MOSCOW, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- The rabbi of a Moscow synagogue has asked Russian authorities to give back thousands of "Jewish sacred objects" that were seized in the Soviet era.
Speaking at a news conference at the synagogue, Yitzhak Kogan said that the approximately 12,000 manuscripts that are stored in the Russian State Library should be returned to the Lubavitcher Hasidic movement, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Wednesday.
"This is the heritage of Lubavitcher Hasids," Kogan said.
The manuscripts came from a library built up over 200 years in the town of Lubavitch, located in present-day Belarus, which was the center of the Lubavitcher branch of the Hasidic movement.
Soviet authorities confiscated the manuscripts and placed them in the Lenin Library, as the Russian State Library was formerly known.
In the early 1990s, Jewish activists organized regular pickets near the library to attract public attention, calling for the manuscripts to be returned to them.
