Book
Creator(s)
- Isaac Ossowski (Subject)
Biographical History
Isaac Ossowski was born in 1877 in Lubraniez, near Warsaw, Poland, to an extremely devout family and Hasidim, with a long tradition of religious study and service, as hazan [cantors], shochet [ritual slaughterer], mohels [perform ritual circumcision], and sofers [scribes.] His father, Menahem, was a shochet and Isaac attended Yeshiva in Russia. He resettled in Germany, first in Frankfurt am Main, then in Berlin. He married Frieda Schwartzbardt, born in 1888. They had three sons, Joseph, (1915-2011), Leo (b. 4/1/1913), and Sol (1919-2011), and one daughter, Nettie. Rabbi Ossowski became head shochet, overseeing the ritual slaughter of animals in Berlin. He also served as hazan, mohel, and sofer for the Alte Shule [Old Synagogue]. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933, the persecution of Jews became official government policy. Rabbi Ossowski and members of his family were interrogated several times by the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons) who gathered intelligence on opponents of the Nazi state and policed racial purity. In 1934, due to the threatening anti-Semitic climate of the Nazi state, he sent his young son, Sol, to Lithuania to study at a yeshiva. In 1938, Rabbi Ossowski, with his wife and daughter, escaped Nazi Germany for the United States. They joined their sons, Joseph and Leo, who had settled in the United States in 1936. Their son, Sol, joined them in the United States in 1939 after completing his rabbinical studies in England. Rabbi Ossowski, 66, died in Ohio in 1943.
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Sol Oster
Scope and Content
Book codifying Jewish law concerned with "Life Ways," and the Passover liturgy, and also a loose page from another work found inside the book, from the library of Isaac Ossowski, a prominent member of the Jewish community in Berlin, Germany, who emigrated in 1938 to avoid the increasing persecution of Jews by the government of Nazi Germany.
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions on access
Conditions Governing Reproduction
No restrictions on use
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
a. Extremely, worn black leather covered religious book with sewn binding; the text block is misshapen and extends unevenly beyond the covers. There is a rectangular piece of cloth tape on the spine with a handwritten title in Hebrew. Title: Shulchan Aruch Publication: Amsterdam : Rabbi Naftali Herz Levi ; 1760 ; Description: 321 p. ; 17.5 cm b. Single loose sheet of brownish paper with Hebrew text in black ink found folded inside book (a); different dimensions and font than (a) suggests it is part of a separate, unknown work. Description: 16.5 cm
a. inside front cover, black ink : illegible writing a. binding, black ink : Hebrew text
Subjects
- Jews--Persecutions--Germany.
- Jews--Germany--History--20th century.
- Jewish refugees--United States.
- Rabbis--Germany--Biography.
- Jewish families--Germany--Berlin.
- Shehitah--Germany--Berlin--Biography.
Genre
- Object
- Books and Published Materials