The Lost Manuscripts of the Library for Jewish Studies in Warsaw

Abstract

Benjamin Richler It took the German SS three months to plunder the Library for Jewish Studies beside the Great Synagogue on Ttomackie St in Warsaw.1 They began hauling away its books and manuscripts on 23 October 1939 and eventually emptied the library of its contents on 22 December. To the best of my knowledge, none of the 40,000 printed books and 150 Hebrew manuscripts survived the war. The library had been established in 1879 when the building of the new progressive synagogue on 5 Ttomackie St was completed.2 Construction of the new synagogue and its modern library had been planned since i860 and took almost twenty years to complete. At first, the small Judaica library of about 2,500 volumes was housed in a room near the entrance to the synagogue. By 1884 the collection had grown to 2,850 titles of printed Hebraica bound in 3,800 volumes and close to 3,000 titles of non-Hebrew books. Its manuscripts numbered 22, many acquired for the library by Ignace Bernstein (1836-1909), a researcher and collector of Jewish folklore, and a patron of the institution. In 1893 Bernstein presented 19 valuable Hebrew manuscripts, many of them dating from as early as the fourteenth century, which he had purchased from Sussman Jabetz who had bought them in Jerusalem in 18 61. In 1898 he purchased another set of manuscripts from the Frankfurt bookseller J. Kauffmann.3 By the beginning of the twentieth century, the holdings of the library, now filling three cramped rooms, numbered around 15,000 volumes. It was obvious that new premises had to be found to house the collection and a decision was taken to