Funeral services will be held here Tuesday for Michael Zagayski of New York, a leading collector of Jewish ceremonial objects and works of art, who died in Palm Beach, Fla., yesterday, at the age of 74. Mr. Zagayski’s Judaica was frequently exhibited at the Jewish Museum here, and many of the objects had been purchased for permanent display. A major part of his collection was sold to a leading private gallery in 1964 for $347,680.
Mr. Zagayski began collecting as a youth in Poland and had accumulated an impressive number of valuable items which were looted by the invading Nazis, in 1939, when he was attending a Jewish Agency meeting in Geneva. Only a year later he began a new collection.
A leader in Poland’s prewar cement and oil industries, Mr. Zagayski came to the United States during World War II to serve as a vice-consul of the Polish Government in Exile. Later he became a U.S. citizen.
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