On the Trail of Books Stolen by the Nazis

World Street Journal takes a look on books stolen from Jewish owners in Paris by the Nazis ended up in Minsk. Here’s how they got there—and whether they will ever return to France.
Françoise Basch still remembers her grandfather’s “massive” library at his home in the heart of Paris.Her grandfather, Victor Basch, a French Jewish intellectual and professor, loved his books, she recalls. But during World War II, the Nazis seized the entire collection after he fled Paris. Professor Basch and his wife were shot to death by members of the Vichy regime and the Gestapo in Lyon, where they had sought refuge. But some of his books recently surfaced in—of all places—Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

 

Françoise Basch, the granddaughter of Victor Basch, in 2015 in her Paris apartment, wondered about the looted volumes, ‘Why don’t those books come back to France?’

 

 

According to Holocaust experts, the Nazis stole tens of millions of books from Jews and other victims. Recently, scholars have focused on 1.2 million volumes the Nazis plundered—including 500,000 taken largely from French Jewish families and institutions. The books went from France to Germany to Silesia, where they were scooped up by the Red Army as spoils of war. The Nazis also looted art, grabbing paintings by Monet, Renoir, Picasso and others. This sparked a campaign in recent years to trace the works and return them to the owners or their heirs.

 

In 1945, the Soviets sent the books in 54 railcars to Minsk, where they have remained for 72 years, known to almost no one but a handful of researchers and professors. The mystery of how half a million French books ended up 1,300 miles from Paris in Minsk—and what to do with them—has captivated Holocaust scholars and historians.

 

Now, the curtain is being lifted on the books the Nazis stole in France. Many belonged to prominent Jews such as the Rothschilds and Professor Basch, along with other “enemies” of the Reich, including Communists and Freemasons. Experts say that most Hebrew books or volumes on Judaism went to Frankfurt. There, the Germans created a research institute “on the Jewish question.” When Frankfurt came under American control after the war, there were efforts to return the books. But most owners were dead, so the U.S. turned the volumes over to a Jewish organization which distributed them to America, Israel and elsewhere; these, in turn, placed them in libraries and other institutions.

 

A large quantity of books ended up in Soviet hands. These were mostly secular works that went to Berlin, instead, and included novels by Victor Hugo, Marcel Proust, Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre. There also were books on politics and philosophy, as well as volumes by Salvador Dalí and Marc Chagall. These were found after the war by the so-called Trophy Brigades of the Red Army—special divisions that picked up cultural property in occupied countries. The French books were stored alongside hundreds of thousands of volumes the Nazis plundered from Belarus. Some experts say that—and the fact that Belarus longed to replenish what they had lost—is why so many of the books ended up in Minsk.

 

Devastated by the war, the Soviets were in no mood for restitution. While they eventually gave back some cultural treasures, including some French archives, the books remained in Minsk and were barely discussed until the 1990s, after the fall of Communism. Only in recent years have there been serious efforts to track and document the books that ended up there. One problem that slows the quest: Books typically don’t have the material value or sizzle that great paintings do.

 

“In many cases, books are not unique,” says Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, senior research associate at Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute in Cambridge, Mass. “But,” she points out, “many of these are unique.”

 

Dr. Grimsted, who tracked the books’ journey from Paris to Minsk, says “they do have financial value—but not in the millions like the art.” 

The books would also have value to victims’ relatives, such as Ms. Basch, who was very attached to her grandfather, a historian who taught aesthetics at the Sorbonne. According to N--i records, a squad descended on Professor Basch’s Paris apartment in January 1941 and took 17 cases of books. The professor had already left and ended up in Lyon, where he and his wife were executed in 1944.

 

Ms. Basch, who is herself a historian, says she was moved to learn about her grandfather’s books. “I am terribly excited that his books are somewhere and within reach and I might someday look at them,” she says. “But there isn’t much time,” she added, “I am 87. I mean this is such a slow process and these books are in Minsk.”

 

“Why don’t those books come back to France?” she asked.

 

At the Journal’s request, five works belonging inscribed to Professor Basch, including a book about Leonardo da Vinci and one about the world economic crisis were found in Minsk. Those books, says his granddaughter, “belonged to a French citizen, to someone who was assassinated because he was French and a Jew. So, why aren’t they restituted to France or to his family?”

“Who knows?” she says, “I may set off to Minsk.”

 

A longer version of this report appeared on the WSJ.