How could I NOT have known about this? I did know that nazis had stolen art and artifacts from the Jews they had sent to death camps to be killed. And knew about the book burnings. But I believed those were isolated incidents the results of the nazi party riling German citizens to hate Jews with their lie-filled propaganda. I definitely never knew the enormity and the organizational planning and scope of this massive book-looting.

And learning from Stolen Words the ironic reason behind this senseless iniquity was that the Germans loved culture, learning and books! Hitler wanted to show the world the culture of an ‘untermensch’ underclass (sub-humans) that he had brilliantly vanquished!

Glickman divides Stolen Words into the before and after of WWII. Provides the global history of early writing materials, i.e. papyrus and animal skins, and how creating a complete scroll was a long, arduous process, and how new discoveries and developments slowly improved and increased writing. Of course, the consummate technology that changed EVERYTHING was Guttenberg’s printing press. After that printing and publishing took off; people wrote, printed and published, and sold books of all kinds.

The Jews were no exception. Print shops opened in Italy, Spain, Portugal and other countries. While Yehuda HaNasi codified the ‘Oral Torah’ into Mishnah. The Gemarah elucidating the Mishnah comes later; and together Jews studied these two complementary parts of the Talmud for hundreds of years. Many rabbis, teachers and scholars have written and continue to write explanations and interpretations of parts of the Talmud. Thousands of scholarly books were printed, published, sold, collected, and used for teaching/ learning all over the globe.

The Haskalah, 1770’s – 1880’s (considered the Jewish version of the Age of Enlightenment) brings intellectual secularism to the Jewish world. Focus shifts from the religious to a liberal view of the world. Jewish unity, study of Hebrew language, science, rationalism, freedom of thought, and the right to ask questions are promoted. Inspired Jews write Hebrew poetry, literature, plays and more. This exciting time of fresh writing is called the Republic of Letters. It helps modernize and stimulate the culture of Central and East European Jews, and slowly moves to both Jews and Muslims in Western Europe. With all these religious and secular books libraries, book shops and personal collections form throughout Europe.

At different times through history Jewish religious books have been destroyed or banned by particular Church leaders who felt threatened by the appeal and wisdom of the Jewish faith and angry the Jews hadn’t yet been converted. Later, after the Enlightenment, the Church blames Jews and our books as a contributing reason people are pulling away from religion and moving toward secularism.

The nazis use whatever propaganda they can, no need to make sense, to turn Germans against Jews to justify mass murder. hitler’s staff, trip over themselves trying to please him and get his approval by devising plans to take millions of books and cultural items from Jewish homes, shops, and libraries for the ‘museum’ he wants created of a people he destroyed! Rosenberg, Himmler and Six were among the most maliciously motivated directors of this operation. Books are collected but…have nowhere to go! The museum of hitler’s twisted mind has not been built. The books are sent and stored here, there and everywhere.

While WWII raged on, and Jews (and other groups of people) were used for torturous experiments, starved, overworked, shot and gassed by the nazis, American Jewish organizations were actively trying to rescue Jews and brought to the US, they were fighting an uphill battle against the clock, the numbers of people involved, a virulently antisemitic state department, and people’s psychological disbelief and denial that murder on a huge scale was happening. At some point their work changed over to helping survivors.

The US Army hands over responsibility for the restitution and relocation of Jewish books at the Offenbach facility to the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction (JCR) organization. Varying managers developed different types of organizational systems for cataloging books, and shipping them to other countries for further processing and distribution. Israel, the US and England receive the lion’s share of the found books. BUT…all recipients had to agree that if the original owner or heirs were located then the materials must be sent to them.

Hannah Arendt one of the most dynamic managers of this tedious, labor- and emotion-intensive work. She requests the creation of a label for these found books indicating that each experienced an eventful history, a past life of respect and study, and then a shockingly dishonorable seizure fueled by hate. But now fortunately found and saved to be returned to its former valuable life purpose. (The labels make me think of the original owners of these books; both regular and brilliant people grabbed, taken and killed because they were Jews. The horror that THEY could not return to their lives hits me hard. How I wish the nazis had taken JUST THE BOOKS and not the people!)

Even after the Offenbach facility is emptied; the JCR learns of and searches for looted books still hidden. Many are found and processed but others are located in Stalin’s Russia, others stolen and sold which do come to light periodically, and others just lost to time.

An incredible story of the journey of millions of books, both heart-breaking and triumphant.