New York, NY – A dealer is locked in a legal battle with France and auction house Christie’s over a 13th Century Jewish Torah.
Yosef Goldman bought the Torah at a New York auction six years ago. France later sued Goldman for the artefact’s return, saying it had been stolen from their national library.
Goldman then sued Christie’s, claiming they should not have sold him the Torah. Christie’s says it did not know the item was stolen at the time. “We believe his suit has no merit, and we will follow up in court,” Christie’s spokesman, Toby Usnik, said.
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Goldman wants the auction house to return the $358,000 he paid for the Torah in 2000, according to his attorney, Nathaniel Lewin.
According to France’s legal case, the government obtained the Torah in 1668. It is unclear when it vanished from the library.
However, a former chief curator of the library’s Hebrew collection, Michel Garel, was convicted of stealing the Torah in March this year.
In 2005, officials from the Bibliotheque Nationale discovered that 30,000 books and manuscripts were missing from its collection.
Yes Mark you are 100 percent right, that Torah was stolen from a synagogue and now they are claiming it belongs to them, shame on the Franks.
just how did the yemach sh’mom soynay yisruel frankos get this Sefer Torah?? they probably stole it from one of inzir whom they were involved in killing.