Actually it’s an address book… Sad story behind it, though. Walter Benjamin was a German Jewish literary critic and philosopher, who fled from the Nazi regime during World War II. This was his address book from time spent in Paris, where he associated with a lot of other refugees before being arrested and imprisoned for several months. He later returned to Paris and then escaped to Spain, intending to travel to the US, but his visa was canceled and he committed suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Nazis again.

The address book was from an exhibition a few years ago of some contents of the Walter Benjamin archive:  Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme Conférence L’exilé Walter Benjamin.