Napoleon also stole enormous quantities of cultural materials from the lands he conquered, much of which wound up in the Louvre and other French museums. Not much has ever been returned. Then there are the so-called "Elgin Marbles" taken from the Parthenon and now on display in the British Museum. And in the U.S. there are the Native American artifacts and bones stored in museums and university research centers, some of which has been returned to the appropriate tribes. So it appears that empires loot cultures as much as they loot land and natural resources.
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The Nazis assembled a group of Jewish experts to work in Berlin processing the millions of books sent there from all over Europe. Among them was the publisher Erich Lichtenstein. He had found refuge in 1941 in the home of a woman named Else Splett, who was the lifelong best friend of my (Jewish) grandmother. (Else Splett was the widow of an English Quaker who had come to Germany after the World War to help feed the country's starving children.) She saved Lichtenstein from deportation and was honored after the war as an "Unsung Heroine" by the city of Berlin. She was fastidious about telling the truth, and on one occasion, when the Gestapo came to search her apartment, saying that they had had a report that a Jew was living there, she invited them to come and look for themselves, meanwhile pushing Lichtenstein behind the front door. She did want to lie if she didn't have to. The point of the project was to know the enemy, and bizarrely enough, it continued almost until the end of the war, with Lichtenstein and others still reporting for work in April 1945. At some point, he and Else Splett became a couple, and they lived together in her apartment in the Hildegardstrasse until separated by death. Lichtenstein, incidentally, was arrested in the 1943 "Fabrikaktion," when thousands of Berlin Jews were arrested in their workplaces, but was released after the demonstration in the Rosenstrasse of the non-Jewish wives of detainees.
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Thanks, NYTimes. I had no idea that books were also looted in such vast numbers. And to find heroes in such obscure places- libraries- is an added surprise.
How sad that Russia has made no effort to return it’s secondhand loot. A small, petty meanness for a country trying to be a world influence. Maybe they will reconsider someday- when they have a true leader.
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Neither had I, and I DO books.
An amazing story; thank you.
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It's good that Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, whose quiet, unsensational labors in archives have been so important to all who care about the restitution of looted books, should be given the credit she deserves. A most interesting article.
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If the project scanned the books into searchable PDF's or text, before returning them to their collectors, THAT would be a real contribution. We live in an era where the great University libraries of the world are trying to unburden themselves of shelving, caring for, and indexing overwhelming burdens of paper books.
The value is what is in the book, and not whose shelf it is on.
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@Scott the value is the book, not what is in it. The value of where it sits is an historical and family heirloom. These books may be very old and fragile and should reside with the family that lost it.
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@John I don’t think Scott was trying to say the books shouldn’t go back to the families. I think he was suggesting that this would be a great opportunity for libraries to make sure that the contents of the books, if not their material attributes, be available to the world at large as well. (Personally, though, I must disagree with Scott’s view that it’s only the contents of books that matter—one can learn a lot from and/or enjoy many of their material attributes.)
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The value of the book isn’t separable from the physical book; this is one of the many mistakes of “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.”
You also cannot separate tenor and vehicle, signifier and signified, form and content, or however you like to say it. The medium really is, like, the message.
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WW II has been over for a long time. This project wastes human time and money. The returned books are of great personal value but of little practical value. Use your resources to help actual living persons.
@Ronald D. Sattler - In what sense does this effort not help "actual living persons"? It must be hard for functionally illiterate people, such as the writer, to see the value of books to their rightful owners.
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@Ronald D. Sattler Returning the books does in fact help actual living persons - the descendants of the people the books were stolen from. It also reinforces the lessons of WW II, which are currently being ignored and disregarded by various fascistic political movements around the world, that such evil will never be forgotten or forgiven.
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Glad to see that Americans have given up those dopey old principles about putting justice before money and truth before convenience. Why, people might get the idea that we stood for something.
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I am so glad that efforts are still being made to rectify the crimes of the Nazis. It's never too late for justice.
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Time is running out and these books must be saved. I hope that someone is looking at designing a robot to read and digitize these books so that they can be preserved for the future. In this day and age this is no longer rocket science and very practical.
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While the property looted by Nazia are still being returned to their heirs, Palestinians are just supposed to shut up and give up their claim for the land, farms and property looted from them. Apparently Justice is only meant for some people.
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@Suresh You know, of course, that there is no country called Palestine, right?
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@Suresh
This is an incredibly insightful comment!
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@Suresh. No, their claims should be resolved in an agreement with Israel that doesn't neglect the claims of Jews who lost as much property (and lives) in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, mandatory Palestine, etc at the hands of governments and militias who attempted to destroy Israel in the name of Arab nationalism. Justice is for both Arabs and Jews.
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Please read this book by David Fishman of YIVO. It tells much more of this story.
"The Book Smugglers tells the story of the courageous Jews of the “Paper Brigade,” who risked their lives to rescue thousands of rare books and manuscripts—first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets—by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers in the Vilna Ghetto, and smuggling them across borders. This new book by David Fishman has been dubbed “Monuments Men for book lovers.” It is the epic chronicle of a little-known chapter from the darkest days of Jewish history."
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a moving story ... with clearly a sequel to be written once these admirable researchers succeed in persuading the Russians to return what the stolen books in their possession ..
thanks for telling this important tale.
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This is an important article, and I applaud all who participate in the project to return confiscated books to their rightful owners and heirs.
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So glad the NY Times is telling this story. The last three paragraphs are about my father. The wonderful librarians at the Berlin Central Library were able to return to him a book given to him in 1937 by his Hebrew school teacher. I was able to go to Berlin, meet them, and accept the book on his behalf. These librarians are truly selfless. Their work is tedious and for obvious reasons it is difficult for them to find the original owners for most of the books. Their story deserves to be celebrated. For my father, they were able to reconnect him with one small part of his childhood.
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@DebbieV That's a wonderful story, and I am so glad your father was able to speak to others of his experience.
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So much focus has been on Nazi's burning of books by the millions, this is the first I've heard of them saving and cataloging books that were seized. Shocked.
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