Lubavitchers Win Partial Victory in Effort To Reclaim Religious Records From Russia

The Lubavitchers won a partial victory yesterday in their legal quest to reclaim religious archives and sacred books currently under the control of the Russian government.A federal judge in Washington, Royce Lamberth, ruled that the Brooklyn-based group, known officially as the Agudas Chasidei Chabad, could pursue a court case in America seeking the return of thousands of pages of handwritten teachings and other records captured by the Nazis in Poland in World War II and eventually seized by the Russians. However, Judge Lamberth ruled that the Jewish group could not use the American legal system to recover a library of books that the Lubavitchers lost in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.Judge Lamberth said a principle known as the “act of state doctrine” allows suits stemming from wrongs a foreign country commits outside its borders, but not official acts of another government on its own territory. “It is not clear whether the Soviet Army’s taking of the archive as spoils of war at the conclusion of World War II was an official government act, but irrespective, it occurred in Poland and not in Soviet territory,” the judge wrote, allowing Chabad’s claim over the papers to go forward. In turning aside the claim for the library, Judge Lamberth noted that Russian courts had issued rulings on the issue, albeit ones that the Lubavitchers consider unfair. “Chabad is in effect asking this court to sit in review of the Deputy Chief State Arbiter of the Russian Federation. That this court cannot do,” he wrote.An attorney for the Lubavitchers, Marshall Grossman, said he was “delighted” with the ruling. “These are thousands of pages of precious writings and transcripts of the teachings of several generations of rebbes. They were taken by the Nazis. They didn’t belong to the Nazis. They didn’t belong to the Russians. They belong to Chabad. Judge Lamberth now says the Russians must answer in a court of law,” he said.A lawyer for the Russian Federation, James Broderick Jr., said he was pleased that the court agreed not to entertain the claims about the library. “It established, I think, a very important principle,” he said.Mr. Broderick described the disputed documents as “a minuscule portion” of the religious group’s overall archive. “The library was the focus of the case,” he said.“That’s typical Russian propaganda,” Mr. Grossman replied.

Lubavitchers Win Partial Victory in Effort To Reclaim Religious Records From Russia

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