Holocaust Family Wins Possession of Ten Million dollar Relic

The family of a Long Island Holocaust survivor can keep a $10 million ancient Assyrian gold tablet he received in exchange for a few packs of smokes on the streets of post-war Berlin, a judge has ruled.
Attorneys for Berlin's Vorderasiatisches Museum had argued that the family of Riven Flamenbaum should turn over the 3,200-year-old thumb-size artifact from the reign of Assyrian King Tukulti-Ninurta I because it was looted by Soviet troops. But Nassau Surrogate John Riordan decided the museum waited too long to press its claim and the tablet -- worth an estimated $10 million -- is rightfully the property of Flamenbaum's three adult children.
"It is certainly understandable how the family would feel entitled [to keep the artifact] and offended by the efforts of the German government," said John Farinacci, an attorney for the Flamenbaum's estate.
"This was part of an immigrant's tale. It was one of the things he was able to get and put in his pocket to make a new life," he added.

Flamenbaum, a Pole and Auschwitz survivor, died at age 92 in 2003 in Great Neck. He left the tablet to his three children, Israel, Hannah and Helen. The 9.5-gram solid-gold tablet sat in the ruins of an Iraq temple about 150 miles north of Baghdad until 1913 when German archeologist Walter Andrae unearthed it. The next year, he shipped it to the Iraqi port city of Basra for transportation to Germany. But with the outbreak of World War I, the cargo freighter carrying the tablet was diverted to Portugal where the artifact remained until 1926. It finally went on display at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in 1934, only to be put in storage five years later with the start of World War II.

Museum officials believe the tablet was looted by Soviet troops in 1945. Sometime later, Flamenbaum bartered black-market cigarettes for it, according to Steven Schlesinger, another attorney for the Flamenbaum estate. In 1949, Flamenbaum emigrated to New York and began working at a Canal Street liquor store. Within a few years, he'd pawned the tablet, along with rare coins, to purchase the liquor store, the attorney said. But he soon paid back the pawn broker and reclaimed the coins and tablet.

Throughout the years, the family had no idea how rare the artifact was -- at one point an appraiser said it was worth just $100. Meanwhile, museum officials had all but forgotten the tablet existed and never placed it on its lists of stolen artifacts. It wasn't until Israel Flamenbaum contacted the museum that the family learned its true value and the museum decided to sue to recover it.

The family has no intention of selling the tablet, according to their attorneys. But it must give a sense of security to know there is a ten million dollar relic in the bank. I wonder where the tablet's journey through time will take it next. It has survived 3200 years and it will continue to survive long after we are all gone, even the Flamenbaums. Who knows, it may even end up on another planet some day, in the pocket of some distant descendant of the Flamenbaums.