Baitchland: Stories of Jewish Life in Nazi-Germany illustrated book by Davidson

Baitchland: Stories of Jewish Life in Nazi-Germany illustrated book by Davidson
Baitchland: Stories of Jewish Life in Nazi-Germany, by Chaim Margoliot Davidson with illustrations by Samuel Reindorf and cover illustration by Y. Zeldin, published by Davidson Book Committee through 'Signal' publishing, New York, February 1939; 48 pages. An illustrated Hebrew-spelled Yiddish-language folio of stories describing Jewish life in Germany after the Nazi rise to power, possibly the first book describing Jewish life in Germany on the eve of the Holocaust. With original thick red paper jacket (missing bottom left corner) and all pages intact, though the first ones are either missing the bottom left corner tips or are bent; the spine is illustrated though splitting and brittle. There is a handwritten dedication & signature on the title page by the author, in Yiddish, as C. M. Davidson; library stamps on the inside front cover & Hitler's face on the back page has been colored in (blotted out). The illustrated back page features a table of contents & promotional text about past books published by Davidson, possibly of this style. The main illustrator, Reindorf (1914-1988), was born in Warsaw and emigrated to Toronto in the 1930's; he ran an art advertising agency in New York for 25 years while continuing to paint and raising a family and later emigrating to Mexico. The cover artist may be Yashe Zeldin (1901-1942), a Yiddish writer born in Vilna, who became a member of the Communist Youth movement in 1919, and in 1923 a sailor in the Soviet Navy; he wrote poems, stories and plays on contemporary, childrens' and Jewish themes, mostly in Moscow; with the German invasion of the Soviet Union he volunteered for service in the army and died in battle on the front in the summer of 1942.