THE RESCUE OF THE SARAJEVO HAGGADAH in the mid-1990s is retold in an historical novel. Here's a review in the San Francisco Chronicle:

People of the Book
By Geraldine Brooks
VIKING; 372 PAGES; $25.95

Let's cut to the chase, which Geraldine Brooks certainly does - repeatedly - in her intense, gripping new novel. "People of the Book," like her Pulitzer Prize-winning previous novel, "March," is a tour de force that delivers a reverberating lesson gleaned from history.

"March," about the father in Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women," whose ideals are dashed in the Civil War, makes a passionate case for the moral and spiritual costs of war. "People of the Book" focuses on the pernicious persecution of Jews through six centuries, contrasting it with the wondrous occasions when Christians, Jews and Muslims cooperate.

At the heart of Brooks' new novel is the Sarajevo Haggadah, a gorgeously illuminated Sephardic treasure dating to 14th century Spain and used during Passover seders to tell the story of the Jews' exodus from Egypt. Brooks first learned of the rare Hebrew codex while in Sarajevo covering the Bosnian war as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. After the war, it was revealed that the Haggadah had been rescued from the National Museum by a Muslim librarian during heavy shelling, and hidden for safekeeping in an underground bank vault. In an afterword, Brooks notes that this was the second time the Sarajevo Haggadah was saved by a Muslim in the 20th century: In 1941, an Islamic scholar - the subject of Brooks' recent New Yorker article, "The Book of Exodus" - hid the volume from pillaging Nazis in a mosque in the mountains for the duration of the war.

Taking her inspiration from these two feats of cross-cultural heroism, Brooks fabricates a compelling, multicultural history of the codex and the people behind it. She hangs all this, cleverly, on a fictional, snappy young Australian book conservator named Hanna, who is called to Sarajevo in 1996 to restore the manuscript. While working on the Haggadah, Hanna retrieves various artifacts from its ancient binding and parchment - an insect wing fragment, a white hair, wine and salt stains - which provide clues to the book's provenance.

[...]

And there's another review in the Minneapolis Star. Excerpt:

In alternating chapters, the story moves back in time, and we meet the people Hanna has become obsessed with, the "people of the book, the different hands that had made it, used it, protected it." Among them is Lola, a young Jewish girl in World War II-era Sarajevo who fights with the resistance and is ushered to safety (along with the haggadah) in the mountains by Serif Kamal, the Muslim librarian of the National Museum; an anti-Semitic, syphilitic book binder and his Jewish doctor in 1894 Vienna; the alcoholic, conflicted priest who saves the book from being burned in 1609 Venice; a young girl whose family suffers terribly during the Spanish Inquisition; and, in 1480 Seville, we finally meet the mysterious illustrator of the beautiful codex.

All of these sections are richly imagined, almost unbearably tense, and tackle, sometimes obliquely, other times directly, the issues of exodus, marginalization, and brutality during periods of extreme nationalism: the Alhambra Decree, the Waidhofen Manifesto, the Venetian Ghettos, National Socialism, just to name a few. Arcing over these various set pieces, and holding it all together, is the story of Hanna's antiquarian sleuthing, which is much more exciting than it has any right to be. Who knew that "because parchment is flesh, human bacteria can degrade it"? Or that a single cat hair could serve as a paintbrush? Or that there's an actual instrument known as a "video spectral comparator"?

It sounds good.

Wikipedia has a capsule history of the Sarajevo Haggadah here. I'm pasting in the text, minus the links:

Sarajevo Haggadah
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sarajevo Haggadah is an illuminated manuscript that contains the traditional text of the Passover Haggadah which accompanies the Passover Seder. It is the oldest Sephardic Haggadah in the world, originating in Barcelona around 1350. The Haggadah is presently owned by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, where it is on permanent display.

The Sarajevo Haggadah is handwritten on bleached calfskin and illuminated in copper and gold. It opens with 34 pages of illustrations of key scenes in the Bible from Creation through the death of Moses. Its pages are stained with wine, evidence that it was used at many Passover Seders. It is considered to be the most beautiful illuminated Jewish manuscript in existence and one of the most valuable books in the world. In 1991 it was appraised at US$700 million[1].

Storied history

The Sarajevo Haggadah has survived many close calls with destruction. Historians believe that it was taken out of Spain by Spanish Jews who were expelled during the Inquisition in 1492. Notes in the margins of the Haggadah indicate that it surfaced in Italy in the 1500s. It was sold to the National Museum in Sarajevo in 1894 by a man named Joseph Kohen[2].

During World War II, the manuscript was hidden from the Nazis by the Museum's chief librarian, Dervis Korkut, who at risk to his own life, smuggled the Haggadah out of Sarajevo. Korkut gave it to a Muslim cleric in Zenica, where it was hidden under the floorboards of either a mosque or a Muslim home. During the Bosnian War of the early 1990s, when Sarajevo was under constant siege by Bosnian Serb forces, the manuscript survived in an underground bank vault. To quell rumors that the government had sold the Haggadah in order to buy weapons, the president of Bosnia presented the manuscript at a community Seder in 1995.

Afterwards, the manuscript was restored through a special campaign financed by the United Nations and the Bosnian Jewish community in 2001, and went on permanent display at the museum in December 2002.

Recently, the museum has authorized the publication of a limited number of reproductions of the Sarajevo Haggadah, each of which have become collector's items. In May 2006, a Sarajevo publishing house announced the forthcoming publication of 613 copies of the Haggadah on handmade parchment that attempts to recreate the original appearance of the 14th century original.[3][4]

There is a brief mention of the manuscript in the motion picture, "Welcome to Sarajevo". The book "People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks creates a fictionalised version of the history of the Haggadah from its origins in Spain to the museum in Sarajevo.

There's a photo too.

The rescue of the Haggadah from the Nazis in World War II is narrated here. Excerpt:

The book had very turbulant history. Here we would like to describe how it had been saved during WW2 from the Nazi Germans. At that time (1941-1945) Sarajevo belonged to Independent State of Croatia (NDH), and director of the Sarajevo Museum was JOZO PETRICEVIC, a Croat. When German troups entered Sarajevo in April 1941, the Museum was visited by a German general Fortner, who ordered to bring Haggadah immediately.

- But mister general, - said Petricevic - one of your colonels came yesterday and carried off the book.
- What was the name of the colonel? - asked the suspicious general.
- We were not allowed to ask his name. - answered Petricevic recourcefully.

The German general, whose intention was to take the book by force, ordered to search the Museum. The Haggadah was already hidden by Petricevic and his colleagues. Of course, Petricevic risked his life during the whole WW2 period, hiding the book from the eyes of German officers. It is not excluded that Petricevic collaborated with local Sarajevo NDH officials in doing so.

And there are a couple of nice, enlargeable images at this Yale University Library site (scroll down).

UPDATE: Another review, in the Rocky Mountain News.

UPDATE (6 January 2008): More here.