Library of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt restitutes Holocaust victim’s prayer book to granddaughter

A handwritten entry in the cover refers to the original owner: “Wolf Grünebaum, Sulzbürg i. Obpf, 4 May 1926”. The book is the only surviving item that belonged to Grünebaum, who is thought to have been murdered in an extermination camp in 1942. It was now possible to hand over the book to his granddaughter, Sylvia Gruen Salomon, who lives in the USA.

She was not born until August 1949 and never knew her grandfather. In 1940, her father Alfred managed to escape to the USA with his wife Irma and their son Joachim, who was born in 1937. Alfred’s brother Justin was also able to escape by other means, first to Canada, then to the USA. Wolf Grünebaum’s sons were unable to persuade him to flee, however, so he remained in Sulzbürg in the Upper Palatinate until the end. He had fought for Germany in the First World War and hoped – as he is often said to have replied to his sons – that his status as a war veteran would protect him.

Wolf Grünebaum’s granddaughter Sylvia Gruen Salomon now lives in Nashville, Tennessee. She says: “The return of my grandfather’s Sidur to our family means a lot to me and all our relatives! It is the only tangible artefact we have that belonged to my father’s father. Not a single item has survived from my maternal grandparents.” Sylvia Salomon has now given the book to her own granddaughters.

Major efforts by committed institutions and individuals came together to enable the restitution of the book to the family. One starting point for the restitution was a project pursued by KU University Library and funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, which aimed to clarify the provenance of some 60 Hebrew works from the 17th to the 20th centuries that can be traced back to Sulzbürg. The collection forms part of the holdings of the Eichstätt seminary, which the University Library is also responsible for. A local priest who had been working in Sulzbürg from 1944 handed over the collection to the former rector of the seminary. The latter in turn transferred it to the seminary library in 1985. Although the project was not able to conclusively determine the stages of ownership through which the copies passed before and after 1942, the research resulted in an exhibition of the books at their place of origin in Sulzbürg, which was on display there until the beginning of the year. In addition, a working group was formed for the project which in turn provided fresh momentum for the initiation of further research into the lifelines and descendants of the former owners.

Wolf Grünebaum was a member of the Sulzbürg municipal council in the 1920s and head of the Jewish religious community from 1931 until his deportation. He was 65 years old when, on Good Friday 1942, he and his wife Amalie were taken by a gendarme to the railway station near their home in Sulzbürg. The same goes for the young Jewish couple Regensburger, for whom Wolf Grünebaum had acted as best man some time previously. The Grünebaums and Regensburgers were taken to Regensburg on the same day as Jews from Neumarkt and deported from Regensburg to the Piaski ghetto south-east of Lublin on 4 April 1942, entered as no. 92/93 and 175/176 respectively on the deportation list. Their lifelines end there, or at one of the extermination camps Belzec or Sobibor.

Since November last year, two Stolpersteine in Sulzbürg have commemorated the fate of Wolf and Amalie Grünebaum.

KU University Library offers a permanent digital insight into the Sulzbürg collection here including information on the findings of the research project.

Link to the project