Herman Garfunkel knew in 1941 that the Nazis soon would be forcing him and the other Latvian Jews into the ghetto. So he entrusted a prized possession -- the family's Hebrew Bible, translated into German -- to the tenants renting the upper floor of his Riga, Latvia, home. The Sochinskis, in turn, promised to return the Bible to Garfunkel when the war was over.

Two weeks later, the Garfunkels were, indeed, sent to the ghetto, and Herman's mother, sister and brother were killed just three weeks after their arrival. But Herman survived, and, 54 years later, he would live to see the Bible returned to him -- and restored for posterity by a book conservator at Cornell University.

John F. Dean, director of the Cornell University Library's Department of Preservation and Conservation, was on vacation in Florida last year when he read about the story in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel.

He read that Garfunkel was sent to three concentration camps but escaped from the last one, a division of Buchenwald, on April 11, 1945. As Garfunkel recently recalled over the telephone, the day was a chaotic one; he was one of 24 prisoners being marched on the camp's grounds, surrounded by scurrying officials preparing to flee from the oncoming Russian forces. A wagon filled with suitcases rode by, and Garfunkel, then 39, and his cousin dove into it -- and rode the wagon to freedom. Years later, Garfunkel learned that in a spot just beyond where he had marched, a sign was erected: "Here are buried 22 concentration camp prisoners, shot on the 11th of April, 1945."

Garfunkel immigrated to the United States in the early 1950s.

Most members of the Sochinski family stayed in Latvia after the war, along with the Bible, which virtually had been forgotten. However, Wanda Sochinski, who was 12 when she had witnessed the eviction of her landlord Herman Garfunkel, married an American soldier and moved to America in 1946.

During a 1988 visit to her native Latvia, Wanda (now Wanda Jackson, 67) found the Bible stored in a shed. She brought it back to the United States and, ultimately, back to Herman Garfunkel (now Herman Grant, 92), who, she discovered after some sleuthing, was living in West Palm Beach, Fla. Former landlord, tenant and family treasure were reunited Sunday, Dec. 10, 1995.

As Dean was about to put down the newspaper article, a quote at the end caught his eye. The Bible, Grant had said, was "a little yellowish now and dilapidated."

Dean contacted Grant and offered to restore the Bible at no charge, even though it had been donated to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton and would not be staying at Cornell.

"This was an exception," Dean said. "Rarely do we do work for anyone outside the university." And unlike many of the thousands of rare and unique volumes that he and his staff restore each year in the basement of Olin Library, he said, the Grant Bible has little intrinsic value. It isn't that old -- dating back no further than the late 19th century -- and was probably mass-produced, unlike the research materials Dean's staff usually restores.

"The real value of the Bible is the fact that it was rediscovered," Dean said. "I was very touched by this story, and I felt that the book's sentimental value made it worth restoring."

Broken in several pieces, with significant damage from water and dampness, the beleaguered Bible was shipped to Dean this past March. Conservation Technician Samantha Couture repaired its pages with various Japanese tissues and rice starch paste. Dean restored the spine, originally of leather, with goatskin; he also made a protective box for the Bible and a scanned image of its genealogical chart.

When completed on Aug. 19, the Bible was 35 pounds and 4 inches thick, with a red leather cover and pages that, for readers of German, are entirely legible.

Clearly, Herman Grant's luck had extended beyond surviving the Holocaust: His cherished Bible had been in the hands of one of the world's most skilled conservators.

Dean served a six-year apprenticeship in his native England as a teen-ager; he was named "Apprentice of the Year" for the years 1951 to 1953 and was binding foreman for the Manchester Public Libraries from 1960 until 1969, when he came to the United States to take a position at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

In 1971 he received a library science degree at the University of Chicago and another master's at Johns Hopkins University, where he started an apprentice program and served as chief conservator from 1975 to 1985. That year he was invited to Cornell to start up and direct a universitywide conservation program that is today among the nation's most successful, with three trained conservators and four conservation technicians.

The Department of Preservation and Conservation is mandated to preserve Cornell's collection of some 5 million volumes, many damaged by acidity, water and vandalism. The department binds 70,000 paperbacks annually (it sends periodicals to an outside binder) and, through grants from public and private organizations like the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation, it preserves collections considered to be of great significance. The department's 10 units include an innovative digitization program, microfilming operations and a graphics conservation laboratory.

Currently, 103 Cornell collections are "Conspectus Level 5," Dean said, which means they are considered among the most important collections in the country and, in some cases, the world.

When Dean isn't overseeing restoration of ancient Buddhist texts or Icelandic manuscripts from the Middle Ages or pamphlets from the French Revolution, he enjoys leading tours of Cornell Library's conservation area. There, visitors might glimpse a botanical text of woodcuts from 1710, an anti-slavery jigsaw puzzle from the 1850s or the various ancient tools of the conservator's trade, which in most cases no longer are made.

Dean said book conservation work is particularly difficult to accomplish in the United States because of the lack of professional training; all of Cornell's professional conservators have been trained in Europe. He hopes eventually to develop a formal apprenticeship program at Cornell.

Meanwhile, what has become of the reconstituted Grant Bible?

On Thursday, Aug. 29, it began its journey back to Florida Atlantic University's special collections division in the hands of Calvin Landau, director of Cornell's Southeast Regional Office in the Department of Alumni Affairs and Development. Grant said he is grateful that the Bible will tell its tales long after he can tell his own and hopes to travel to Boca Raton to view Dean's handiwork.

"You can restore anything; it's just a matter of time," Dean said.

He ought to know.