Mordechai W. Bernstein (1905–1966) worked for the “Yiddish Scientific Institute” (YIVO) in Wilno which relocated to New York in 1941. He was commissioned to trace YIVO’s holdings in Germany that had been looted by the Einsatzstab (Taskforce) Reichsleiter Rosenberg. Between 1948 and 1951 he also visited some 800 places in his search for vestiges of German-Jewish culture. He published the results of his findings in three volumes written in Yiddish and, as such, created a musée imaginaire for a German-Jewish culture which had been destroyed.
The exhibition catalogue offers descriptions of the exhibits and includes 18 articles written by Bernstein that can now be read for the first time in translation.The objects range from antiquity to the 20th century and highlight in this way the diversity of German-Jewish culture.
