Illuminated Manuscript, written in English, on vellum, presented to Mrs. Lorna Gascoigne from the Hungarian Colony in Tangier.
AUCTION 62 |
Thursday, June 26th,
2014 at 1:00
Fine Judaica: Books, Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, Graphic and Ceremonial Art
Lot 182
(HOLOCAUST).
Illuminated Manuscript, written in English, on vellum, presented to Mrs. Lorna Gascoigne from the Hungarian Colony in Tangier.
Tangier: July 1945
Est: $2,000 - $3,000
PRICE REALIZED $1,000
Testimonial of gratitude and respects to Lorna Gascoigne for her intervention in obtaining news of separated family members left behind in former Nazi-occupied Hungary.
Lady Lorna Gascoigne was the wife of the British diplomat, Sir Alvary Douglas Frederick Trench-Gascoigne (1893–1970). In August 1939, he was named Consul-General for the Tangier and Spanish Zones in the Protectorate of Morocco and resident at Tangier. In later years he served in Tokyo and in Moscow.
A small group of Hungarian Jews settled in the neutral city of Tangier in order to escape Nazi Europe. A number of these refugees were able to build profitable businesses there. The most celebrated of whom were the Grussgott, and especially the Reichman family, who used their wherewithal (business profits, charm, diplomacy and bribery) to do whatever they could to aid victims of the Holocaust. Under the aegis of the Spanish Red Cross, family matriarch Renée Reichman sent tens of thousands of food parcels from Tangier to the prisoners of Auschwitz and other concentration camps. See A. Bianco, The Reichmanns: Family, Faith, Fortune, and the Empire of Olympia & York (1997).