A Bible belonging to a Jewish family in Nazi Germany has made its way back to its descendants after decades of being passed from collector to collector.
The Bible originally belonged to Eduard and Ernestine Leiter, who had to leave their home due to the growing persecution in Nazi Germany and later died in a concentration camp in Poland. Now, over 80 years later, researchers and historians have traced the couple’s lineage and returned the book to the family, according to the Washington Post.
When the Bible was put up for sale on eBay in 2017, artist and historian Gerhard Roese noticed that the book contained illustrations from Gustave Dore. A famous artist of the late 19th century, Dore’s illustrations implied that the Bible may have belonged to a family during the Holocaust.
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Working with researchers of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, they set to work to find the ancestors of the original owners.
The couple had a son, Sali, who survived the concentration camp, changed his name to Charles, and moved to America. Charles had a son named Max who died years ago but was featured in the New York Times in 2008. Max had three grandchildren, one of whom had a LinkedIn page and was contacted by the researchers. The search took over four years, but they eventually found the owner’s great-great-grandson living in New York City.
Upon receiving the Bible, Jacob Leiter and his grandmother, Holocaust survivor Susi Kasper Leiter, were overjoyed to have a piece of their family’s history returned to them. The book allowed the family to learn more about its ancestors.
“I kept saying throughout the whole process how lucky I am that I have my grandmother to experience this with,” Jacob told the Washington Post. “Just doing this in its entirety with her is something I’ll remember forever.”
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It is a miracle that the Bible still exists, as thousands of non-German books were burned by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, according to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Other targeted books included books from Karl Marx and the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarquel.
