The Book Thieves

by Anders Rydell

  A dozen full-time SS researchers had spent almost a decade working on Hexen-Sonderauftrag, sifting through 260 libraries and archives in pursuit of material on witches, trial protocols, witness descriptions, and confessions. The material was compiled in a card index, the Hexenkartothek, in which every “witch” was given her own section including her history, family ties, and fate. It took the form of victim documentation, which was also precisely what it was.

  Himmler viewed the witch trials as an expression of the millennial battle between the northern and southern European cultures. This persecution, according to Himmler, had been a way for the Catholic church to fight the original spiritual beliefs of the northern peoples—an attack on, and destruction of, ancient Germanic customs. The witches thus represented Nordic “popular culture,” which, according to this view, had been opposed by a southern, Mediterranean-based Christianity with its roots in the Judaic world.

  There was a certain amount of truth in this—many of these women had indeed been burned because they had been accused of practicing magic and pagan, pre-Christian rites. Not altogether unexpectedly, however, Himmler suspected that the persecution was a part of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy genuinely Germanic culture. In the SS universe, the witches were Aryan martyrs, Nordic Amazons who had stood up to the “Semitic priesthood.”29

  To a certain degree, the Hexen-Sonderauftrag research was made use of during the Third Reich. Joseph Goebbels had recognized the propaganda value of the witch hunts, in order to justify attacks on the Catholic church. Even in Nazi parades and propaganda performances the witches were elevated into German heroines.

  A writer named Friedrich Soukup was employed to write light fiction, either books for young adults or historical novels on the witch hunts, with an edge of blame directed at the church. Soukup allegedly planned an ambitious trilogy based on the research, a project, however, that was never realized. Hexen-Sonderauftrag’s documentation on the persecution of witches was the most detailed research on the subject that had ever been carried out in Europe. During the nine years of the project, the card index grew until it covered the lives of 3,600 witches. Further, an archive and library of some 150,000 documents and books was built up. After the war, Himmler’s Hexenkartothek disappeared and was forgotten—until its rediscovery in Poland in the 1980s by the German historian Gerhard Schormann.

  According to Schormann, the project served dual aims. It was a source of propaganda as well as an attempt to recover and preserve aspects of Germanic beliefs that had been lost.30 Oddly enough, Himmler’s research into witchcraft, despite its many academic shortcomings, gained a certain amount of importance in modern research into the witch hunts because of the extensive amount of historical source material that had been amassed. “As Europe’s first and only ‘pro-witch’ government, the Nazi regime has also exerted some lasting influence on popular understanding of witchcraft and on some forms of popular magical practices,” writes the American historian Michael David Bailey.31 Gerhard Schormann himself would end up using Himmler’s Hexenkartothek as the basis of his research into the witch trials in Germany.

  Jewish literature was also sent to Schloss Niemes, but this seems only to have been placed in storage, while the occult literature was very much prioritized. Grimsted feels that this interest in occultism at a time when the regime was preoccupied by the idea of “total war” cannot be dismissed as “insignificant sensationalism”—but rather, that it was regarded as highly significant by the SS elite at the end of the war: “Perhaps RSHA leaders, such as Himmler and Kaltenbrunner, both of whom as we now know were secretly initiating peace feelers at that time, were themselves also not ready to abandon the pursuit of spiritual or even pagan sources for survival or renewal of their mission, while the world around them was destroying the Nazi regime and its ideology for which they were assigned to provide security.”32

  In the end, the total war also reached the SS castles. In April 1945, Section VII personnel were called to the front to take part in the final battle for the Third Reich.

  • • •

  Within Amt Rosenberg there were no plans to give up the fight against world Jewry, despite the fact that Germany was retreating on all fronts. If anything, the work was intensified. In the closing stages of the war, Alfred Rosenberg started drawing up plans for a last, grandiose project that was as unworldly as it was futile: an international anti-Jewish congress in 1944 on the theme of “Jewry in Global Politics in Our Time.” To lend an air of legitimacy to the project, he had even initiated a collaboration with his rivals within the RSHA, the Propaganda Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry. The head of the Frankfurt institute, Klaus Schickert, had been assigned as the editor of a work entitled A Yearbook of Jewish World Politics, which was very likely intended to be launched at the congress. The book, an anthology, would show how Jews were controlling political developments and must therefore be held accountable for the war.33

  The plans for the congress were described in a classified document from June 15, 1944, a week after the Western Allies made their landings in Normandy.34 The document was written by Hans Hagemeyer, one of Alfred Rosenberg’s most trusted men, who had been tasked with organizing the congress. According to the document, Hitler had personally approved the plans and decided that the conference would be held in Kraków. Hagemeyer went on to describe the congress in detail. In addition to a series of “Jewish experts” there would be speeches from three German ministers. The Berlin Philharmonic would put on a performance under chief conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler.

  “Prominent Europeans” would be invited to the congress, as well as state representatives from countries both in and outside Europe. Some of their names were given, including several of Europe’s leading anti-Semites, Fascists, and Nazis. From Italy would come the minister Fernando Mezzasoma, a man who had been something of a correlative in his country of Joseph Goebbels. From the Netherlands, Anton Mussert, the leader and founder of the Nazi Party there, Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging in Nederland. From France would come the poet and minister of education in the Vichy regime, Abel Bonnard. Hagemeyer also mentioned that Alfred Rosenberg had gone to Norway, “so that he can personally extend an invitation to the ministerial president, Quisling.” The Arab world would be represented by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who in 1941 had fled to Nazi Germany and tried to persuade Hitler to expand the reach of the Holocaust to the Middle East. Undertakings to send delegates had, according to Hagemeyer, been received from Sweden, Romania, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal—but no names were given. According to Hagemeyer, preparations for the congress were in progress with the utmost secrecy.35

  Since its inauguration, the Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage in Frankfurt had been actively building up international contacts, as evidenced by the guest list at the opening ceremony, which included representatives from Denmark, Hungary, Romania, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway. The institute created a continental network of anti-Semitic organizations and authorities to help disseminate anti-Semitic information to the general public.36 Nazi Germany regularly made use of local anti-Semites, racists, and organizations, which were often given German funding. At times this also occurred under a local facade, such as the French Institut d’Etudes des Questions Juives (Institute for Studies on the Jewish Question), which was headed by a Frenchman, Paul Sézille, but overseen by the SS and financed by the German embassy.37 The institute, which marketed a German model of anti-Jewish politics, arranged events such as the anti-Semitic exhibition Le Juif et la France (The Jew and France) in Paris in 1941, which set out to show how Jews had infiltrated society and corrupted French culture as well as national customs and traditions.

  The Institut d’Etudes des Questions Juives collaborated closely with the Frankfurt institute. Its overseer, SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker, had suggested that it should become a branch of Rosenberg’s Hohe Schule—something that never came about. However, the Frankfurt institute provi
ded assistance for its French colleagues in the creation of a journal, La question juive en France et dans le monde, modeled on Der Weltkampf.

  Hans Hagemeyer’s document revealed that in actual fact, the planned 1944 congress in Kraków had an entirely different purpose than merely being an anti-Semitic research conference. Hagemeyer wrote that while the whole event had the semblance of a “historical and scientific congress,” its actual purpose was to “create an international organization that will examine and fight Jewry.” In other words, a sort of anti-Semitic United Nations.38 Heinrich Himmler, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Joseph Goebbels, and Hans Frank would be made honorary members of this international organization, along with a number of the more prominent participants such as Mezzasoma, Mussert, Bonnard, and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The organization would counteract “pro-Jewish propaganda” and uncover how the Allies were actually fighting for “Jewish world domination.”39

  The problem was that the Europe that Rosenberg wanted to unite in this anti-Jewish fellowship was rapidly disintegrating in 1944. Before the end of the year, Nazi Germany stood alone among the intended participants. Adolf Hitler, realizing the political impossibility of Rosenberg’s plans, canceled the congress.

  Early in 1944 the Red Army liberated Leningrad after a siege lasting 872 days. The Soviet Union was freed in the summer, and by August the Red Army was at the gates of Warsaw, which was where Stalin stopped the offensive. For almost half a year the eastern front was still, while the Red Army amassed enormous resources in preparation for a last attack. Six million soldiers were moved to the front, almost twice the manpower that Hitler had had at his disposal when he attacked the Soviet Union in 1941.

  In Ratibor there seems to have been an awareness of the impending attack, and at the end of 1944 plans were once again drawn up to evacuate the collections to Bavaria. However, by this time it was no longer realistic that millions of books stockpiled in Ratibor could be quickly moved. After one and a half years of activity, there had not even been enough time to complete the evacuation of books from Berlin. How many books the ERR evacuated in those last few months is still uncertain. The work continued right up to the first week of February 1945, when the Red Army reached the town. It is really quite remarkable that both the SS and the ERR carried on working on the libraries at a time when there could no longer be the slightest doubt, even for the most fanatical of Nazis, that the Third Reich was lost. The answer probably has both an ideological and a very human explanation.

  These organizations were the intellectual guardians of the movement, and had long functioned as a sort of concentration of true believers. Based on and built up from the central core of National Socialism, there was a morass of myths, historical falsifications, and conspiracy theories, which these “intellectual guardians” were intent on proving and establishing on firm foundations through their “research.” In these circles fatalism was a mortal sin, even in a literal sense. At the same time they probably also had very human reasons to continue their work. After all, for as long as this could be justified, it would keep them away from frontline duty. Being sent to the eastern front was regarded, quite rightly, as a death sentence.

  In January 1945 the collections began to be evacuated from Schloss Pless. But in the middle of the month, the Soviet offensive began, and two million Red Army soldiers pressed their way into Poland. Thousands of books were left at the train station in Pless, when the ERR staff was forced to flee from the advancing Russians.40 In early February, personnel in Ratibor also had to escape when the town was subjected to artillery bombardment. When the Red Army took Ratibor, there were still barges on the Oder, loaded with books. There had been plans to burn certain portions of the collections, and a plentiful supply of gasoline had been stockpiled for this purpose, but for some reason a decision was made to simply abandon the books.41

  Rosenberg’s activities on the other front, in Hungen, also continued until the very last moment, and the Frankfurt institute continued lending books to researchers, universities, and other research institutions—documentation of outgoing loans indicates that this activity went on until February 1945, by which time the Red Army was outside Berlin and the western front was a mere 124 miles from Frankfurt.42 The institute continued making purchases of books for another month.

  Early in April 1945, American forces from the Fifth Infantry Division reached Hungen and took possession of the castle. Before long the huge book depots were found. The unit that made the discovery was led by a thirty-two-year-old lawyer and lieutenant named Robert Schoenfeld, a Polish-born Jew who had fled the Nazis in 1939 and made his way to the United States.43 This was probably the moment when a soldier from Schoenfeld’s unit, armed with a British-made automatic rifle, made his way into one of the dark book depots, firing a warning shot that hit a crate and penetrated a book from the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana: Samuel Usque’s Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel.

  [ 14 ]

  A WAGON OF SHOES

  Prague

  In a little square in central Prague, where the two streets Dušní and Vězeňská meet, Franz Kafka rides a headless figure. The black bronze sculpture is inspired by one of the author’s short stories, “Description of a Struggle,” in which the narrator defeats an apparently invincible opponent by leaping onto his shoulders and riding him like a horse.

  The statue has become an attraction. A group of Russian tourists take turns photographing each other in front of the emblematic national writer. The place is loaded with symbolism: the Kafka family lived on Dušní Street, and this is the heart of Prague’s old Jewish quarter—only a few yards from the Spanish Synagogue. In front of the synagogue, built in Middle Eastern architectural style, lies a considerably more modern building: Prague’s Jewish Museum, constructed in a gray-yellow functional style. In a room on the second floor sits the librarian and researcher Michal Bušek, a man in his thirties with a shaved head, a well-trimmed beard, and gray checkered shorts. Beside his desk stands a library cart, fully loaded with old, shabby books. All have the same sodium-bleached label, glued onto the lower part of their spines—with a handwritten “Jc” or “Jb,” followed by a number. These are the books marked by the Talmudkommando in Theresienstadt, J being an abbreviation of “Judaica.”

  “The Nazis knew how important books were to the Jews. Reading makes you into a human being. When someone takes it away from you they also steal your thoughts. They wanted to destroy the Jews by robbing them of what was most important to them,” says Bušek, and looks at the cart. He is in the midst of an extensive process of checking the large collection of books that ended up at the Jewish Museum after the war, including some from Theresienstadt. “I look for signs of the owner of a book, ex libris, stamps, notes, and I enter these into a database that we are building.”

  The work is much like what is being done at the libraries in Germany. A horribly time-consuming process, each book having to be examined for signs of its previous owner. Sometimes it is easy, for instance if a book has an eye-catching ex libris with a full name. Sometimes there is a signature, a dedication, or a few lines written by someone who has once read the book. But this is an exception. Many of the books lack any kind of indication of previous owners. In some cases, names have been crossed out and bookplates scraped off.

  “The first step is entering any name and the number of the book. Next, you put in all the details about the book in the database, its title, publication year, and even photographs of the book. Eventually every book in the collection will have a detailed description,” Bušek tells me. He estimates that the first step will take about a year, while the second will take considerably longer. Hebrew text is also entered into the database, which has required a special software system, he explains, but a necessary one in view of the fact that many of the books, not least those from the Talmudkommando, are written in Hebrew. In this collection there are more owners’ marks, as several of the books come from important collections.

 
; That this work is only now being done, seventy years after the books were “liberated,” speaks volumes about the state of book restitution as a whole but also about the tragic fate that befell so many of the collections by the end of the war, stranded behind Soviet lines. The Jewish Museum in Prague is in fact one of the very few institutions behind what was once the Iron Curtain that is actively engaged in the project.

  After the war, in 1945, most of the collections from Theresienstadt were moved to the Jewish Museum in Prague. The museum, founded in 1906, had been taken over in 1939 by the Nazis, but was to some extent permitted to continue with some of its activities. During the war, the museum became a collection and sorting station for books and religious artifacts taken from deported Jewish communities. “Boxes of plundered objects from synagogues were sent here; they were cataloged and sorted by a group of Jewish researchers. The Jews and the Nazis did not have the same agenda. The Jews wanted to save these artifacts because they hoped the war would soon be over. The Nazis, on the other hand, wanted to create a Jewish museum where they could exhibit how odd and different the Jews were,” says Bušek.

  For a few years, the museum became a center of an extensive rescue operation of Jewish culture. The reward for the degrading work that had been done under the Nazis was that thousands of books and historical and religious objects had been saved for posterity. Many came from Jewish communities that no longer existed. The Jewish population, estimated at over 300,000 before the war, had been reduced to just a sixth of what it once was. Most died in the Holocaust; many others would never come back.1