Ernst Laske (born 9 August 1915 in Berlin; died 11 May 2004 in Kibbutz Bror Chail, Israel) was a German-Israeli book antiquarian and bibliophile.

Early life

Ernst Laske was the only son of the clothing merchant, art patron and bibliophile

Gotthard Laske Gotthard Laske (March 3, 1882 in Stargard – November 23, 1936 in Berlin) was a German confectioner, bibliophile, and patron of the arts. Life Laske collected books that were beautifully and lavishly printed and bound. His library contained ab ...

(1882-1936) and his wife Nelly. Laske grew up in Berlin. In reaction to the rise of the Nazis, he joined the Zionist movement, but hesitated for a long time to leave Germany. His father committed suicide in 1936,Vgl. auch Friedhilde Krause: ''Gedenken an die deutsch-jüdischen Bibliophilen Gotthard und Ernst Laske''. In: ''Marginalien – Zeitschrift für Buchkunst und Bibliographie'', 183. Heft 3/2006 and his sister had obtained an affidavit to South Africa and emigrated there. Laske worried about leaving his mother alone in Berlin. Nelly Laske was murdered in

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

in 1943.

Escape from Nazi persecution

In 1938, Ernst Laske took part in a hachshara in Grüsen, Hesse, a preparatory course for the

aliyah Aliyah (, ; he, עֲלִיָּה ''ʿălīyyā'', ) is the immigration of Jews from Jewish diaspora, the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel, which is in the modern era chiefly represented by the Israel, State of Israel ...

to what was then Palestine. On 9 November 1938 their residence was attacked by National Socialists and Laske was beaten up so badly that he almost went blind in one eye. The severely injured man dragged himself 30 kilometers to a hospital. There Nazis picked him up again and deported him to

Buchenwald concentration camp Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...

. After his Zionist friends got him a visa for Denmark, Laske managed to gain release from the concentration camp and escape to Denmark. In 1943, he was one of the Jews who managed to escape deportation of Jews from Denmark in fishing boats to Sweden. In February 1947, Laske set out for Palestine with his wife and daughter Nurit on one of the illegal immigrant ships. However, the "Chaim Arlosorof" was boarded by the British Navy off Haifa and the Laske family was interned on Cyprus. At the beginning of 1948, immigration finally succeeded. The Laske family became co-founders of the kibbutz " Ne'ot Mordechai" in northern Galilee.

Antiquarian bookshop in Tel Aviv

In the mid-1970s, Ernst Laske left the kibbutz and started a new life in Tel Aviv. For about two decades, he ran the antiquarian bookshop in the "Landsberger" bookstore on Tel Aviv's Ben Jehuda Street. He quickly became an institution for all those interested in German books and German history. He gladly invited his customers - among them publishers and antiquarians from Germany - to his apartment on Jabotinsky Street in Tel Aviv. In his library there were also some of his father's bibliophile treasures, which he had been able to save for emigration, stored in a box. Every two years Laske traveled to Europe to meet friends. During a visit to Berlin in September 1993, he became a member of the Pirckheimer Society. At the age of 80, Ernst Laske retired from the book business. He spent the last years of his life in a retirement home on Kibbutz Bror Chail in southern Israel, near his grandson's family. He is also buried there.

External links

* Klaus Hillenbrand
''Deutsche Bücher''
in:

Taz Taz or TAZ may refer to: Geography *Taz (river), a river in western Siberia, Russia *Taz Estuary, the estuary of the river Taz in Russia People * Taz people, an ethnic group in Russia ** Taz language, a form of Northeastern Mandarin spoken by ...

, 20. Februar 2010

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Laske, Ernst 1915 births 2004 deaths Buchenwald concentration camp survivors Emigrants from Nazi Germany German bibliophiles Holocaust survivors German Zionists