Rare first edition of Gutman’s banned caricatures of the 1929 Palestine Riots

A first edition of the book that the British tried to erase.

In 1929, British Mandate Palestine erupted in violence. During the infamous Palestine riots, 133 Jews were murdered and hundreds more wounded by Palestinian Arabs — while the British authorities stood by. The following outrage inspired one of early Israeli history's most daring artistic responses.

Artist Nachum Gutman (1898–1980), a Moldovan-born Israeli painter, sculptor, and illustrator educated in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, was deeply shaken by the massacres. In a burst of anger and grief, he created a series of scathing caricatures: raw, satirical drawings that exposed both the brutality of the riots and the apathy of the British rulers. His wife Dora warned him he’d get into trouble — and she was right.

When Gutman published his booklet with Tel Aviv publisher Nachum Eitan and printer Saadi Shoshani, the British administration immediately banned it, seizing most copies and forbidding any reprint. The printing plates were handed to Eliezer Levin-Epstein, who produced a Yiddish edition in Warsaw in the same year.

Today, surviving copies of this first edition are very rare.

An important piece for collectors of Jewish history, antisemitism, Eretz Israel, or Jewish art.