“This is a modest token of my gratitude and sincere thanks to the United States, a great nation whose hospitality and spirit of freedom and equality have made it possible for me, once a poor refugee, to attain a decent place in a free human society.”

The above sentence was written in a letter to the Library of Congress upon presentation of the gift of a singular collection of early American documents, valued at more than one million dollars in 1975. The appreciative donor was H.P. Kraus, one of the greatest antiquarian book and document sellers in history. In a way, he was the ultimate example of the immigrant to the United States who embraced the history, culture, and values of the nation and became an American.

As a thirty year old Austrian bookseller from a Jewish family, Mr. Kraus was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 and thrown into a Vienna prison. From there he was shipped by the Nazi SS to the work camp at Dachau where the sign over the gate mockingly proclaimed Arbeit nacht frei (work makes you free). With 8,000 other workers, he was brutalized and worked to exhaustion. Many died under the oppression. Unexpectedly, Mr. Kraus was then moved to Buchenwald, where the sign over the gate read Recht oder Unrecht mein Vaterland-”My country, right or wrong”-which he thought sounded rather ominous coming from Hitler-controlled Germany. After eight months of using his wits and avoiding actions that could bring retribution, he was suddenly released and told to leave Austria within two months. After paying a fortune in taxes and bribes, he escaped to Sweden to await a passport to America.

He wept as he passed the Statue of Liberty and came ashore a penniless refugee. It was his birthday and he was “the happiest man in the world.” The rest of his story included becoming “one of the world’s leading dealers in rare books, manuscripts, periodicals, and reprints, a happy husband, father of five children, and a wealthy man.” He had come to the land which stands the messages on the over-doors of the concentration camps on their head: a land that is free so you can work wherever your abilities can take you and a nation that allows the citizens to peaceably replace the leaders if they are taking the country in the wrong direction.

Among the collection of unique manuscripts that H. P. Kraus donated to the Library of Congress was a 17 page letter of Amerigo Vespucci, written September 10th, 1504, detailing the four voyages he made to the New World. A European cartographer put Vespucci’s name on the map, with no realization that such an act would label a part of the globe that would echo through the ages as a safe haven for generations seeking liberty under law.

Bill Potter