Chabad and Wiener Libraries, the Archive of the Rayatz
A Case Of Looted And Lost Property — Любавичские Ребе и Их Библиотеки
On the subject of: mentalblog — The Schneerson Collection. I was speaking with Dr. Ekaterina (Katya) Oleshkevich in preparation for a podcast. Katya was the Chief Librarian of the Schneerson Library in Moscow (2014-2018). She is a Principal Investigator in the project of cataloging the Rayatz Archive. Katya is a graduate of Moscow State University, Department of Jewish Studies, and holds a Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University, Department of Jewish History. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The following remarks are exclusively my rants and don’t reflect the opinions of Dr. Oleshkevich. For Katya’s researched opinions, please read the PDFs. Eye-opening!
The Archive of the Rayatz
The archive could be compared to a “Presidential Library” in the USA. It has all private and public documents related to the “Rayatz rule”.
The Archive is distinct from the “libraries”, or book collections. The Nazis took possession of this archive (perhaps because of Chaim Lieberman's work and professional dedication, it seemed an important set of documents). The Germans sent it to storage together with other Jewish community archives (i.e., Salonika, Vienna, etc.), cultural and Masonic records. It is presumed that it was sent to Wölfelsdorf in Silesia (today Wilkanów in Poland).
When Rayatz was whisked out of Warsaw by the German officer Major Ernst Bloch (Rescued from the Reich by Bryan Mark Rigg) he left his Archive and the Library but took some manuscripts (ksovim)? Someone knows what he took exactly? The “Archive” was looted by the Germans, and then the Russians captured it as a trophy. On the other hand, the “Library” was left in Poland and most of it, was ultimately “returned” to NY in 1978. No one knows what was lost during German and Russian custody in the chaos of the war. Some documents got mixed with other archives.
Nobody knew of the Archive's survival until the late 90s, specifically 2005 (see Katya’s paper). As a legal “compromise” the copy scans of the archive housed hidden in the Berl Lazars’ Museum of “tolerance”. The originals of the archive are still in the Russian State Military Archive, the museum of “tolerance” has only the scanned copies, but they are unavailable to the broad public.
This archive was meticulously cataloged by Katya and her colleagues with the expectation that it would be published online and available for research. Who could even imagine that it had a better chance of being open in the Russian Army or Nazi warehouse than in Lubavitch Chabad custody. The Facebook group run by Katya abruptly stopped publishing on September 16, 2020.
If you follow access to the archive, it might give you an idea who vandalized the Rayatz photographs (several original Rayatz photos are vandalized). Ekaterina couldn’t tell me, she didn’t know. I think it most likely occurred very recently, a thick black marker was used. Someone who examined the originals documents in the Russian State Military Archive storage is guilty of vandalism of the precious and priceless photos. He probably thought he was a hero, tampering with the photos. The culture that produces these iconoclastic zealots is dysfunctional.
The History of Chabad and Wiener Libraries
Not many people know (I didn’t know) that the foundation of Chabad Library in NY (Barry Gourary Memorial Library) is not the original Lubavitcher library. The original library is currently in the legal dispute in Moscow. Katya writes:
“After the Lubavitch library had been nationalized by the Soviet government in the early 1920s, the Rayatz decided to buy a book collection of the famous bibliophile, Samuel Wiener. The purchase agreement was concluded in 1924, and the Rayatz was obliged to pay $50 of monthly payments to Samuel Wiener for the library.
The archive features numerous letters written to Y.I. Schneerson by the Wiener family confirming the receipt of the payments. Most of the letters were written by the son of Samuel Wiener, Eremey Wiener, in Russian, however, his father sometimes added a postscript at the end of the letter - always in Hebrew.
The Rayatz succeeded in taking these books with him when leaving the USSR in 1927, and afterward [part was recovered in Poland in 1978] they became the part of the Chabad Lubavitch Library in New York”
Biography: Viner, Shmuel (1860–March 1929). Also, Russian wiki: Винер, Самуил Еремеевич. So he named his son after his father, the Rosh Yeshive in Borisov.
The bibliophile Samuel Wiener (Shmuel Viner) emigrated from the CCCP and died in France in 1929. This letter (receipt) was written in Menton, France by Eremey Wiener. With a footnote by his father.
Menton, September 6, 1928 “Dear Iosif Solomonovich! [Sholem is Solomon, nu-nu] Hereby we gratefully confirm the receipt of the check for 50 dollars as a payment for August 1928. My father and the whole family congratulate you on New Year and wish you and your family happiness and health. With best regards, E. Wiener”
Postscript from the father, Shmuel Viner (aka Samuel Weiner):
כו״ח טובה ליום הזכרון לכבוד ידידי [לא ברור] רבנו הרב אדמו״ר מרן רבן של כל חסידי חבד בדורנו. יצו ה׳ את הברכה אתו, הצדיק גוזר והקב״ה מקיים ידידו שמואל בן [לא ברור, כנראה שם אמו] וינר
Shmuel Viner died that year, in March 1929. Did Rayatz continue the payments after 1929?1 Where is the name and memory of Shmuel Viner in the NY Chabad library? Can they even tell what books in NY belong to the Weiner collection?
Why did Rayatz need an expensive library, then? He was willing to pay in considerable installments, in foreign currency? $50 monthly is worth now about $1,000 a month or $12,000 a year. Rayatz was doing what Chabad does, fighting for dominance in Russia and Leningrad, diminishing the power of the established Rabbonim. He was fighting the Zionists, rabbinical leadership, secular Jewish elite2. A possession of a major, expensive library goes a long way in the perception of “leadership”.
There is another aspect, Rayatz (and his father) loved books. Jonathan Meir describes Rayatz as a “writer who lived (captured) in a body of a Rabbi”. Let’s not forget the purchase at approximately at the same time in 1918 in Odessa of the Kherson Geniza (video lecture in Hebrew by Jonathan Meir), widely regarded as a forgery. Jonathan Meir is saying, at the end of that video, that Kherson Geniza is “hidden” in some closet in the NY library. I think Rayaz took the Geniza with him to Riga in 1927 and then to Warsaw. Kherson Geniza must have been retrieved in 1978 with the library. Maybe we should call it the “NY Geniza”? Typical Chabad, once they take custody it becomes unavailable even internally. It’s really a scandal because without a proper catalog, they can hide or forever destroy historic artifacts.
As I wrote, elsewhere, Rayatz and Rashab were caught completely flatfooted by the Russian Revolution. They had no idea what was coming. Rayatz (and Rashab) was busy with becoming a Tsar of all Russian Jews. They had no sense of imminent danger, didn’t instruct Hasidim or themselves accordingly. Didn’t have a sense or even the slightest intuition that the fatal devastation of the one-two-punch by Socialist Communism and National Socialism was the fate of that tragic century. They were in a bubble that was about to get severely punctured.3
Having this traumatic experience of the lost possession, the already infirm Rayatz made a valiant stand in Warsaw, at least with the manuscripts. Even at that moment in 1940 Poland, in front of half Jewish, German officer Ernst Bloch, who was saving the life of his entire family, Rayatz still didn’t fully understand what was coming. His kingdom was falling in front of his eyes.
On one hand, I favor the aristocratic leadership, it best prepares people for the job of governing. On the other hand, ensconced in financial and emotional “privilege”, protected from the world, they lose the sense of danger and reality. This is precisely how Tsar Nicholas, the 14th and last Emperor of Russia, got slaughtered together with his family and without a fight. Rayatz was left hanging by the thread twice. A different fate in Russia and Poland was awaiting most of his followers.
אוֹי מֶה הָיָה לָנוּ
In Russian, the expanded and detailed paper:
I am no longer in favor of returning anything to Chabad. They will just hide it from people and research behind the ideological dark screen. Like they do in NY, and seem to be doing in Moscow now. Returning historic documents to Chabad is against the interest of the Jewish people! It’s not beneath them to vandalize, or outright destroy, priceless historic records when it doesn’t follow their fictional story. As the late Rebbezin Musya, herself the prime subject of the censorship by Chabad apparatchiks, “librarians” and propagandists, derisively called them — “шпана”.
Speaking of libraries: Sound No. 7 - Sholem Aleichem: The Counterclaims of Barry S. Gourary.
Wiener had a wife and several children, it was them who received the payments after his death.
Michael Beizer on the Jewish community of Leningrad in 1917-1939, in Russian and Hebrew.
I finally read both Oleshkevitch papers — she filled some gaps in my understanding and opened up some new ones.
• she states that no manuscripts are found in the Red Army museum — only the “archive” is there. come to think of it, a few years ago people did tell me that only some “archive” was there, but since I never heard of it, I had no idea what they were talking about and decided that those Tzemach Tzedek manuscripts that other people claimed were discovered in the Red Army museum, were part of this "archive" (and if there were not, where DID the folks in NY get their photocopies from?).
• she does somewhat answer my question about the absence of a catalog of the library sent to the Moscow storage — at least there is a claim is that there was a catalog.
• she explains quite plausibly why the very-very rare Shklov siddur was placed into that storage (this had always puzzled me) — it did not have the kedusha of having been owned by one of the Rebbes (this is not a totally satisfying answer, to be sure, as this siddur is not simply a valuable imprint, but, I believe, the ONLY extant copy, and even the author of Shaar Hakolel working on his Torah Ohr siddur bemoaned the fact that he could not get to see it).
• now, if the manuscripts were all left in that later nationalized Moscow storage and became part of the disputed “Schnnerson Collection”, how did any manuscripts make their way to NY?
• there were very few books that were taken to Rostov and later Leningrad and those, with additional purchase of the Viner collection went to Riga, then to Otwotsk (with more books purchased during the pre-war period), to only then be abandoned in Poland in 1939. The FR took a small suitcase with manuscripts on his person on his way out of Warsaw — what did the NY library consist of until 1978? THIS REMAINS THE BIGGEST GAPING HOLE IN MY UNDERSTANDING OF THIS SAGA.
• as an aside to the last point, she says that what was brought out of Poland in 1978 was also an "archive", but we do know for a fact that is contained also some manuscripts of maamorim, including by the Tzemach Tzedek. perhaps “archive” in this case doesn’t mean purely a collection of documents?
I usually do many edits after the post is published.