Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau

In 2017, 24 books from the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau (Jüdisch-Theologisches Seminar Fraenckel'scher Stiftung, Breslau) were handed over to the Fundacja Ochrony Dziedzictwa Żydowskiego [Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, FODŻ]. The handover took place in collaboration with the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin – Centrum Judaicum, which was also able to identify books from the seminary’s library.

The Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau was founded on 10 August 1854 as a rabbinical seminary, following a bequest in the will of the businessman Jonas Fraenckel, and grew in the following years to become one of the most important Jewish educational institutions in Europe. The seminary included a library of approximately 30,000 volumes. During the November pogroms of 1938, the library and the seminary were vandalised, after which it was closed by the Nazis and numerous students were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.

The handwritten number ‘15’ found in some volumes from the Breslau seminary clearly indicates that the books originated from a depot of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA) at Eisenacher Str. 11–13 in Berlin-Schöneberg. The RSHA had gathered looted books from all over Europe there, mainly from Jewish communities, Masonic lodges, political parties and monastic libraries. Some of these books were distributed to libraries throughout Berlin by the Salvage Office for Academic Libraries (Bergungsstelle für wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken) between late 1945 and early 1946.