JANUARY 2018

Artifact of the Month: January 2018

Letter of Citizenship
Sani Salit (1880 – 1936)

Sani Salit was born in Jerusalem, Palestine (then part of the Ottoman Empire) on July 15, 1880. As a young man, he went to Panevezys in Lithuania, where he met his future wife, Eva Miller (born 1882 in Lithuania). Sani and Eve had two daughters, Mary (born 1903), and Helene (born 1906). Sani was a cigarette specialist and was brought to Norway by Moritz Glott in 1911 to work as a factory master at Glotts Tobacco Factory in Oslo. In 1921 Salit was granted Norwegian citizenship. A few years later, he established his own cigarette production - Mahala Tobacco Company. Sani Salit died of pneumonia in Trondheim in 1936.

Sani's wife Eva and the oldest daughter Mary were both deported in November 1942 and murdered in Auschwitz. The youngest daughter Helene married Paolo Colombo, an Italian doctor, in 1938. The couple stayed in Italy throughout the duration of the war. Helene Colombo died in Oslo in 1987.

The letter of citizenship from 1921 is a gift to the Oslo Jewish Museum from the Mosaic Congregation in Oslo
Photo: Sani Salit’s own cigarette brand, «Salit» from 1927
Photo: The letter of citizenship from 1921 is a gift to the Oslo Jewish Museum from the Mosaic Congregation in Oslo
Photo: The Salit-family, 1921. From left: Mary, Sani, Eva and Helene
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