Rabbinical School Vacquelire Street Paris
Rabbinical School, Vauquelire Street – Paris. .The Séminaire Israélite de France (also referred to as the École Rabbinique) has been training rabbis since 1829. Though founded in Metz, the school was transferre... More
Library of the Union of Russian Teachers in Latvia
The Union of Russian Teachers in Latvia was established in January 1919 during the Latvian War of Independence against Soviet Russia. It served mostly as a professional and scientifically-oriented organization.... More
People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR
On June 20th, 1934, the older People’s Commissariat of Military and Marine Affairs became the People’s Commissariat of Defense of the U.S.S.R. In December 1937, naval affairs were handed over to the new People’... More
Baltinava Jewish Culture Society - Public domain map
Though the village of Baltinava’s Jewish community never numbered higher than a few hundred the village was still home to Jewish mutual aid and cultural societies – as this book stamp demonstrates. In the years... More
Library of the Israelite Consistory of Paris
Library of the Israelite Consistory of Paris. ..A consistory was a religious authority governing the Jews of various geographic localities in France, in accordance with a Napoleon I decree circa 1808. Whenever... More
Library of the Business Institute MORKO
Library of the Business Institute M.O.R.K.O. Inventory 1301. Section 944. Number 176. ..This stamp comes from the library of the Moscow Institute of Commerce of M.O.R.K.O. M.O.R.K.O. is an acronym for the Mosc... More
The Lounge Bookseller_b
This stamp is not from a library but from a bookstore called “The Lounge”, which was located on Rue Etats-Unis (United States), in Cannes. This particular street is renowned for luxury, high end shopping establ... More
Rabbinical School Vauquelire Street Paris
Rabbinical School, Vauquelire Street – Paris. .The Séminaire Israélite de France (also referred to as the École Rabbinique) has been training rabbis since 1829. Though founded in Metz, the school was transferre... More
Jewish Bookstore Aaron Beker No 20 Herren Street
In the 1800s the Latvian city of Riga developed a reputation for being culturally open which proved an appealing draw for many Jews who came to settle in the city. Throughout the 1800s the city’s Jewish populat... More
Libary of the Kharkhaver Jewish Workers Cooperative Self Education
In the years following the end of the First World War and the Russian Revolution the city of Kharkiv – in Ukraine – became home to a large and vibrant Jewish community; indeed, the Jewish population of Kharkiv ... More
Library of the Pskov Pedagogical Institute
Library of the Pskov Pedagogical Institute. This stamp most likely indicates the pre-World War II incarnation of the present-day Pskov State Pedagogical University in Pskov, Russia...This book stamp is from a b... More
Professional Union of Bookdealers, Magnitogorsk
Professional Union of Bookdealers. Magnitogorsk group committee. Magnitogorsk is a city founded in 1743 by the Empress Elizabeth. Given the city’s large reserves of iron ore, it was of importance to Soviet lead... More
Library of the Mens Sunday School, Riga
Library of the Men's Sunday School in Riga. This private school was founded in 1890 by a group of Russian teachers to serve those who never had a chance to get a sufficient education at a regular school. The o... More
Bookstore G Gutman Kovno Birstono Street no 10
A census of Kovno from 1923 indicated that 27 percent of the city’s population was Jewish – and the city was the scene of a thriving Jewish community that would befit such a high percentage. The city was home t... More
Russian Social Deomcratic Workers' Party
This party was formed in 1898 and attempted to combine all Marxist revolutionary groups in the Russian Empire. The three main original constituents were the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Worki... More
Democratic Zionists Guild Hakhsharah
Many Zionist groups throughout Europe worked to actively prepare their members for eventual immigration. Therefore, numerous “Haksharah” (Zionist Training Farms) were set up to provide young Zionists with the t... More
Society of Jewish Science in the Netherlands
Society of Jewish Science in the Netherlands.Founded in Germany, in 1819, the Wissenschaft der Juden (Society for Jewish Culture and Science) sought to establish a construct of the Jewish people as a people – i... More
Vitebsk Scholarly Archival Commission
Vitebsk Scholarly Archival Commission. ..The Vitebsk Scholarly Archival Commission was established in 1909 by Vitebsk historians and folklorists and played a central role in the development of archival science ... More
Library of the Gatchina Palace Museum
Library of the Gatchina Palace-Museum. ..The Gatchina Palace was originally built in the late 18th Century for a Russian count; however, Catherine the Great eventually purchased the property and it became an im... More
Novorossiysk Imperial University Library
Novorossiysk Imperial University Library. This institution in Odessa was founded in 1817, and was originally known as Richelieu Lycee. In 1865, by decree of the Emperor Alexander II, it was re-organized as Imp... More
Military Engineering Academy Riga - Public domain map
Military engineering academy. Riga. N. V. Kuybishev Library. This was a library for an officer training school, located in Riga. These schools were for commissioned officers in the Russian army; there were a gr... More
Publication of Rabbi B. Israelzon
Publication of Rabbi B. Israelzon. Courland Governorate. Kandau. Kandau is the German name for the town of Kandava, which is located on the outskirts of Riga. The stamp also references the Courland Governorate,... More
Library of the Daugavpils - Public domain map
Library of the Daugavpils D. K. A. 9732 (House of the Red Army). A “House of the Red Army” was a cultural institution whose function it was to serve the cultural, educational, and recreational needs of Red Army... More
Flour and Cereals Business of B. Tsivyanin Kreytzburg
Flour and Cereals Business of B. Tsivyan in Kreytzburg. The owner of this business is possibly related to an Abram Ziwian, a watchmaker born in 1900 in Kreutzburg, who perished or was murdered there in 1941. Kr... More
House of Ethics Rabbi Yisrael Salanter
House of Ethics. The Foundation, Our Master, Our Teacher, and Our Rebbe (admur) Rabbi Yisrael Salanter. Kovno..Born in Lithuania in 1810, Rabbi Yisra’el ben Ze’ev Volf Salanter (also known as Lipkin) was a pro... More
Jewish Democratic Teachers' Association
The cultural openness that was often attributed to the Latvian capital of Riga, made the city an appealing destination for many Jews. After 1842, when the Jewish community received formal recognition by the aut... More
Society for the Guarding of the Health of the Jewish Population
At the beginning of World War I, as many Jewish (as well as non-Jewish) refugees poured away from the Western boundaries of the Russian Empire where fighting with the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires was tak... More
The Lounge Bookseller_a - Public domain map
This stamp is not from a library but from a bookstore called “The Lounge”, which was located on Rue Etats-Unis (United States), in Cannes. This particular street is renowned for luxury, high end shopping establ... More
Student Library Reading Room fo the Kiev Polytechnic Institute
Student Library-reading room of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. ..Founded in 1898 with the support of the originator of the Periodic Table of Elements, Dmitri Mendeleev, among others, the Kiev Polytechnic Inst... More
Western Oblast Pioneer House
Western Oblast Pioneer House. Smolensk, Sotsialisticheskaya Street 1/5. ..The Pioneer movement is an organization for children in communist countries. It is similar to the Scout movement in the US, but is dist... More
Literary Circle in Reval - public domain postal stamp scan
Literary circle in the city of Reval. ..This stamp most likely denoted ownership by a private library or literary society/book group. Given that the name on the stamp is Revel, rather than the current name of T... More
Administration of the Estonian Railroad of the Tartu Branch
USSR. NKPS. Administration of the Estonian Railroad of the Tartu Branch. _ _ _ _ 194. Nr. 475. ..While some of this stamp is illegible, there is enough to ascertain that it is from the library of the NKPS, whic... More
Library of the Riga Infantry School - Public domain map
A census of Kovno from 1923 indicated that 27 percent of the city’s population was Jewish – and the city was the scene of a thriving Jewish community that would befit such a high percentage. The city was home t... More
Central Yiddish School Organization_Central Secretary Vilna
In 1921 the Central Yiddish School Organization (Tsentrale Yidishe Shul Organizatsye – often known by the acronym TSYSHO) was founded in Warsaw to advance and administrate a network of secular Yiddish schools. ... More
Library of Free People - A stamp with a picture of a man holding a ten...
Library of Free People, 4th District (arrondissement), Paris...This library was located in Paris, in the 4th arrondissement; an arrondissement is an administrative district, of which Paris is divided into 20. T... More
Josef Jona Zwi Halevi Horovitz
Josef Jona Zwi Halevi Horovitz. Chief of the Court (Av Beit Din). Kehal Adath Jeshurun Frankfurt Am Main...Born in 1892, in Hunsdorf (Czech Republic), Rabbi Josef Jona Zwi Horovitz – the “Hundsorfer Rav” – was ... More
Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana - Public domain map
The Bibliotheca Rosenthalia began as the personal collection of Leeser Rosenthal – an independent collector who assembled an impressive library including thousands of printed books alongside numerous manuscript... More
Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Public domain map
Library, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ..This stamp is from the library of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is housed in the historic Quai d’Orsay building in Paris. The ministry has been at this location ... More
Jewish Community Assembly in Riga - Public domain map
Jewish Community Assembly in the city of Riga. This stamp is from a Jewish community center library in Riga. The orthography on the stamp is consistent with the language used before the post-revolution reform.... More
Union of Food Workers Lozovsky Club - Public domain map
The Lozovsky referred to in this stamp is most likely Solomon Lozovsky, a prominent Bolshevik and, during the times he was expelled from the Bolshevik Party (in 1914 and 1918), a Mezhraionets (a Russian Social ... More
Bookstore G Gutman Kovno Birstono Street no 10
A census of Kovno from 1923 indicated that 27 percent of the city’s population was Jewish – and the city was the scene of a thriving Jewish community that would befit such a high percentage. The city was home t... More
Kolel Kaunas Consolidated with Kolel House of Israel
Kolel Kaunas (Kovno) consolidated with Kolel House of Israel. Talmudical Academy Kolel of Kaunas and Kolel Beis Israel Kaunes, Lithuania. Kaunas, Lithuania...Library of the Kovno Kollel...In 1877, Rabbi Yisroel... More
May He Live Zalman Tuviyah Markovicius the Rabbi fo Antaliepte in Lith...
May He Live, Zalman-Tuviyah Markovicius // the Rabbi of Antaliepte in Lithuania..After serving as the Rabbi in the small Lithuanian town of Inturke (Anturke), Rabbi Zalman-Tuviyah Markovicius (Markovitz) reloca... More
No 1093 State Picture Gallery of the BSSR
No. 1093. State Picture Gallery of the BSSR. ..The State Picture Gallery of the BSSR was founded on January 20, 1939 and was not evacuated during the war. Much was lost. Its current name is the National Arts Mu... More
Popular Library of Chinon - Public domain map
This stamp is from a library in Chinon, a city in the Loire valley. Chinon is well-known for medieval architecture, including the Château de Chinon, a castle which has been the residence of royalty from both Fr... More
Talmudic Library of Congregation Israel Salonica
Talmudic Library of Congregation Israel -- Salonica..In 1912, when Salonica was reincorporated into Greece, the city already had a large and vibrant Jewish community. A devastating fire ravaged Salonica in 1917... More
NKVMF House of the Naval Fleet KBF - Public domain map
NKVMF USSR. House of the Naval Fleet KBF. City of Tallinn. Library Inventory Number. ..The NKVMF is the acronym for The People’s Commissariat (or Ministry) for Navy; KBF is the acronym for The Red Banner Balti... More
Foreign Delegation of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party
The Socialist Revolutionary Party was a major political party in Russia in the early twentieth century. It was a revolutionary socialist party espousing a democratic and agrarian socialist platform. It was no... More
Baruch Kunstadt Dayan, Israel
Rabbi Baruch Kunstadt was born in Pressburg (Bratislava, Slovakia) in 1884 and as a young man he studied in that city’s yeshiva – he was the grandson of Rabbi Lippman Kunstadt. From 1907 to 1939 he was the Av-B... More
Communist Academy Library - Public domain map
Communist Academy Library ..A research institute and institution of higher learning established in Moscow in 1918 as the Socialist Academy, it was renamed the Communist Academy in 1924. It had an implicit riva... More
Synagogue of Lubavitcher Hasidism Vilna
Synagogue of Lubavitcher Hasidim. Vilna. Vilna Street, private house number 21. ...The Lubavitcher Hasidim are adherents of a Hasidic movement known as Chabad (also known as Lubavitch and Chabad-Lubavitch). T... More
Museum of the Revolution of the BSSR
Museum of the Revolution of the BSSR. Exhibit number. Inventory number 2403. ..The Museum of the Revolution of the BSSR was opened on May 2, 1926 in Minsk. It held materials dealing with the history of the revo... More
Publishing House of E. Gitlin Warsaw
Publishing house of E. Gitlin. Warsaw. Nalevki, Ivanovskiy Bazaar No. 1. Telephone no. 31-59. ..There were multiple Gitlin publication houses in Warsaw- in addition to “E”, there was also an “A” and an “F” Gitl... More
Ryazan Jewish Library, Heyrus - Public domain map
Ryazan Jewish Library-reading room "Heyrus". This library’s name is “Heyrus”, which is the Hebrew word for freedom in the Ashkenazi pronunciation. There was also a Zionist-socialist organization called “Heyru... More
Club Ivria Riga - A black and white image of a logo
Club "Ivria". Riga. Club Ivria was a Zionist social club, established in Riga in the early 20th Century. It functioned as a historical and literary institution, and as a library...This book stamp is from a bo... More
Chatzi Kaddish Intellectual Books
Karlsruhe is the capital city of the grand duchy of Baden in Germany, a city with a lengthy Jewish history dating back to the early 1700s when Jews were attracted to the city by pledges of non-discrimination by... More
Seal of the Rabbi of Riga S. Pukher
Seal of the Rabbi of Riga S. Pukher..Solomon Pukher was born in 1829 in Vladislavov, a town then in the Russian Empire. It is currently in modern-day Lithuania and is called Kudirkos Naumiestis. He was educat... More
Jewish Central Education Committee in Vilna
As home to a large Jewish community the city of Vilna (Lithuania) offered a variety of educational institutions that catered to different parts of the city’s Jewish population. The Central Education Committee (... More
Library of the Kovno Kollel - Public domain map
Library of the Kovno Kollel...In 1877, Rabbi Yisroel ben Ze’ev Wolf Lipkin – also known as Yisroel Salanter – founded a Kolel (a yeshiva for young, but married, men) in the city of Kaunes (Kovno), Lithuania. T... More
Library of the Kiev Branch of the Society for the Promotion of Culture...
Library of the Kiev Branch of the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia. 1570. ..The Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia was a civic and educational associatio... More
The First Jewish Workers Club in Yekaterinoslav
As it was a busy industrial city, Dnipropetovsk also provided a rich urban setting for the development of a large and active Jewish community. Jewish workers were involved in numerous trades in the city, but Je... More
Library of the Old Believer Community, Latvia
Library of the Old Believer community in Latvia. No. 1277. This was a religious library, specifically for a particular sect of Russian Orthodoxy. The “old believers” are an extremely conservative sect of Easter... More
Library Culture Riga - A black and white photo of a sign
Library "Culture". Riga, Saraynaya Street 11. No. 6771899. This stamp is for a Riga library, formerly located at 11 Saraynaya Street. The orthography on the stamp is consistent with the language used before t... More
Saltykov-Shchedrin Library
This library was named after one of the most prominent satirists in the history of Russian literature, Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Schedrin. His writing focused on social issues such as serfdom, corruption, ... More
Bronislav Grosser Jewish Workers Club Kharkov
Jewish Workers Club “Bronsilav Grosser” Kharkhov .This Jewish workers’ club located in Kharkov, Ukraine was named after Bronislav Grosser. Bronislav Grosser was a well-known Bundist, writer, and theoretician o... More
Yakov Yehusha Son of Zvi Shulman - Public domain map
The city of Yelisavetgrod (Kirovohrad) was the site of many notable anti-Jewish pogroms including ones that took place in 1881, 1905 and several pogroms that took place during the Civil War which followed the B... More
Latvian SSR Yiddish Theater, Israel
After the Soviet Army occupied the Republic of Latvia it renamed the territory the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (Latvian SSR) – it was a region that saw heavy fighting throughout the Second World War as co... More
Rabbi Chaim Lubotski - A stamp with the name of a person on it
Rabbi Chaim Lubotski. City of Rezhitsa, Vitebsk Governorate. ...Rabbi Chaim Lubotski was a rabbi in the city of Rezhitsa. Rezhitsa was part of the Russian Empire from 1772 to 1917.It was part of the Vitebsk Go... More
Association of Hebrew Language and Culture
Association of Hebrew Language and Culture – Breslau. Hebrew..By the time the Nazis rose to power, Breslau was home to the third largest Jewish community in Germany. The Jews of Breslau had developed strong com... More
Library of Guardianship of National Sobriety in the city of Volmar
Library of Guardianship of National Sobriety in the city of Volmar. ..Starting in 1894, the Finance Ministry in the Russian Empire began creating a network of committees for “Guardianship of National Sobriety”... More
Library of the Metropolitan Flavian - Public domain map
Born Nikolai Gorodetsky into an aristocratic family in Orel, Russia in 1840, the future Metropolitan (the 3rd highest class of rank in the Russian Orthodox Church) dropped out of law school at Moscow University... More
Uman Public Library - A stamp with the name of a city on it
The city of Uman remains an important location for Jews due largely to its connection to the famed Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav who lived in Uman in the months previous to his death. The Jewish population of Uman w... More
Rabbi Abraham Leichtag Wachsmann - Public domain old map
Rabbi Abraham (Leichtag) Wachsmann. Associate and justice of The Sacred Community of (Kehila Kedosha) Ujpest...Born in 1890 in Bánffyhunyadon in Romania, Rabbi Abraham Leichtag Wachsmann received his theologica... More
The American Library in Paris - Public domain map
The American Library in Paris has been in existence since 1920, and was founded by The American Library Association (ALA), using books sent overseas as part of the Library War Service. (This was a program to pr... More
Library of the Krasnodarsk Institute of Wine Making and Viticulture
Library of the Krasnodarsk Institute of Wine-Making and Viticulture. .Krasnodarsk is the capital of Krasnodar Krai, which is a large region of Russia that borders Ukraine. This region has the most wine factori... More
Drug Store and Perfumers Shop of N. L. Temkin
Drug store and perfumer's shop of N. L. Temkin. Rakovskaya Street. ..Rakovskaya Street is located in Minsk, which is currently the capital of Belarus. The Offenbach index has this particular stamp, denoting a b... More
Russian Philanthropic Society in Poland
Russian Philanthropic Society in Poland. Branch in Brest on the Bug. This stamp appears to be the Brest Branch of the Russian Philanthropic Society; Brest is located on the Polish border.. The main location of ... More
Library of the Krasnodar Institute of Winemaking and Viticulture
Library of the Krasnodar Institute of Wine-making and Viticulture. This Institute, originally called the North Caucasus Polytechnical Institute, changed its name many times since its founding in 1918 during the... More
Kiev Workers School no 85
After the Russian Revolution, and the subsequent civil war, the Communist leaders in the Soviet Ukraine embarked on a project to reconstruct the devastated regions along Marxist-Leninist lines. Part of this pro... More
Rostselmash Technical Library - Public domain map
Rostselmash is a Russian agricultural equipment company based in Rostov-on-Don and founded in 1929. It started out as a as a government contractor. In 1941 they evacuated their factory from Rostov to Tashkent ... More
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) Kiev Oblast Library, Number 581...
The All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) was the name of the ruling party in the Soviet Union between 1925 and 1952. It’s original name was the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (bolsheviks). It became ... More
May He Live Zalman Tuviyah Markovicius the Rabbi of Antaliepte in Lith...
May He Live, Zalman-Tuviyah Markovicius // the Rabbi of Antaliepte in Lithuania..After serving as the Rabbi in the small Lithuanian town of Inturke (Anturke), Rabbi Zalman-Tuviyah Markovicius (Markovitz) reloca... More
Secretariat of the Local Union Mulhouse
Secretariat of the Local Union, Mulhouse. ..This stamp is from the city of Mulhouse, which is located near the German and Swiss borders. The city was annexed by Germany as part of the territory of Alsace-Lorrai... More
Hebrew school of the Jewish Community of Berlin
Hebrew school of the Jewish Community of Berlin..By the time the Nazis came to power approximately a third of the Jewish population of Germany could be found living in Berlin. Within the city a vibrant Jewish c... More
Offenbach Archival Depot - Public domain map
The Offenbach Archival Depot was the central collecting point for sorting and organizing the millions of books looted from European libraries by the forces of the Third Reich. These items were originally housed... More
Library of the Rabbi Zwi Perez Chajes
From the Library of the Rabbi Zwi Perez Chajes of Blessed Memory (Zikhrono Lebrakha)..Rabbi Zwi Perez Chajes was a prominent Jewish scholar, teacher, community leader, and Zionist. Born in 1876 in Brody (Galici... More
Library of the Idritsa House of the Red Army
Library of the Idritsa House of the Red Army. Inventory number 1664. Main fund 1876. .A “House of the Red Army” was a cultural institution whose function it was to serve the cultural, educational, and recreati... More
Publishing House Ahiasaf Warsaw
Publishing House "Ahiasaf". Warsaw, Tverdaya [Street] 12. The “Ahiasaf” Publishing house was founded in Warsaw in 1893. The primary function was publishing a Hebrew language annual, similar to an almanac, of th... More