List of libraries damaged during World War II

This is a list of libraries damaged during World War II.
Austria.
When Hitler’s Germany started the Anschluss with Austria in 1938, one of the first casualties was the looting of the public and private libraries of Vienna.
Belarus.
Two hundred libraries in Belarus suffered damage during the war. T. Roschina calculated that 83 per cent of the libraries' collection were plundered, stolen or destroyed. 600,000 of those volumes were subsequently found in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland after the war, but a million other volumes, including rare and old printed volumes, have not been returned.
Belorussian libraries were plundered of 95% of their holding.
The “Smolensk holdings” of five hundred files of the Communist Party Archives ended up in the National Archives in Washington, DC, along with manuscripts of the Belarusian poet Vassily Koval. The papers of the Polish folklorist and ethnographer, Professor Józef Obrebski, ended up in the archives of the University of Massachusetts. The Khreptovitch Library was temporarily removed to Kyiv (Kiev) during the war. A Dutch Trophy collection was given to the Soviet Union and returned to the Netherlands. Part of the library collection of Petlura was returned to the Ukraine.
Belgium.
The Nazis assumed control over libraries and information. Concerning the confiscation of library books, one military order stated: “The Army groups and their designees may demand information from any person concerning economic data, supplies, consumption, storage, purchase and sale of goods, products and wares of every kind. They may demand books, papers, receipts, and samples be shown, and that anyone required to furnish information appear in person… Information shall be given free of charge.”
Some of the captured library loot was returned to Belgium by the US Government after the war. A photograph in the Offenbach Archival Depot records says in its caption, “1st cases of Belgium items being prepared for shipment. Inspected by Belgium Restitution officer, Lt. Raymond and Capt. Seymour Pomrenze.”
China.
“According to the statistics of 1936 compiled by the Chinese Libraries Association, on the eve of the Japanese invasion there were 4,747 libraries in all throughout China, including independent libraries, school libraries, institutional libraries and county and municipal libraries. But by 1943, however, following the Japanese invasion and occupation, the number of libraries declined to 940. Four-fifths of the libraries were either destroyed or looted. Before the war, there were approximately 25 million volumes housed in the various libraries, but after the war the number was reduced to 15 million volumes. 10 million volumes, or forty percent of the books, were lost in the intervening years… Although some 158,873 volumes have been returned to China in the intervening years, it constitutes 6 percent of the total number taken, i.e., 2,742,108 volumes. The major portion has not been returned.”
Many of the rare books looted by the Japanese from Chinese libraries were sold to collectors, according to Frederic D. Schultheis.
Czechoslovakia.
In 1935, there were 17,148 public, school and university libraries in Czechoslovakia, having a book stock of 8,528,744 volumes. Many of these items were confiscated by the Germans, especially any Czech books dealing with geography, biography or history. Works by any Czech writers were taken away, many burned, most others taken directly to the paper pulp mills. Special libraries were devastated, and suffered a loss of about 2,000,000 volumes.
“Czechoslovak Libraries after the Munich Pact… Soon afterwards all the Czech books dealing with geography, biography, and especially history disappeared… After being confiscated, many of these were burned, whole collections totally destroyed or taken away to Germany….”
Official notices of censorship and destruction of Czech nationalist and ethnic literature were given. A decree of the autumn of 1942 ordered all university libraries to hand over all early printed Czech works and first editions to the Germans. The collections in the National Museum were pillaged; and the Modern Art Gallery, containing a unique collection of Czech art of the 19th and 20th centuries with some precious specimens of foreign (mainly French) art, was closed. The entire political literature of the free republic, as well as the works of the participants in the Czech revival of the 18th and 19th centuries, were withdrawn. The books of Jewish authors were prohibited, as well as those of politically unreliable writers. The Germans withdrew the Czech classics, as well as the works of the 15th century reformer John Hus, of Alois Jirásek, the author of historical novels, the poet Victor Dyck, Karel Čapek, Vladislav Vančura and others. Thus the Hitlerites destroyed the national culture of the peoples of Czechoslovakia, plundered and pillaged works of art, literature, and science. It can be seen as gruesome precedence allowing communist regime, alongside with Soviet ocuppants post 1948 - 1968 respectively, to withhold parts of the seminal cultural heritage for generations.
Total losses of books, manuscripts and incunabula estimated at 2,000,000 volumes.
Germany.
About a third of books in German libraries were lost.
Hungary.
The library of the University of Kecskemét had 45,000 volumes destroyed, and another 30,000 in the social sciences destroyed as well.
“1944-1945 Hungary: Nearly all small libraries (public, special) were destroyed and many of the larger libraries suffered serious damage during the siege of Budapest. The libraries of Parliament and of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences were among the libraries most severely hit; the library of the Polytechnic Institute was completely destroyed.”
Russian soldiers confiscated books looted by the Germans, "...notably including those of the great Hungarian Jewish collectors..." and sent many of them back to Moscow, rather than leaving them in Hungary.
Italy.
Italian libraries suffered damage as a result of allied and German air raids. More than 20 Municipal libraries were destroyed and many public libraries suffered the same fate. It has been estimated that almost 2 million printed works and 39,000 manuscripts were destroyed.
About 2 million printed works and 39,000 manuscripts lost.
After the war, many of the major collections looted from Italy were identified by the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives service of the American military government and returned to their owners. The Collegio Rabbinico Italiano, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, and the Deutsche Historische Bibliothek Rom were all returned, although not all were intact, to their owners in Italy. “These last two collections were seized by Hitler with the idea of re-establishing them in Germany.”
There is a photograph in the National Archives and Records Administration showing the unloading of some of these re-captured books. The caption reads: “The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Library, is being unloaded at the Offenbach Archival Depot 9 July 1945. Three freight cars, 578 cases of books and catalogs of paintings, were brought from the Heilbronn salt mine in Württemburg-Baden where they were kept since brought from Italy.”
Japan.
1942-1945 Japan: Air raids did heavy damage to libraries and collections, including the Cabinet Library in Tokyo.
The heaviest damage was sustained by governmental libraries. Over 655,000 volumes in the Tokyo area were destroyed, including those of the cabinet Library (46,695 volumes), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (40,000 volumes), the Transportation Ministry (69,000 volumes), the Bureau of Patents and Standards (15,528 volumes) and the Finance Ministry (manuscripts and catalogs). The entire library of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries was lost. Whether directly or indirectly related to the damages of war, total book resources in Japanese libraries were cut by 50%, and when the Occupation forces arrived in 1945 there were probably fewer than five million books in the country.
“In Japan, as in Germany, human and cultural destruction (including the loss of texts) were, of course, paired. Figures are hard to come by, but by the end of the war, bombing had accounted either directly or indirectly for the destruction of 50 percent of the total book resources in Japanese libraries. When the occupation troops arrived in 1945, there were probably fewer than five million books in the country. Three quarters of all public libraries suffered heavy damage, with 400,000 volumes in public library collections lost in a bombing raid on Tokyo alone. Heavy damage was sustained by government libraries; more than 655,000 volumes of the Tokyo area were burned, including libraries of the Cabinet, Bureau of Patents and Standards, and Finance Ministry.”
Nearly three-fourths of all public libraries, a third of which were located in the Tokyo metropolitan area, suffered serious damage. Tokyo’s largest, the Hibiya Public Library, sustained the greatest losses, estimated to be about half the entire 400,000 public library collections destroyed by bombing raids over Tokyo.
Latvia.
Latvia was occupied by the Soviets from 1944 to 1991. What records remained after the defeat of the Germans were either removed to Russia or destroyed by intent or neglect. In Latvia, Holocaust scholarship could only be resumed once Soviet rule had ended. Much of the post-1991 work was devoted to identification of the victims. This was complicated by the passage of time and the loss of some records and the concealment of others by the NKVD and its successor agencies of the Soviet secret police.
Lithuania.
“Political upheavals have often created a frustrating situation for librarians and citizens in general. Consider the case of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which in 1918 had regained their independence after centuries of Russian occupation? As a result of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1940, they were once more occupied by Russian troops and in 1940 bookstores and libraries were 'cleansed' and unwelcome titles were burned. In 1941 Nazi Germany conquered these countries, only to be driven out once more by the Soviet army in 1944-1945. These succeeding regimes brought not only an appalling waste of human lives, but also rapidly alternating prohibitions of books, purging of libraries and the rewriting of history and textbooks.”
In Lituania, all universities and public libraries have been closed, and Gestapo agents removed or destroyed the equipment of the scientific institutions and books of the national libraries. The Academy of Arts was ransacked, and in Kaunas, the archives of the Academies of Science and Music were destroyed. Over 10,000 volumes were stolen from the State Library, and 23,000 more were stolen from the University Library. In part, this was in reprisal for the country’s steadfast refusal to create a legion of Lithuanian volunteers to fight against the Russians.
In Vilna (Vilnius, Vilno, Wilno, etc) the ERR set up a collecting point for Lithuania. Dr. Gotthard of the Berlin headquarters arrived in August 1941, and began looting the Strashun Library. He conscripted the labor of two Gestapo prisoners, including A.Y. Goldschmidt, librarian of the Hispanic-Ethnographic Society. Eventually, he committed suicide rather than assist the looting of the libraries. Dr. Johannes Pohl appeared in January 1942, and ordered that the city be made a collecting point for the region, and concentrated at the Yidisher Visenshaftlikker Institut (Institute for Jewish Research). Materials were brought in from the private collections from Kovno, Shavle, Mariapol, Volozhn and other towns, and included books from over 300 synagogues and personal libraries. Some of the Jewish workers were able to smuggle out and hide some of the most valuable books in the ghetto, which was stopped when the ghetto was liquidated in July 1943. The accumulated collection of over 100,000 volumes were separated into piles by century of publication, and about 20,000 were selected for shipment to Germany. The remaining materials were pulped to avoid storage and transportation costs, and to make a small profit. One incident involved an assistant of Dr. Pohl dumping out five cases of rare books in order to make room for an illegal shipment of hogs.
"On 24 June 1941, the Nazis captured Vilna. In March 1942, representatives of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg (Rosenberg Operation Group), the body charged with looting Jewish cultural property for the Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage (Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question) in Frankfurt, established a sorting center in the YIVO building. Workers were forced to select the most valuable objects from the collections of YIVO and other local Jewish institutions to be sent to Frankfurt, while the remaining items would be destroyed...
A group that was dubbed the “paper brigade” led by Avrom Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginski, risked their lives daily by hiding material in the building’s attic or smuggling it into the Vilna ghetto, where they buried it or gave it to non-Jewish contacts for safekeeping. Since it was located outside the ghetto, the YIVO headquarters also served as a transit point for smuggled weapons for the Jewish partisan movement. Such activity continued until the liquidation of the Vilna ghetto in September 1943. Some of the hiding places went undiscovered and the items stored there survived the war, but the YIVO headquarters and its contents were completely destroyed.
“He [Captain Seymour Pomrenze] was instrumental in the restitution of thousands of looted archives, including those of the Strashun Library in Vilna, Lithuania. The library was the premier Jewish library in Europe before World War II, and luckily survived the Nazi destruction of Vilna. The contents of the library, along with those of the YIVO building in Vilna, were looted for eventual placement in the anti-Semitic “Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question.” Pomrenze oversaw the return of tens of thousands of items from the Strashun Library to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research headquarters in New York.”
“In 1954 a depot of 330,000 confiscated books was discovered in the building of a former bank in Vienna. This depot contained also books from Tanzenberg and there was found a part of the library of the famous YIVO in Vilna. With the help of an Austrian-Jewish lawyer called Friedrich Weihsenstein they were returned to the YIVO in New York. The librarian of the IKG wrote lists of the books, but none of the documents mention their numbers and the YIVO in New York was not very cooperative regarding the research.”
Luxembourg.
In Luxembourg, all citizens engaged in “culture” had to register with the German government. This would help in the suppression of dissent, and enforce official censorship. In the “Duty of Registration for All Persons Engaged in Creating or Transmitting Cultural Values in Luxemburg (Verordnungsblatt, No. 15, February 21, 1941, page 109)”, all writers, authors, publishers, art publishers, copyists and book dealers had to register. Those who refused to register with the occupation government, would be forbidden to practice their arts in the future.
“In Luxembourg, non-German reference materials, i.e., French or English were confiscated and replaced by German encyclopaedias. In fact, after 1940, there was an attempt to eliminate all English and French books from collections in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. It was an attempt to seal off occupied countries from the intellectual currents of democracy.”
Malayan Union/Malaysia.
“…the Japanese looted very thoroughly the head office at Batu Gajah: they removed all the scientific equipment and took away or broke about 5,000 rock slices. Fortunately the rock and mineral collections and the library and records did not fare so badly: eventually they tried to burn down the building, but this was prevented by the Asiatic staff. The district office also suffered badly. A serious loss was the disappearance of a memoir and map ready for publication, as well as all the relevant notes, so a good deal of the country will have to be re-mapped.”
The Penang Library had its main collection in English, but also had some materials in indigenous languages. When the Japanese Army entered the city, they looted the library, yet they left behind enough materials for the library to continue operations. After the takeover, the library continued to have over 1,000 subscribers and remained open for their patrons until June 1944.
Malta.
The Malta Royal Library building was slightly damaged by aerial bombardment during the siege of Malta but no books were lost.
The building which housed the Notarial Archives received two direct hits from aerial bombardment in April 1942, and about 2,000 volumes of notarial records were destroyed or damaged. Some documents were later stored in the basement of Auberge d'Italie, where many were also damaged.
Netherlands.
“…the library of the Spinoza House, the Dutch Scientific Humanitarian Commission, the International Archives of the Women’s Movement, the Portuguese-Israelitic Seminary Ets Haim, the Beth Hamidrash Library, the library of the Nederlandsch-Israelitic Seminary, the Valkenburg Monastery Library the Dutch Economic and Historical Archives fell into the occupier’s hands. In October and November 1943 it was the turn of the Amsterdam Ashkenazi archive and of several smaller Jewish archives in the provinces. The high point was of course the famous library of about 160,000 volumes of the International Institute for Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam, which was confiscated within two months of the invasion.”
“The Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg (ERR), established by Alfred Rosenberg in 1939, was represented in the Netherlands by an Amsterdam office. In 1940, the ERR confiscated all property belonging to the Freemasons, among which was the famous Biblioteca Klossiana. This library had been bought by Prince Hendrik (1876-1934), husband of Queen Wilhelmina, and had been presented by him to the order of Freemasons. It contained important incunabula and books on the occult, which were not available anywhere else in the Netherlands. Other parts of the library and the order’s archive were of importance as well. The library of the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam was closed, and the ERR took over the building for its offices. In July 1940 the institute’s very important collection of newspapers and the library of approximately 160,000 volumes were confiscated. German arguments over their final destination kept the materials in Amsterdam until the winter of 1944, when they were transported to Germany in eleven ships. The International Archives of the Women’s Movement, established in Amsterdam in 1935, lost its whole collection after the institute was closed by the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) in June 1940. In August 1942, 499 crates containing books and archives taken from, among others, Jewish antiquarian book dealers and theosophical societies were transported to Berlin.”
“In Holland [sic] the monks of the Abbey van Berne distributed the early printed books on the monastic library among neighboring farmhouses. Virtually all were destroyed by natural causes, by theft, and by shellfire. The Abbey buildings are intact.”
“Sigmund Seeligmann (1873–1940) was a renowned Dutch bibliographer and historian. He often invited scholars to use his extensive private library, which included more than 18,000 books on Jewish subjects and was considered one of the most important Jewish libraries in Europe before World War II. After the invasion of the Netherlands, the Nazis confiscated Seeligmann’s library in October 1941. His collection was sent to Berlin, where it became part of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt Library. In 1945, Seeligmann’s library was discovered in Czechoslovakia. At the time, Nazi-looted Jewish cultural property was being uncovered in salt mines, bunkers, and castles across Europe. Often the recovered objects were the only surviving elements of the Jewish communities they once had served. Salvaging and preserving these cultural treasures became a high priority for Jewish organizations.”
“The collections as well as the libraries of the International Institute for Social History at Amsterdam have been closed down. The library, which has about 150,000 volumes, as well as a very important collection of newspapers, has been taken to Germany. The Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana of the University of Amsterdam, which belongs to the city, has been packed in 153 crates and has also been taken to Germany. Famous collections concerning natural history of the College of St. Ignace at Valkenburg and the Museum of Natural History at Maastricht have also been taken to Germany, as well as the library which belonged to it. In 1940 all the property of the Freemasonry Lodges was confiscated and taken away to Germany. It included the well-known Klossiana Library.”
The German authorities were especially interested in manuscripts of German and Dutch mysticism. Libraries and antiquarian bookstores were combed for special manuscripts of ancient lore. A special search by Dr. W. Grothe and F. Brethauer of the ERR was begun in August 1941. The Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden and Groningen university libraries were searched for manuscripts. Also combed were the Haarlem and Nijmegen municipal libraries, as well as the Fries Genootschap, the Meermanno-Westreenaianum in the Hague, the Nijmegen Municipal Museum and the Haarlem Bishop’s Archive. Many manuscripts were taken and then later “exchanged” for manuscripts from German and Austrian libraries. If the manuscripts could not be exchanged or purchased, they were copied. The exchanges were sometimes advantageous for the Dutch, but the balance weighed in favor of the Germans, and many times were not unlike forced sales. Although with a legal appearance.
The German efficiency in selecting and removing these volumes from the occupied countries and sending them back to German is astounding. Also astounding is that many of the major collections remained more or less intact, and were recovered by the Allies at the end of the war. German libraries had preserved many of these Dutch collections as well as their own. As such, much of the Biblioteca Rosenthaliana, the library of the Jewish Portuguese Seminarium of Amsterdam, the books of the Societas Spinozana, the collections of the Freemasonic Groot Orde der Nederlanden, the volumes of the Etz Chaim Seminarium, and twenty Sifre Toroth (plural of Torah) were returned to their country from the Offenbach Archival Depot.
Poland.
Most of the Polish libraries were damaged and suffered losses by German occupation, especially prominent was the destruction of libraries in Warsaw who saw continued bombing by the Germans. Poland faced especially great loses during the early years of the war as the Germans focused on "outright destruction of Jewish books and religious artifacts". The German's created "Bremn-Komman-dos" (arson squads) with their main focus being on burning Jewish synagogues and their libraries. What little did survive during the initial bombing and shelling was confiscated during the occupation and transported to Berlin so the German's could study the "Jewish Question."
When Polish librarians made a report to the International Federation of Librarians Association after the war, they stated that in 1939 there were 22,500,000 volumes in Polish libraries. By the end of the war a total of 15,000,000 of those had been burned, destroyed, or confiscated. This number is believed to be conservative, as it does not account for private collections which would have been destroyed or looted as Jewish families were deported. 
Around 15 million volumes were lost of a total 22.5 million volumes available.
Serbia.
In April 1941, the National Library of Serbia in Belgrade was completely burned and destroyed as a result of German bombs.
The official German document which refers to the bombing of Belgrade, presented in a postwar trial, says that the National Library of Serbia had been marked as one of the first targets of the Nazi bombing of Belgrade in 1941. In the first investigative statement given to the officers of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia in mid-May 1945 in Kupinec near Zagreb, German General Alexander Löhr said that Adolf Hitler personally ordered the complete destruction of Belgrade. Said Löhr:
When asked why National Library, he replied: 
The library fund on that April 6th, 1941.
United Kingdom.
England also lost her share of books destroyed during the war. Some 54,000 children’s books went up in flames during the bombing of England, and thousands of special collections housed in the libraries are gone forever. Of the 1,145,500 books destroyed in the ruins of the bombed libraries, 982,000 were in city libraries; 155,813 belonged to university libraries, and the rest in county libraries.