5 ½ inches;
Paris, France; 2007.

"This exhibition creates a unique opportunity for dialogue about tolerance in the modern world," says Contemporary Jewish Museum Director, Connie Wolf. "Each of the 600 participants in Linda Ellia’s extraordinary project gives us a contemporary insight into issues of intolerance which are, unfortunately, still very alive today. The works show us the power of creative resistance, and we hope will inspire new ideas about making a difference." Or to once again quote the eloquent preface to Notre Combat by Simone Veil: "This past is too burdensome to be silenced and whether we want it or not, the Holocaust is our common heritage and we must confront it. Linda Ellia’s work is an expression of this confrontation. It summons us to never forget what was."

From Notre Combat by Linda Ellia;
one of six hundred works on paper;
artist: Wallas Gustave;
8 ¾ x 5 ½ inches;
Paris, France; 2007

Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf was organized by the Contemporary Jewish Museum with the support of the Jewish Community Federation Holocaust Memorial Education Fund, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It will remain on display until June 15, 2010. More information and images of the pages are available from the project's website.

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