Jewish books stolen by Nazis during World War II returned to Prague — by way of Washington University Libraries.
In February 1972, more than 100 cartons of books made a cross-country journey from Los Angeles to St. Louis. Washington University paid $30,000 for the thousands of volumes that would comprise the bulk of the Shimeon Brisman Collection in Jewish Studies, a huge grouping of religious texts and rabbinical commentaries that included Brisman’s personal rare book collection as well as titles purchased from UCLA in the same era.
For decades, WashU librarians didn’t realize that tucked among the Brisman Collection were 30 volumes that bore a stamp revealing a longer, and more disturbing, journey. Thirty years before the books’ arrival in St. Louis, Nazis had forcefully taken the texts from a library in Prague to the ghetto-concentration camp in Terezín (Theresienstadt). After World War II, some books made an additional stop at Bamberger and Wahrmann, a Jewish bookstore in Jerusalem, before being purchased by UCLA and then WashU.
The books’ journey finally concluded last August, when WashU successfully repatriated the volumes to their rightful owner: the library of the Jewish Museum in Prague. In doing so, the university created a template for returning stolen property — joining cultural institutions around the world that in recent years have confronted tragic legacies within their own collections.