Library

During World War II, the Nazi government looted countless books both from the collections of private individuals and from synagogues, libraries, schools, and other cultural heritage institutions. They were kept as trophies of war and sent to Nazi research institutes. Near the end of the war, the United States military established the Offenbach Archival Depot near Frankfurt am Main Germany to house looted materials. The Jewish Cultural Reconstruction (JCR) initiative was formed in the U.S. to find homes for these books. They were sent primarily to Jewish libraries and other organizations in the United States and Israel, including Brandeis.

The Brandeis Library is now working to identify and fully catalog formerly-looted books in our collections so that future researchers can have access to the history of these items. These webpages tell the story of both the JCR as a whole and the books’ history at Brandeis, as well as how we’re working with libraries and other institutions around the world with collections of Nazi-looted materials.

The Brandeis Library launched its Strategic Collections Project in the summer of 2022, to ensure that physical collections remain current and relevant to the university’s research and teaching needs. The library prides itself on the strength of its collections, but over the years, shifting research priorities and changes to the library buildings themselves have created an unsustainable situation, in which the most relevant materials are not also the most accessible to our community.

To remedy this, the library has reimagined the ways that they acquire, sort, and assess physical collections, and will spend the next three years working, floor by floor, to realize it. The library’s Strategic Collections Project involves shifting rarely used materials into storage, deselecting materials that are obsolete or available in alternate formats, and restructuring collection spaces within the building to allow for easier discovery.