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RUTH ROVNER SPEICAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

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The objects have come to the
museum in varied ways. For in-
stance, Ms. Silbiger showed us a
small and very simple wooden
guitar in another display case.
It was ingeniously fashioned
from a cigar box, and it was made
inside a concentration camp. Af-
ter the liberation of the camps, the
guitar ended up in the hands of
amusic dealer in Basel. "He got in
contact with us and said, This be-
longs in your museum,' " related
Ms. Silbiger. "So he gave it to us."
In the same display case we
saw a set of beautifully painted
wooden blocks. Ms. Silbiger ex-
plained that they were made by
a young wife and mother, Bella
Adler, who had married in 1938,
and then ended up in
PHOTO BY RUTH ROVNER
– a concentration camp.
Because she want-
ed her young son and
other children in the
camp to see things of
beauty, she took wood
blocks and drew deli-
cate, finely drawn fig-
ures: a swan, a
peacock with feath-
ers, a bird perched on
a tree branch, a table
set with a lace table-
cloth — things that
the children in the
camp had never seen.
In 1945, Bella
Adler was one of the
first to be liberated.
She now lives in
Basel and her son,
A tombstone on display outside the Basel museum.
who started life in a
interesting and varied, ranging concentration camp, is a physi-
from the ancient tombstones to cian in the United States. All
documents about the world's first these years,"she kept the wood-
Zionist Congress, held in Basel en blocks she had made; but eight
years ago, she and her son de-
in 1897.
On the afternoon I visited, mu- cided to give them to the Jewish
seum guide Frimetti Silbiger first Museum.
Adecdotes like this made out
showed us a map of the region in-
dicating where Swiss Jews lived. tour even more interesting, and
"You can see that Jews settled we listened with interest to Ms.
along the Rhine," she said to our Silbiger's lively commentary.
As a museum guide, she meets
group, which included four visi-
tors from London and two from people from all over Europe and
New York. "They came with the the United States. She also gives
Romans and traveled on the group tours, often to Swiss school-
children, most of them not Jew-
Rhine River."
Next we saw a display case ish. So she fields all sorts of
with ritual objects made by Jews questions from curious young-
in the Rhine River area, such as sters, some of whom know noth-
an unusual Torah crown made ing about Judaism.
She also gives frequent tours
entirely of textiles.
"Jews in the region were very to the German students who
familiar with textiles, and so they come on class trips. Basel is close
used them for Torah crowns and to the bOrder of Germany, and
other ritual objects," explained German students often visit the
Ms. Silbiger, an energetic guide museum from schools that are 50
who serves on the committee or even 100 miles away.
"It's very improtant for us that
which helps select and identify
the objects the museum acquires Germans come to the museum,"
said Ms. Silbiger.
for its collection.

n the small, sunny courtyard,
the tombstones are an arrest-
ing sight — weathered, frag-
mented slabs, with Hebrew
and German letters still visible.
"Grabstein des Jehuda Sohn
des Pesach" reads the stone
marking the grave of a Jew who
died in 1293. Another stone is for
a rabbi who died in November
1234.
These tombstones, all from the
12th and 13th centuries, are on
display in the courtyard outside
the Jewish Museum inBasel.
Switzerland's only Jewish mu-
seum is located not far from the
center of town at Korhausgasse
8. It is modest in size and simple
in design — but its collection is

