Collect to destroy. The annihilation of German and Polish Jewish research libraries

Abstract

Jewish research libraries emerged in the wake of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Jewish studies initiated subsequently. They formed the foundation of this new field of knowledge, rapidly developing by Jewish scholars. The subject of this article is the history of three German libraries – one in Breslau and two in Berlin – and four libraries in the Second Polish Republic: one in Warsaw, two in Vilnius, and one in Lublin. After introducing these Jewish research libraries from their foundation to Hitler’s rise to power (1933) and, respectively, to the outbreak of war, the author describes their fate during the years of Nazi rule. Closed, confiscated, destroyed, looted, deported, used in perverse ways – all seven ceased to exist. The subject of the text section of the article is the postwar distribution of the volumes surviving from these Jewish libraries. The article closes with reflections on the study of the provenance of the survived books, dispersed in collections on several continents, as a means of saving the libraries from which they originated from oblivion.