An unusual item has recently arrived at the Appel Auction house in New York.
Collectors will soon have the chance to bid on the wheelchair that belonged to the leading 19-century Chabad Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn.
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Schneersohn was the sixth Rebbe of the Chabad Lubavitch Hassidic movement, potentially leading to great interest among collectors and Chabad members.
The auction house published photos and letters attesting to the item's authenticity. Based on the items, Schneersohn used to have two wheelchairs. One was kept at the Chabad World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, New York, while the other was used by Schneersohn for community events.
The wheelchair currently on auction was gifted by Schneersohn's grandson, Shalom Ber Gourary, to Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch.
"My grandfather has two wheelchairs. This chair [referring to the photo] shows that he used it to go to events," he wrote in a letter. In one of the photos, Schneersohn is seen using the wheelchair at a Chabad event in 1943, seven years prior to his death.
Schneerson was the last Chabad Rebbe to live in the town of Lubavitch, a town that was at the time under Tsarist Russia's control and today is part of Belarus. In 1920 he became the leader of the movement after his father, the fifth Rebbe, Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, passed away.
In 1927, he was sentenced to death without trial for operating a secret network of Jewish schools, a matter illegal at the time. As a result of international pressure, he was instead sent to exile to the city of Kostroma, more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Moscow. After his release, again due to international pressure, he was allowed to leave Russia. He moved to Latvia, and eventually to the United States.
In 1940, he purchased the famous 770 building in New York. After passing away in 1950, his son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, took over.
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