Sefer ha-zikaron shel ha-bitan ha-Eretsyiśreʼeli ba-taʻarukhah ha-ʻolamit be-Nyu-Yorḳ

Sefer ha-zikaron shel ha-bitan ha-Eretsyiśreʼeli ba-taʻarukhah ha-ʻolamit be-Nyu-Yorḳ, 5699 (Visitor Book of the Jewish Palestine Pavilion, New York World's Fair 1939)

New York: ḥ. mo. l., 1939–1940

This massive visitor book contains the handwritten names and addresses of approximately 7,400 people who visited the Jewish Palestine Pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair during September and October 1940. The exhibit was the first ever Jewish pavilion in the history of world fairs to focus on economic and secular developments rather than religion. 

This World’s Fair, whose theme was “The World of Tomorrow,” was open to the public from April 30, 1939, to October 27, 1940. The Jewish Pavilion welcomed its first visitors on May 28, 1939. The date 5699 engraved in Hebrew characters on the cover is the Jewish year, which reflects the number of years since the creation of the world, as per the Bible. By the time of the second season, which started in March 1940, Europe was already mired in the horrific events of World War II. 

Among those whose signatures filled the visitor book was David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), then chairman of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency in Palestine. Ben-Gurion, who later became Israel’s first prime minister, attended the exhibit around October 6, 1940. He had arrived in the U.S. a few days earlier, on a mission to raise Americans’ awareness of the unfolding tragedy for the Jewish people in Europe under the Nazi occupation.

The visitor book that Ben-Gurion signed is 22" x 15" x 6" and contains approximately 1,000 pages, 418 of them bearing signatures of the visitors. It is bound in bleached hide over half-inch-thick wooden boards, and features a cover title on cedar wood set within a brass border and secured with heavy brass clasps. Although the date engraved on the cover is 1939, the actual signatures reflect later dates from 1940. The  discrepancy is likely because the interior pages would be replaced with new ones once the previous pages were filled with signatures. 

Each page contains inscriptions with ornamented initials in the bold typeface. An inscription in Hebrew occupies the upper half of the page; the English translation is below. It reads: ”On these pages are recorded the names of the visitors to the Jewish Palestine Pavilion, New York World’s Fair, 1940.” (The Hebrew inscription, however, shows the date of the actual opening of the exhibit in the Hebrew calendar, 5699, or 1939.) The facing page contains the names of the visitors in English, Hebrew or Yiddish. 

The Jewish calligrapher and graphic artist Ismar David (1910–1996) designed the visitor book. David was born in Breslau (Wrocław), which is now in Poland, and immigrated to Jerusalem in 1932, where he worked for the Jewish National Fund and created several fundamental volumes in a similar style and size for this organization. From March through May 1939, David worked in New York for the Jewish Palestine exhibit, designing the cover of the souvenir book of the pavilion and its visitor book.