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The Road to Minsk for Western "Trophy" Books: Twice Plundered but Not Yet "Home from the War"
Abstract and Figures
In the fall of 1945 an echelon of fifty-four freight cars arrived from Silesia in the war-torn Belarusian capital of Minsk bringing over 1 million library books. Half of them had been plundered from Belarusian libraries by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) during World War II, but the other half had been plundered by the ERR in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands and ended the war in the ERR Silesia center in Ratibor (now Polish Racibórz). Many of those "twice-plundered" books are still in Minsk, some were forwarded to Moscow (only a handful of those returned to the West), some were destroyed by order of the censor, while many have been otherwise dispersed. Only half a century later can we begin to reconstruct their migration and identify the private libraries (mostly Jewish) from whence they came.
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... Some of these ERR lists survive to this day. 11 It is unclear whether such detailed official documentation exists in the case of Palestine, but thus far only a small amount has been discovered. ...
... In 1935, "Padežina library", inherited from predecessors by Daugavpils' bookseller Sholom Adelberg (1896-1941), stored 7,000 volumes. 16 The bookstore-library of Esther Ettinger (1885-1941?), situated at the centre of Riga, Brīvības Street, attracted readers with foreign publications in psychology, pedagogy, law, art and history. 17 Already in 1930 her library contained almost 10,000 volumes. ...
[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] The aim of the research is to find out the influence of the Nazi regime on preservation of historical book collections, which were established in Jewish societies, schools, religious organizations and private houses in Latvia until the first Soviet occupation (1940/1941). At the beginning, libraries of Jewish associations and other institutions were expropriated by the Soviet power, which started the elimination of Jewish books and periodicals published in the independent Republic of Latvia. The massive destruction of Jewish literature collections was carried out by Nazi occupation authorities (1941-1944/45), proclaiming Jews and Judaism as their main “enemies”. However, digitized archives of Nazi organizations (mainly documents of the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce) shows that a small part of the Latvian Jewish book collections was preserved for research purposes and after the Second World War scattered in different countries. Analysis of archival documents will clarify the Nazi strategy for Latvian Jewish book collections. It will be determined which book values survived the war and what their further fate in the second half of the 1940s was.
This article analyses the historical and political background of the Russian law on cultural property displaced to the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War (April 1998, with amendments in 2000). Following the 1990–1991 revelations about the extensive cultural treasures captured by Soviet authorities at the end of the Second World War, there was hope abroad for restitution, with a series of bilateral agreements with the countries of origin, but in spring 1994 the Duma blocked further restitution. We follow the fierce debates, the Constitutional Court ruling (1999), the amended law (July 2000), and its implementation under the Ministry of Culture.
We show the wide-scale Russian support of the law, with its concept of “compensatory restitution” that virtually nationalizes the spoils of war, with only scant provisions for restitution to those who fought against the Nazi regime and those victimized by it. What explanation emerges involves the manipulation of historical memory by the Stalinist regime, as the cultural trophies assume symbolic importance in the “myth and memory” of “victory” in the Great Patriotic War. Restitution to legal owners is to be considered only in exchange for equally substantial compensation for wartime loss and suffering of the population at large.
This article provides brief coverage of the Russian-German dialogue since 1991 and the search for solutions about looted art of German ownership seized at the end of the Second World War and still held in Russia. So far, while Russia and Germany regard themselves as partners and friends in political and economic realms, they have been unable to find agreement about the looted art. Germany seems no longer to retain Russian cultural goods plundered during the war, whereas Russia still possesses a significant amount of German cultural assets. On the basis of existing treaties and international law, Germany demands its restitution. Russia, on the other hand, has nationalized the confiscated goods in 1998 as compensation for its own war losses. Nevertheless, not a few citizens of both countries have been returning artworks and books privately, in some cases supported by the governments. A convincing solution for the general problem can only be found if the treasures, which in the past have been understood as trophies, could be transformed into cultural ambassadors, while dialogue and the search for new ways continue within the framework of a policy of reconciliation. This approach also includes further research and analysis of the Russian cultural losses resulting from the war, a project undertaken in the 1990s at the Forschungsstelle Osteuropa (Research Center for Eastern Europe) of the University of Bremen, as briefly described in an appendix to the article.
Amsab Institute d'Histoire Sociale (Amsab [Archives and Museum of the Socialist Labour Movement] Institute of Social History)
- Acronyms Abbreviations
- Amsab Amsab Instituut Voor Sociale
- Geschiedenis
Abbreviations and Acronyms
Amsab
Amsab Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis/
Amsab Institute d'Histoire Sociale (Amsab
[Archives and Museum of the Socialist Labour
Movement] Institute of Social History), Ghent
BAB
Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives), Berlin-
Lichterfelde
BAK
Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives), Koblenz
BAN
Biblioteka Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk (Library
of the Academy of Sciences), St. Petersburg
CDJC
Centre de documentation juive contemporaine
(Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation),
Paris
ERR
Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die
besitzten Gebiebte (Rosenberg Special
Command Force for Occupied Territories)
In his dissertation The Development of U.S. Protection of Libraries and Archives in Europe during World War II
December 1948: 1699–1704. In his dissertation, " The Development of U.S. Protection of Libraries and Archives in Europe during World War II " (Fort Gordon,
Ga., U.S. Army Civil Affairs School, 1964; revised from a doctoral dissertation
prepared at the University of Chicago, 1958), Poste devotes a chapter to OAD
(258–301), with a chart of out-shipments by country (299–300). See F. J.
Taina tserkvi v Uzkom Literaturnaia gazeta
- Evgenii Kuz 'min
Evgenii Kuz'min, " Taina tserkvi v Uzkom, " Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 38 (18
Main Archival Administration); alternatively and earlier often GAU Glavlit Glavnoe upravlenie po okhrane gosudarstvennykh tain v pechati pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR (Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in Print under the Council of Ministers of the USSR)
- Glavarkhiv Glavnoe Arkhivnoe Upravlenie
Glavarkhiv
Glavnoe arkhivnoe upravlenie (Main Archival
Administration); alternatively and earlier often
GAU
Glavlit
Glavnoe upravlenie po okhrane
gosudarstvennykh tain v pechati pri Sovete
Ministrov SSSR (Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in Print under the
Council of Ministers of the USSR)
Avtografy sud'by Velikoi artistke, pochtitel'no . . . , " Vestnik Minskogo gosudarstvennogo lingvisticheskogo universiteta, series 1: Filologiia
- Vladimir Makarov
Vladimir Makarov, " Avtografy sud'by, " Vsemirnaia literatura (Minsk), 1998,
no. 6:134–43, and " Velikoi artistke, pochtitel'no..., " Vestnik Minskogo
gosudarstvennogo lingvisticheskogo universiteta, series 1: Filologiia, 1998, no. 4:157–
Cultures and Nations of Central and Eastern Europe: Essays in Honor of Roman Szporluk The Postwar Fate of the Petliura Library and the Records of the Ukrainian National Republic
): 189–91 (special issue, Cultures and Nations of Central and Eastern Europe:
Essays in Honor of Roman Szporluk, ed. Zvi Gitelman et al.); and Patricia K. Grimsted,
" The Postwar Fate of the Petliura Library and the Records of the Ukrainian
National Republic, " Harvard Ukrainian Studies 21, nos. 3–4 (1997 [2001]): 392–461.
An annotated copy of the catalog is held in the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam University Library. A few copies were also produced of the original Russian version: Niderlandskie knigi—zhertvy voiny: Katalog vystavki knig iz fondov VGBIL, prinadlezhashchikh vladel'tsam iz Niderlandov
- Ed Pronina
Pronina, ed., Nederlandse boeken—slachtoffers van de oorlog: Tentoonstellingcatalogus
van de boeken uit het fonds van de VGBIL aanhorig bij de Nederlandse bezitters Amsterdam,
Universiteitsbibliotheek, September 1992 (Moscow: " Rudomino, " 1992). An annotated copy of the catalog is held in the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam
University Library. A few copies were also produced of the original Russian
version: Niderlandskie knigi—zhertvy voiny: Katalog vystavki knig iz fondov VGBIL,
prinadlezhashchikh vladel'tsam iz Niderlandov, 15–28 iiunia 1992 g. (Moscow:
" Rudomino, " 1992).
Neizvestnye stranitsy istorii nemetskikh bibliotechnykh kollektsii v gody Vtoroi mirovoi voiny Restitutsiia bibliotechnykh sobranii i sotrudnichestvo v Evrope. Rossiisko-germanskii " kruglyi stol The proceedings were first published in a much more extensive German version
- I Evgenii
- E A Kuz 'min
- Azarova
Evgenii I. Kuz'min, " Neizvestnye stranitsy istorii nemetskikh
bibliotechnykh kollektsii v gody Vtoroi mirovoi voiny, " in E. A. Azarova, comp.,
Restitutsiia bibliotechnykh sobranii i sotrudnichestvo v Evrope. Rossiisko-germanskii
" kruglyi stol ", 11–12 dekabria 1992 g., Moskva: sbornik dokladov (Moscow: Rudomino,
1994), 17–24. The proceedings were first published in a much more extensive
German version: Klaus-Dieter Lehmann and Ingo Kolasa, eds., Restitution von
Bibliotheksgut. Runder Tisch deutscher und russischer Bibliothekare in Moskau am 11.
Spoils of War: The Soviet Union's Hidden Art Treasures The Soviets' War Treasures: A Growing Controversy Those findings were later incorporated into the book by Akinsha and Kozlov, with the assistance of Sylvia Hochfield, Beautiful Loot: The Soviet Plunder of Europe's Art Treasures
- Konstantin Akinsha
- Grigorii Kozlov
Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov, " Spoils of War: The Soviet Union's
Hidden Art Treasures, " ARTNews (April 1991): 130–41; " The Soviets' War Treasures: A Growing Controversy, " ARTNews (September 1991): 112–19. Those findings were later incorporated into the book by Akinsha and Kozlov, with the
assistance of Sylvia Hochfield, Beautiful Loot: The Soviet Plunder of Europe's Art
Treasures (New York: Random House, 1995). Both of the authors who broke the
story are now living abroad.
387