600-Year-Old Jewish Prayer Book Reclaimed After Nazi Theft

After 83 years hidden in the Austrian National Library, a stolen Jewish treasure has found its way home.

The Rothschild Vienna Mahzor, a Jewish prayer book created in 1415, recently sold at auction for $6.4 million. The sale marks the end of a journey that took the manuscript from medieval Vienna through Nazi theft and back to the family whose collection it once graced.

A scribe named Moses, son of Menachem, spent nearly a year creating the 400-page prayer book for the High Holidays. He decorated each page with burnished gold panels, Gothic archways, and vivid illustrations of lions, unicorns, parrots and dragons in lapis blue, copper green and cinnabar red.

The book survived centuries of turmoil. It emerged from an era when the Black Death ravaged Europe and persecutions nearly destroyed Vienna's entire Jewish community in the 1420s.

In 1842, banker Salomon Mayer von Rothschild purchased the mahzor in Nuremberg for 151 gold coins. He added his family's coat of arms and a Hebrew inscription promising to preserve it "for generations to come, so that the Torah of God may forever be in our mouths."

But in 1938, when Germany annexed Austria, Nazi forces looted the palace of his descendant Alphonse Rothschild. They seized everything inside, including the prayer book, and transferred it to the Austrian National Library.

There it sat, uncataloged and unexplored, for six decades.

Why This Inspires

The mahzor's rediscovery came through an unexpected twist. In 2021, Vienna's Jewish Museum borrowed the book for an exhibition about the Rothschild family. The loan sparked questions about how the library acquired it.

Research revealed the theft, and in 2023, Austria's Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended returning the manuscript to Alphonse's heirs. The family chose to share their treasure with the world through auction.

"Hebrew illuminated manuscripts are extremely rare because they are expensive items to create," explains Judaica specialist Sharon Liberman Mintz. "Between destruction, upheaval and migration, the fact that this has survived 600 years is nothing short of a miracle."

The book serves as more than beautiful art. It preserves the liturgical customs of Vienna's Jewish community just before persecution silenced them forever.

The $6.4 million sale represents one of the strongest results ever achieved for an illuminated Hebrew manuscript at auction. More importantly, it marks a moment of justice for a family whose heritage was violently stolen.

A 600-year-old prayer about faith and memory has been answered with both.