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Subject Guide: Book Looting During the Holocaust

Archival and library collection highlights found at the Center related to the looting and destruction of Jewish books during the Holocaust, and later restitution efforts.

Crates awaiting return to Italy, 260-PHOAD-I-24, NARA.

Library Materials

Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts : Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950. 1st American ed., Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

Molho, Rena, and Chastaoglou, Vilma. Jewish Sites in Thessaloniki : Brief History and Guide. Lycabettus Press, 2009.

Recanati, David A., and Title: Zikhron Saloniki ; grandeza i destruyicion de Yeruchalayim del Balkan. Zikhron Saloniki; Gedulatah Ve-Hurbanah Shel Yerushalayim De-Balkan, Ha-Orekh: / David A. Recanati. Ha-Vaad Le-Hotsaat Sefer Kehilat Saloniki, 1985.

Records of the Jewish Community of Salonika, Greece

The ERR sent the materials confiscated from Salonika and elsewhere in Greece to the NSDAP Institut zur Erforschung dur Judenfrage (IEJ) in Frankfurt am Main, headed by Alfred Rosenberg. The part of the archives of the Jewish community of Salonika that made its way to Frankfurt appears to have been collected by the United States military at the Offenbach Archival Depot (OAD) in Germany at the conclusion of the war. It appears that YIVO in New York received its section of the Salonika archives from the OAD in the years immediately following the conclusion of World War II. Other segments of the archives of the Jewish Community of Salonika found their way, also after the war, to Salonika, Athens, Jerusalem, Moscow, and Amsterdam.

Online Resources

Tedeschi, Mario. Alla ricerca della bibliotheca della communita ebraica di Roma saccheggiata nel 1943. La Rassegna Mensile di Israel terza serie, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Settembre - Dicembre 2004), pp. 165-174. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41287640 

Documents concerning the destruction of Jewish libraries in Rome

https://presidenza.governo.it/USRI/confessioni/appendice.html

Report on the activities of the Commission for the Recovery of the Bibliographic Patrimony of the Jewish Community of Rome stolen in 1943, Translated by Lenore Rosenberg

https://presidenza.governo.it/USRI/confessioni/doc/rapporto_finale_eng.pdf

Testimonies and eye-witness accounts of the destruction of Jewish libraries in Rome

http://www.studistorici.com/2012/01/26/27-gennaio-giorno-della-memoria/