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Russia Scared U.S. Will Leverage Art for Seforim

MOSCOW [AFP] — RUSSIA said on Thursday it would not send any new art exhibitions to the United States until the two sides had settled a dispute over the return of a Jewish library to New York.

A US judge ruled in August that the Russian government must return an archive that once belonged to a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi but was seized by Soviet troops in Nazi Germany. The vast library is being claimed by a Hasidic group in New York but the Russian government insists that it is a part of its state archive.

Russian Culture Minister Alexander Avdeyev told Moscow Echo radio that Moscow imposed its US exhibition restriction in August and that the order remains in place. ‘We stopped sending exhibitions to the United States in August (because) one American organisation made a completely illegitimate claim on this collection of books,’ Mr Avdeyev told the radio station.

Russia had no intention of ceding the library ‘which has never left Russian territory … because we have our own believers who respect these books no less’ than do Jews in the United States, he added.

Moscow feared that the US authorities might seize Russian exhibitions and hold them, in breach of international law, he said. The library was state property and ‘the state is not subject to jurisdiction under international law,’ Mr Avdeyev said.

The collection is known in Russia as the Schneersohn Library in honor of its original owner Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, who had no heirs when he left Russia a decade after the imposition of the Soviet state.

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9 Comments

  • FD

    The real problem?
    The majority of the books in The Russian National Library were stolen from other groups as well.If they give in to Chabad, then there will be a run on all the other stolen booty the russians have there as well…

  • Putin-s Poodles

    Certain parties in Moscow who look like Lubavitchers but are just Putin’s poodles are lending weight to the “own believers” excuse. May they do tshuva fast and start doing what the Rebbe wants instead of what a two penny dictator wants them to do.

  • chani

    nothing to do with heirs,
    the same precedent lies with these seforim.
    THEY BELONG TO THE CHASSIDIM – quote from Rebbetzin Ch.Mushka.

  • chani

    nothing to do with heirs,
    the same precedent lies with these seforim.
    THEY BELONG TO THE CHASSIDIM – quote from Rebbetzin Ch.Mushka.

  • chani

    nothing to do with heirs,
    the same precedent lies with these seforim.
    THEY BELONG TO THE CHASSIDIM – quote from Rebbetzin Ch.Mushka.

  • GIVE BACK THE BOOKS NOW!!!

    THE RUSSIANS ARE DOING WHAT THEIR BEST AT…“to hit a kike to save Russia” this slogan is written on every wall of the metro, Train Stations, Airports, etc., in Moscow “Bei jidov spasai Rusia”<–

    if you go to Moscow or any part of Russia, you will see that they have Skin Heads everywhere & everyplace hating Jews so don’t tell me your keeping these books as archives for the people! since World War II. give back the books and clean up the garbage that my grandfather died for in world war II, and we still don’t know the day he past away

    the Rebbe said..these books are ticking time bombs for any one, whose possession they are found in, and are not the rightful owners. these books bring and will continue to bring harsh judgment from above against the Russians…

  • mendel

    as he rebbe said they will come back when moshiach will arrive
    WE WANT MOSHIACH NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!