Leopold Jan Binental (1886–1944) was a musicologist and journalist, and an indefatigable promoter of Frederic Chopin’s compositions and researcher into his life story in the inter-war period. He wrote and published a great deal in professional periodicals as well as in the national and foreign popular press, mainly in France and Germany. Until 1939, he was a regular music critic for "Kurier Warszawski". He was thought to be a competent and respected Chopinologist, and his reputation in Europe was confirmed by the monograph Chopin published in Warsaw (1930 and 1937) and in Paris (1934) and the album Chopin. On the 120th anniversary of his birth. Documents and mementoes (Warsaw 1930 and Leipzig 1932) presenting Chopin’s mementoes, prints, drawings, handwritten musical notes and letters. He initiated and co-organised famous exhibitions about Chopin in the National Museum in Warsaw (1932) and the Polish Library in Paris (1932 and 1937). He was Executive Secretary on the Management Board of the Fryderyk Chopin National Institute created in 1934. Binental amassed a private collection of Chopin’s manuscripts and mementoes which is highly regarded in musicological circles. He also collected works of art; his collection comprised ancient, Middle Eastern and modern European ceramics, medieval sculpture and tapestries, goldsmithery and Judaica. After the outbreak of war in autumn 1939, Binental took certain steps to secure his collections. Three chests with ceramics and works of art were deposited in the National Museum in Warsaw. However, it is not known what happened to the collection of Chopin’s objects. At the beginning of 1940, Binental and his wife managed to leave Poland and reach France, where his daughter lived. In 1944 he was arrested by Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz from which he did not return. After the war, at the request of his daughter Krystyna, some of the works of art deposited in the collections of the National Museum were found. With her approval, they are currently to be found in public collections in Poland, although the fate of his Chopin collection remains unknown. Every now and then, some proof appears on the world antiquarian market that the collection has not been damaged, despite remaining missing.