Opava Israelite Community

Since 2015, five books from the library of the Jewish Community of Opava have been returned to the Jewish Community of Ostrava via the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic.

The roots of the Jewish community in Opava date back to the mid-18th century. After the end of the Austrian Empire, Opava was part of newly founded Czechoslovakia from 1919.

After the cession of the Sudetenland to the German Reich, which was decided at the "Munich Agreement" in September 1938, Troppau was part of the Nazi Reichsgau Sudetenland. German troops entered the city as early as the beginning of October 1938.

During the November pogroms of 1938, the synagogue in Troppau was completely destroyed. The remaining Jews in the city were interned in a camp in Skrochowitz in the summer of 1939; from here they were deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in 1940 and from there to concentration and extermination camps where they were murdered.

The library of the Jewish Community of Opava was shipped in 70 boxes (13,750 books) to the Reich Main Security Office ("Reichssicherheitshauptamt", RSHA) in Berlin on 10 August 1939. The Berlin City Library received books from a depot of the RSHA at Eisenacher Str. 11-13 in Berlin Schöneberg from the Bergungsstelle für wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken (Salvage Office for Academic Libraries) after the end of the war. The RSHA had collected looted books from all over Europe there.