In the winter of 1945-1946, Holocaust survivors in displaced persons camps around Munich prepared for the first Passover after liberation by creating an extraordinary illustrated Haggadah. This Haggadah was written and arranged by Yosef Dov Sheinson, a Lithuanian Jew who had survived four years of internment and heavy labor under the Nazis. The text in Hebrew and Yiddish, is surrounded by illustrated borders (hand-drawn by Sheinson), and includes seven stark woodcuts of scenes from the camps by the artist Miklos Adler, (“Ben Benjamin”), a Hungarian survivor. While the Passover story retells the Exodus of the Israelites from oppression in ancient Egypt, this Haggadah uses images that retell the parallel suffering and killing under the Nazis. For this reason, it is often called “The Survivors Haggadah.” This work, initially published through the joint efforts of two Zionist organizations, was reprinted by the U.S. Third Army with the guidance of its chaplain, Rabbi Abraham J. Klausner. It was used for a communal Seder that Klausner led in Munich on April 15 and 16, 1946 attended by DPs as well as American relief workers. The cover of the Haggadah is imprinted with the tricolor “A” insignia of the United States Third Army so that it could be printed as a U.S. government document. Although it is believed that about 400 were printed only a very few handful of the originals survive.

View the haggadah