Russia accused the US of a “rude violation” of international law and refused to honor a U.S. court ruling that it return thousands of holy books to the Chabad-Lubavitch Chassidic movement.
A U.S. federal court judge ruled last week against the Russian government, which nationalized the Chabad-Lubavitch library after the owner, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, who had been forced to leave the country in 1927, died without leaving heirs.
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ruled last week that the Russian state library and military archives were holding the books illegally.
Many of the documents were confiscated during the Bolshevik revolution. Another 25,000 pages of the writings of Jewish leaders were seized by the Nazis and later retrieved by the Russian army, which claimed the papers as state property and refused to return them to the Jewish community.
Former Russian President Boris Yeltsim had promised his counterpart at the time, U.S. President George H.W. Bush, that he would return the valued library, but no action was taken.