Gezelshaft Kinder Sanatorye In Miedzeshin.

[ILLUSTRATED FUNDRAISING RECEIPT BOOK] GEZ.[ELSHAFT] KINDER SANATORYE IN MIEDZESHIN

Warsaw: The Gezelshaft, 1937-1938? Item #43523

No Date [1937-1938?] Presume 1st edition. Original plain paper wrappers with stamp, small oblong 12mo, receipts 10101-10120 [20 single-sided receipts]. Entirely in both Yiddish and Polish.

Each receipt and stub is numbered consecutively and bares an authenticating overlapping rubber stamp “Gezelshaft Medem Sanatorye Varshe.”
The receipts are gorgeously illustrated with period green ink drawings of buildings from the Medem Sanitorium with the number “5” in the middle, presumably indicating a donation of 5 zloty. In the center they read, “1 meter of forest for the Medem Sanitarium,” providing space on the stub for the donor to print their city, name and address.

A massive fundraising drive was undertaken by the Sanitorium in 1937-1938, accompanied by the re-release of Aleksander Ford’s 1936 Yiddish-language Film about the children of the Sanitorium entitled, “Mir Kumen On” (“We are Coming,” but generally translated into English as “Children Must Laugh”), viewable online at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vozD_XbGHGA).
The restored film was featured at the Museum of Modern Art’s To Save and Project: The 14th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation in 2016.

The Medem Sanatorium was an “Educational and clinical facility for children and young adults at risk for tuberculosis. This sanatorium, which functioned in Miedzeszyn near Warsaw between 1926 and 1942, was named after Bundist leader Vladimir Medem (1879–1923), and was the best-known establishment of the Bund and of TSYSHO (the Central Yiddish School Organization) in Poland. The clinic was funded by donations from Jewish unions in Poland and American Jewish workers’ organizations” as well as the Joint (Bund Melbourne).

We could not locate another example of this receipt book anywhere using standard search methods.

Very Good Condition. Rare and Displayable. (PBERL-1-11).

Price: $300.00