Non-traditional haggadah with sharp illustrations depicting the cruelty of the Nazis, and long, very harsh texts describing Hitler’s crimes in minute detail, the Nazi tyranny and the silence of the nations of the world with respect to the Holocaust, and the locking of the gates to the Land of Israel in the faces of the immigrants, and the bitter lot of those left in Europe. The text of the Haggadah was written by Yosef Dov Shinzon, who wrote the Haggadah during his stay in the DP camp in Munich in 1946. The Haggadah lacks binding and end (bound by other Haggadah from 1944.)
Most of the haggadah is written in Hebrew, with some passages in Yiddish. With the exception of the traditional version of Mah Nishtanah, the entire Haggdah deals with European Jewry and its bitter fate during the years of the Holocaust.
One of the most prominent passages describes Hitler’s crimes in language characteristic of Pharaoh’s decrees: ‘When the righteous among the nations saw everything Hitler decreed and that he is consuming Israel, their great Sanhedrin stood up, and out of great mourning, declared silence … they stood for a short while mourning and with heads bowed low … and Hitler sends hungry dogs upon Jewish babies, who tear them to shreds. The same evil man would go on to build gas chambers and furnaces and consume Israel in them. And great is the sorrow among the world’s nations. And the righteous among them declare: Who are we and what power do we have to save them from that evil person … and the people of Israel ask that their babies be saved, they stand and give them over to Christians to hide them, and they hide them from them and demand their pay … they hide them and find them afterwards to be killed … and they proselytize them and make them gentiles. And the fathers of those babies are dragged to camps by the murderers where they are consumed by harsh work, starvation and all types of torture and disease. And everyone sees the Jews soaked in their own blood and they pass right by …”
Later on, there is a harsh passage relating to the bitter fate of the survivors: ‘And the survivors gather together from their caves, forests and extermination camps and they come and go to the lands of their exile … and the Jews flee for their lives, smuggling them through borders and there they rob them of everything they have … and they go and collect the babies of Israel like abandoned eggs. And there is tremendous controversy, and each camp pulls towards his own… Those who are unafraid kidnap the babies of those who are afraid, and those who are afraid kidnap the babies from those who are unafraid … and the children stand and argue each digs in his heels and brothers are separated from each other, because they do not come to any agreement … and they cannot sit together … and emissaries go out from the Land to the survivors, with all sorts of keys in their hands in order to cause division amongst the survivors and to open their closed hearts ….”
The text which deals with the four sons whom the Torah discusses relates to those prevented from immigrating to the Land of Israel with various claims: ‘The evil one, what does he say – is this country too narrow for you that you pressure your way into the Land of Israel … go with your own powers and build the destroyed Europe. Strike his teeth and say to him: We moved to Europe and they built us gas chambers and cremetoria, they destroyed us with all sorts of cruel inventions, and for this we should rebuild Europe? … The simple one, what does he say? Will you gather in such a small land? What will become of Yishmael? Say to him … we are not coming to take advantage of another, we will build our own homes … as for Yishmael – Israel will not short-change him of his rights ….”
“Dayeinu” lists a long series of decrees, persecutions and pogroms against the Jewish people beginning with the crusades: ‘If only we were dispersed among the nations and suffered the decrees of the first crusades, it would have been enough for us … if he would have given us ‘the mark of disgrace’ and not given us the decree of the black plague, it would have been enough for us … if he would have given us the inquisition and not the decrees of 1648 and 1649, it would have been enough for us … if he would have given us the slaughter of 1919 in the Ukraine and not given us Hitler, it would have been enough for us … if he would have established the ghettos and not the gas chambers and crematoria, it would have been enough for us … How much more so, in that all these came to be, we must immigrate, even illegally, end the exile, build the Chosen Land and make a home for ourselves and our children forever.’
In one of the passages there is a reference to the place where the Haggadah was written in the DP camp among the survivors of the Holocaust: “The twelve months of the month of Herut were liberated, and the remnant still lives in Bavaria the state …” This section refers to delegations from Eretz Israel to the camps, According to She’erit Hapleitah.
Between the pages of the haggadah, there are large pictures on entire pages in linocut style [Signed in print Ben Benyamin – Zvi Miklos Adler – Hungarian Holocaust survivor who decorated the Haggadah with drawings from his personal memory as a prisoner in the camp] depicting the forced labor the Jews endured during the Holocaust and the Nazi tyranny. One shows a soldier with gun drawn and Jews digging a mass grave, another picture depicts a soldier with a whip beating forced laborers and a dead Jew at his feet, a picture of Jews on a death march and a soldier slaughtering them with a few dead lying next to him, Jews standing in line to receive a portion of soup, and SS soldier with a swastika on his arm oppressing forced laborers with yellow patches on their clothes, and more.
[13] leaves. Some of the leaves are detached. Tears in the margins of the title page and the last two leaves. Missing the end of the haggadah [possibly a number of leaves]. missing binding (binding on other cover from 1944 haggadah.) Moderate-fine condition.
