A mortuary of books
- 416 pages
- 15 hours of reading
In March 1946, the American Military Government for Germany established the Offenbach Archival Depot near Frankfurt to store and restore vast quantities of Nazi-looted books, archival materials, and ritual objects discovered in German caches. These items highlighted the cultural genocide accompanying the Nazis' mass murders. The depot became a temporary "mortuary of books," as historian Lucy Dawidowicz termed it, housing over three million books of Jewish origin from nineteen European countries awaiting restitution. The narrative follows the efforts of various Jewish organizations and individuals who sought to recover this looted cultural property and return millions of treasured objects to their rightful owners. Notable Jewish intellectuals, including Dawidowicz, Hannah Arendt, Salo W. Baron, and Gershom Scholem, played crucial roles in this monumental task. Their work led to the establishment of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Inc., which acted as the Jewish trustee for heirless property in the American Zone, transferring hundreds of thousands of objects from the Depot to new centers of Jewish life post-Holocaust. This commitment underscored the significance of cultural objects as symbols of the enduring legacy of those lost and contributed to the revival of Jewish culture and scholarship in the postwar era.
