MZ-46-O

This is a knife for cutting challah for Shabbat dinner. The inscription on the left reads: Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary), on the right: in honor of Shabbat (early 20th century). The exhibit belonged to Asher J. Scharf, who donated it to the Museum in 2002. Asher was born in 1923 in Biała, but much of his family came from Oświęcim. Throughout his life, he was associated with the Bobover branch of the Chasidim. During World War II, the tragic fate of Asher and his future wife Schifra led them from Poland to Siberia and on to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, where they worked as forced laborers in Soviet labor camps. Their story was recorded in 2007 in the American documentary Saved by Deportation by Sławomir Grünberg. Asher Scharf was nominated by U.S. presidents – in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and in 1992 by George Bush – to be a member of the U.S. Commission of the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. Asher Scharf not only took care of and financed the restoration of the Jewish cemetery in Oświęcim (1987-1988 and 2004-2005), where his ancestors were buried, but also the renovation of the historic synagogue in Bobowa, completed in 2003.