63 147 (HOLOCAUST). Personal Diary of Nelly Epstein. Manuscript in German. Diary includes clippings, a floor-plan, maps and occasional drawings. pp. 106 (excluding blank pages). Original boards. Rectangular 12mo. Vienna, 1st January, 1935 – Haifa, 18th January, 1943. $4000 - $6000 ❧ A private document of a life uprooted. Diary entries of Brno-born Nelly Epstein (1921-2013) from the age of 13 to the age of 21. The diaries commence with those typical of a teenage girl: Her friends, family-life in Vienna, school, vacation trips, theater performances including clipping of actors she was fond of, the move to a new apartment with a drawing of the floorplan, dance parties and first romantic encounters. All this starkly contrasts with her entries four years later when she describes her lengthy four-month journey with her young husband Emil (Aryeh) Katscher and a group of young Zionists seeking to escape the Nazi net. They travel via the Danube to the Black Sea and then on to Palestine. Upon arrival Nelly is interned for eight months in a British-run detention camp near Haifa. Particularly striking are her drawings depicting life on the boat and in the detention camp. The diary ends in January 1943 when her husband who had joined the military, is deployed to Egypt. The last news concerning her parents is a note from relatives stating that they were deported to Poland in April 1942. Nelly’s parents Amelie (1894-1943) and Berthold Epstein (1883-1944) are known to have been killed in Auschwitz. Her younger brother Hans (1925-45) died in Theresienstadt.” 148 (HOLOCAUST). Autograph Book. Manuscript in Hungarian, written in several hands. Memory-book of a Holocaust survivor, inscribed by his comrades in the Labor Service and fellow inmates at Feldafing DP camp. pp. 32 (excluding blank pages). Original boards with hand-colored upper cover depicting two figures in the Labor Service. Rectangular 8vo. 1945. $2000 - $3000 ❧ “WE GO HOME, CONDEMNED TO LIVE.” The story of the owner of this historic volume, Jeno Benedek, can be partly reconstructed through the memoirs of fifteen of his fellow survivors presented here. In Kolozsvár (Cluj) Benedek was drafted in 1942 for the Labor Service, an alternative military service imposed upon Jews by the Hungarian Government. He served on the Eastern Front in Belarus (Gomel, Mazyr, Brest); Ukraine (Pripyat, Bondorovka, Davidovka); the Don River (Battle of Voronezh); and Germany (Mühldorf, Waldlager). At the end of the war Benedek was kept at the former sub-camp of Dachau, Feldafing-Weilheim, which was turned into a displaced persons camp mostly for the Hungarian Jews liberated by the United States Army. On August 22, 1945, Benedek was sent back to Hungary by train, and in October he settled in Kolozsvár. Beside warm words of friendship and in praise of Benedek’s virtues, the moving personal stories contained in this album provide insight to the barbarity and tragedy of the times: Erzsi Hevesi writes (Feldafing, August 19, 1945) how the “Lager” is slowly beginning to vanish from within, as the barbed-wire falls from her heart and her brain turns human again. Zoltán Neumann ends his bittersweet note (August 21, 1945) with these poetically tragic lines: “We go home, condemned to live.” A more detailed description available upon request. Lot 148 Lot 147