Wielka Synagoga w Warszawie

View of the Great Synagogue, Warsaw, approx. 1915 (Photo: public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

In 2017, two books from the library of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw (Wielka Synagoga w Warszawie) were handed over to the Fundacja Ochrony Dziedzictwa Żydowskiego [Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, FODŻ].

The library of the Wielka Synagoga, comprising some 50,000 volumes, was transported to Berlin in 1939 by Kommando Paulsen, a unit of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA).

One book is known to have ended up in the collection of the Berlin City Library (Berliner Stadtbibliothek, BStB) shortly after the end of the war in 1945/46; the second volume presumably arrived via an allocation from the Salvage Office for Academic Libraries (Bergungsstelle für wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken), specifically Order No. 15 (a Depot of the RSHA).