Personalized desk set on a marble base used by the director of the Vaad Hatzala Emergency Committee in postwar Germany

Rabbi Nathan Baruch was born on June 7, 1921. He was the director of Vaad Hatzala in Germany from September 1946 to September 1949. The Vaad Hatzala Rescue Committee was originally established in November 1939 to rescue Polish rabbis and yeshiva students who escaped to Lithuania at the beginning of World War II. It later expanded to include assistance to all Jewish Holocaust survivors. Rabbi Baruch established the central Vaad Hatzala office in Germany and was responsible for reestablishing Jewish religious life in Europe. His duties included the printing and distribution of religious items, including prayer books, haggadahs, Torahs, pocket sized editions of the Talmud, and other sefarim. Rabbi Baruch was instrumental in getting the United States Army to print, in 1948, the 19 volume Heidelberg Talmud. The texts were distributed to displaced persons camps and Jewish communities worldwide. He married, had a daughter, and died in Long Beach, New York, on November 28, 2001, at the age of 81.

Vaad Hatsala was established in November 1939, by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada. Its mission was to rescue Polish rabbis and yeshiva students who fled to Lithuania at the onset of World War II. Vaad made it possible for numerous rabbis and Torah scholars to emigrate from Lithuania to the Far East prior to the German invasion in June 1941. After the United States entered the war, Vaad Hatsala focused on providing funds, food and clothing to refugees so that they could adhere to their Orthodox lifestyle and continue their studies. In January, 1944, the organization officially changed their mission to include all Jews, regardless of religiosity or affiliation, and focused on those living in areas that had been occupied by Germans. Vaad Hatsala had branches in Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, and Tangier. Through these branches they initiated various successful rescue projects, most notably the release of 1,210 inmates from the concentration camp Theresienstadt to Switzerland on February 6-7, 1945. The organization ceased operations in the early 1950s.

The desk set was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2008 by Doris Baruch, the widow of Nathan Baruch.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Doris Baruch