Abandoned libraries in the Warsaw ghetto 1942–1944. German librarians’ plans
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33077/uw.25448730.zbkh.2025.911Keywords:
Jewish libraries, Warsaw Ghetto 1940–1943, Nazi occupation of PolandAbstract
At its peak, approximately 450,000 people lived in the Warsaw Ghetto (1940–1943). Many of them had home libraries. There were also bookshops, public lending libraries, and a thriving street trade in antiquarian books. All of these books remained in the ghetto after their owners were deported to extermination camps, and eventually, after the ghetto uprising, the number of these volumes is estimated to be around 500,000.
The German librarian, Wilhelm Witte, commissary manager of three of Warsaw’s most significant libraries, offered to the ghetto authorities to collect and store the abandoned books in the former Main Judaic Library building on Tłomackie Street. However, this turned out to be an unrealistic request, as the SS had seized all remaining Jewish possessions as well as the Library building and denied Witte any access to these books. Thus, the books of the ghetto’s inhabitants were destroyed in the ghetto’s ruins.
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