(POGROMS).

Vienna? ca. 1910; Albert, Feingold & Tuch, publishers (lower left)

A chilling document, captioned in Hebrew and German, designed to serve as a memorial to those killed in Pogroms in 1903 in Kishinev, in 1905 in Odessa and Kalarasch, and in 1906 in Bialystok. The central portion contains lists of the names of the martyrs, in columns, topped and separated by names of places and dates; the outer columns contain appropriate, poignant memorial prayers based on traditional liturgy, but adapted to the circumstances (“...we have pledged the tears of our eyes and the blood of our hearts to further the remembrance of their souls.”) The dense text, with quotations and paraphrases from Biblical and ritual passages, makes repeated reference to “...children who perished without years... our martyrs who perished for their faith...” Images with German captions include, at bottom “Sacrifices of the massacre;” in the center, “Cemetery;” above, “Burial of Torah scrolls desecrated in the Kishinev Massacre.”

A scarce, vital and profoundly important, historical document