During the Second World War, the Nazis carried out violent attacks on Jewish cultural heritage, paying special attention to book collections in libraries, archives and other institutes. This... Show moreDuring the Second World War, the Nazis carried out violent attacks on Jewish cultural heritage, paying special attention to book collections in libraries, archives and other institutes. This destructive event is now sometimes referred to as the ‘Bibliocaust’. The plundering, destruction and dispersal of many private and public collections by the Nazis’ ideological brigade, Alfred Rosenberg’s ERR, shifts our perception of the Germans as anti-intellectual vandals: their aim was to preserve certain Jewish cultural artefacts to justify their extermination, and destroy the rest. Inspired by an essay on becoming a book collector written by the Jewish writer and culture critic Walter Benjamin, this article investigates what the term ‘collecting’ meant during this chaotic time, how books lost their meaning as a result of dispersal, and how their owners fought back against the destruction of their memory. Show less
