Stolen Words

<p><em>Stolen Words</em> is an epic story about the largest collection of Jewish books in the world--tens of millions of books that the Nazis looted from European Jewish families and institutions. Nazi soldiers and civilians emptied Jewish communal libraries confiscated volumes from government collections and stole from Jewish individuals schools and synagogues. Early in their regime the Nazis burned some books in spectacular bonfires but most they saved stashing the literary loot in castles abandoned mine shafts and warehouses throughout Europe. It was the largest and most extensive book-looting campaign in history. After the war Allied forces discovered these troves of stolen books but quickly found themselves facing a barrage of questions. How could the books be identified? Where should they go? Who had the authority to make such decisions? Eventually the military turned the books over to an organization of leading Jewish scholars called Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Inc.--whose chairman was the acclaimed historian Salo Baron and whose on-the-ground director was the philosopher Hannah Arendt--with the charge of establishing restitution protocols. <em>Stolen Words</em> is the story of how a free civilization decides what to do with the material remains of a world torn asunder and how those remains connect survivors with their past. It is the story of Jews struggling to understand the new realities of their post-Holocaust world and of Western society's gradual realization of the magnitude of devastation wrought by World War II. Most of all it is the story of people --of Nazi leaders ideologues and Judaica experts; of Allied soldiers scholars and scoundrels; and of Jewish communities librarians and readers around the world.</p><p></p><p>Rabbi Mark Glickman has served at congregations in Ohio Washington State and Colorado. He is the author of <em>Sacred Treasure-The Cairo Genizah: The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic</em>.</p><p></p>