The Schneerson Library cannot be taken out to the United States from Russia, presidential envoy for international cultural cooperation Mikhail Shvydkoy told Interfax.
“The Schneerson collection is part of the Russian State Library’s collection, which, in turn, is indivisible and cannot be subject to separation,” he said.
“There are no reasons” for moving the collection. These archives have been in the Russian Federation’s ownership all through the 20th century, and cannot be alienated or moved on a permanent basis,” Shvydkoy said.
Pending the settlement of the Schneerson Library issue, no exhibits of Russian cultural values are possible in the United States, he also said.
“It is impossible to imagine a situation involving seizure of Russian cultural values, which is due to the fact, among other reasons, that special conditions must be created to keep them, which is difficult to do in places unfit for this. Therefore, we will not be able to send any of our exhibits to the United States pending solution of the problem,” he said.
A Russian-American agreement is being drafted that would help protect Russian cultural values from third parties’ claims, Shvydkoy said, adding, “The drat will be ready within a month, I think.”
The Schneerson Library is a collection of old Jewish books and manuscripts, put together by rabbis of the Chabad Jewish community in the late 18th century in Belarus. It is one of the Jewish religious relics.
Part of the collection amassed by Lubavitcher Rebbe Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson, was nationalized by Bolsheviks in 1918 and ended up at the Russian State Library. The other part was taken out of the Soviet Union by Schneerson, who emigrated in the 1930s.
About 25,000 pages of manuscripts got into the hands of the Nazis, and were later seized by the Red Army and handed over to the Russian State Military Archive.
Lubavitchers (adherents of one of the Hasidic movements – IF) have sought the restitution of the Schneerson collection since the late 1980s. According to some reports, at the time Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin promised to James Baker, Secretary of State in the George Bush Sr. administration, that the holy documents will be returned to the Hasids.
On August 6, 2010, a federal judge in Washington, Royce Lamberth, ruled that the Hasids proved the legitimacy of their claims to the ancient Jewish books and manuscripts, which, in his definition, are kept at the Russian State Library and the Russian Military Archive illegally.
The Russian Foreign Ministry challenged the judgment.
Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle has assured Russian officials that the U.S. court ruling will not lead to a seizure of Russian cultural values, taken out to the United States for an exhibition.
(Source: Interfax)
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6 Responses
Russian cultural value? Hmmm…. After Chabad suffered (along with the rest of the Jews for 70 years of communisims) and Russian rabbis met their death in Siberia, not to mention the other sufferings that Jews endured in Mother Russia’s anti semetic Tzar’s country, they have the nerve to tell us and the world that it is of Russia cultural value??? Come on now, what kind of total lie and hypocrisy is this?? They hated Jews, they killed us and even more so the Chabniks for teaching in the underground cheders, opening mikvahs and just praying like a Jew.
The only cultural value these books have are two:
1. it reminds them of just how much they hated us, and
2. they can use it to blackmail us into paying for our Jewish heritage. As if they use it for their Russian heritage.
Given that several groups of American Jews are actively trying to support Yiddishkeit in Russia, it seems that they should work with the Russians to improve access to the collection and to build up the local Jewish communities. There is a movement in many places in eastern Europe to support rebuilding the Jewish communities that were destroyed by the combined effects of the Nazis and Communists – and we should be sympathetic. The Russians aren’t being overly unreasonable since they don’t want to have all the confiscations of the 20th century litigated elsewhere, an din the post-1991 period have been sympathetic to groups trying to establish frum communities in Russia.
Under the “Act of state” doctrine, if the government confiscation was lawful at the time, then under the “Act of State” doctrine the US will respect that particularly if the person’s whose property was confiscated was not an American. For example, when a Palestinian comes into an American court and argues the Israelis were unfair to him, we don’t want him getting a judgement against Israel and then seizing some Israeli property to enforce the judgement.
Believe me, I am not a supporter of Chabad. But what’s the excuse, since we stole it so long ago, we have a right to keep it?
Russian heritage? They tried to destroy any vestige of belief in Hashem and the Jewish religion, exiling
Jews to Siberia and imprisoning them for adhering
to and teaching the Torah. Then they steal our holy
writings and call it Russian culture. What blatant
liars they are.
The vatican is no different.
Like Pharaoh, Hashem is leading all these rashaim to their destruction.