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PRESENTS: Our Israel Groups are fully escorted & include Airfare on El Al, Breakfasts & Dinners, All Sight-seeing, Evening Activities 17 Days DELUXE 70 FREE TENNIS & GOLF PACKAGES with flight to Eilat Departs April 25, May 9 & Oct 10 FREE COLOR BROCHURE with 3 nights in JORDAN Join Israel Travel Expert Carol Ritman Departs Nov.14, 1995 LANCASTER RESORT RENTALS 800-845-7017 "Putting people and meations together for over 35 years" 20 Days DELUXE BAR/BAT MITZVAH 15 Days - JULY 30 Free Air & land for Bar Mitzvah child (in room with 2 adults) Escorted by Rabbi Michael Gold Spedal Ceremony with Certificate & Party CALL TOLL FREE 1-800-248-6872 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