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Roads to Ratibor: Library and Archival Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg*
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
Scholarship has not adequately studied the history of Nazi cultural plunder during the Second World War, or the further international displacement and restitution efforts thereafter. The present study discusses one of the primary agencies of plunder, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). It focuses on the plunder of libraries and archives, tracing their migration, revealing new sources, and identifying collections that did not return home after the war. Emphasis falls on materials that ended the war in the little-known ERR research and library center in Ratibor (now Polish Racibórz), to which the Germans transported more than two million books.
* Editorial Note: This article parallels the author’s piece "Twice Plundered or ‘Twice Saved’? Identifying Russia’s ‘Trophy’ Archives and the Loot of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt" in the Fall 2001 number of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. The postwar fate of cultural treasures plundered by the ERR will receive further treatment in a future article in this journal.
A list of abbreviations follows the text. Citations to Soviet-area archives give fond (record group)/ opis’ (inventory within fond)/and delo (or file) numbers. In Soviet and Russian practice a "fond" designates an integral group of records or a collection from a single office or source, or papers of an individual or family. Transliteration from the Cyrillic herein generally follows Library of Congress practice. Ukrainian place names are rendered according to current Ukrainian usage.
1. See Lynn Nicholas’s prize-winning The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York: Knopf, 1994; several translations published); and less well-documented Francine-Dominique Liechtenhan and Alija I. Barkovets (then deputy director of GA RF), Le Grand Pillage: Du butin des nazis aux trophées des Soviétiques (Rennes: Éditions Ouest-France, 1998). Jonathan Petropoulos concentrates on policy issues and art collectors: Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
2. See Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov’s (with Sylvia Hochfield) Beautiful Loot: The Soviet Plunder of Europe’s Art Treasures (New York: Random House, 1995; British edition: Hidden Treasures); findings appeared earlier: "Spoils of War: The Soviet Union’s Hidden Art Treasures." ARTNews (April 1991): 30–41; and "The Soviets’ War Treasures: A Growing Controversy," ARTNews (September 1991): 112–19. For context of Stalinist reparations policy, see Pavel Knyshevskii, Dobycha: Tainy germanskikh reparatsii (Moscow: Soratnik, 1992, also available in German edition). See also impressive volume from 1995 conference in New York, The Spoils of War: World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property, ed. Elizabeth Simpson (New York: Abrams, 1997).
3. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, "The Road to Minsk for Western Trophy Books," Libraries and Culture 30, no. 4 (Fall 2004), 351–404.
4. See Grimsted, "Twice Plundered or ‘Twice Saved’? Identifying Russia’s ‘Trophy’ Archives and the Loot of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 191–244. See the updated Russian version, "Dvazhdy zakhvachennye ili ‘dvazhdy spasennye’? Rozysk rossiiskikh ‘trofeinykh’ arkhivov i dobycha Glavnogo upravleniia imperskoi bezopasnosti," Sotsial’naia istoriia. Ezhegodnik 2004 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2005): pp. 401–55.
5. See the collection of essays Return from Russia: Nazi Archival Plunder in Western Europe and Recent Restitution, ed. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted and F.J. Hoogewoud (Leicester: Institute of Art and Law, forthcoming 2005).
6. I first discussed Ratibor in "The Fate of Ukrainian Cultural Treasures during World War II: Archives, Libraries, and Museums under the Third Reich," Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 39, no. 1 (1991): 66–69. I devoted a brief introduction to Ratibor in The Odyssey of the "Smolensk Archive": Plundered Communist Records for the Service of Anti–Communism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, Carl Beck Occasional Papers, 1995), esp. pp. 16–18; and in my more focused "New Clues Regarding Nazi Archival and Library Plunder: The ERR Ratibor Center and the RSHA VII Amt Operations in Silesia," in The Return of Looted Collections (1946–1996). An Unfinished Chapter: Proceedings of an International Symposium to Mark the 50th Anniversary of the Return of Dutch Collections from Germany, ed. F.J. Hoogewoud, E.P. Kwaadgras et al. (Amsterdam: IISH, 1997), pp. 52–67. See my Trophies of War and Empire: The Archival Heritage of Ukraine, World War II, and the International Politics of Restitution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), esp. ch. 5.
7. OSS, Art Looting Investigatory Unit, Consolidated Interrogation Report no. 1 (J.S. Plaut): "Activity of the ERR in France" (15 August 1945), mimeographed, p. 2; several copies in National Archives, College Park (NACP), e.g., RG 239 (Roberts Commission)/85 and RG 260 (OMGUS), Ardelia Hall Collection (AHC), in the NARA Microfilm Publication M1782, roll 1—OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit Reports. Another copy resides in the Public Record Office (PRO), T209/29, available electronically on the website of Central Registry of Information on Looted Cultural Property, 1933–1945: http://www.lootedart.com/International/International%20Bodies%20and%20Reports/Orcid_GSF_38002_4627314815.asp
8. The most extensive study to date of the ERR plunder of Western European libraries is Donald E. Collins and Herbert P. Rothfeder, "The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg and the Looting of Jewish and Masonic Libraries during World War II," Journal of Library History 18 (Winter 1983): 21–36, written, however, before the opening of ERR records in Kyiv and Moscow, and before re-appraisal of related surviving sources. Also true of Rothfeder’s dissertation, "A Study of Alfred Rosenberg’s Organization for Nationalist Socialist Ideology" (University of Michigan, 1963). See also Joshua Starr, "Jewish Cultural Property under Nazi Control," Jewish Social Studies 12 (January 1950): 32–45; and Leslie I. Poste "Books Go Home from the Wars," Library Journal 73, no. 21 (December 1948): 1699–704.
9. An English translation of Rosenberg’s Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts was first published in 1952 and reissued in 1982 by a revisionist press. Michael Kellogg relates Rosenberg to the Aufbau Circle in The Russian Roots of Nazism: The Influence of White Émigrés on the Making of National Socialism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Among studies see Robert Cecil’s well-informed The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology (London: B. T. Batsford, 1972).
10. Regarding Rosenberg’s intellectual background and activities as Beauftragter des Führers (DBFU) see Reinhard Bollmus, Das Amt Rosenberg und seine Gegner: Studien zum Machtkampf im Nationalsozialistichen Herrschaftssystem (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1970); and Rothfeder’s dissertation. See also Max Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes against the Jewish People (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), esp. pp. 22–27. See early biography and register of documents by Joseph Billig, Alfred Rosenberg dans l’action idéologique, politique et administrative du Reich hitlérien: Inventaire commenté de la collection de documents conservés au C.D.J.C. provenant des archives du Reichsleiter et Ministre A. Rosenberg (Paris: Éditions du Centre, 1963=Les inventaires des archives du CDJC, Paris, vol. 1).
11. The ERR designation was initially typed "Einsatzstab der Dienststellen des Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die westlichen besetzten Gebiete u.d. Niederlande." A round stamp was in being by September 1940. Numerous examples are in Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfeld (BAB), NS 8/259, starting with the order "Bestätigung" of 15 July 1940, where the name is explained. By June 1941 the name had dropped the "westlichen."
12. Georg Leibbrandt (1899–1982) was born in Torosovo (German Hoffnungsfeld, Odessa Oblast). With a doctorate from Leipzig University, he studied in Paris and the U.S. before 1933, and had worked with Karl Stumpp at the Deutsche Ausland-Institut in Stuttgart.
13. On Sammlung Leibbrandt see Gabriele Camphausen, Die wissenschaftliche historische Russlandforschung im Dritten Reich 1933–1945 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1990), pp. 213–24; this study does not detail archival plunder from Odessa and other areas, particularly that involving records of German communities. Leibbrandt’s associate in the Stuttgart-based Deutsches Ausland Institut, Karl Stumpp (1896–1982), headed a special commando in Ukraine (Sonderkommando Stumpp) during the war, intersecting with the ERR although under the RMbO. See Eric J. Schmaltz and Samuel D. Sinner, "The Nazi Ethnographic Research of Georg Leibbrandt and Karl Stumpp in Ukraine, and Its North American Legacy," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 14, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 28–64; revised version in German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing, 1920–1945, ed. Michael Fahlbusch and Ingo Haar (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004). Many Stumpp reports remain in TsDAVO, BAB, and microfilm at the Library of Congress.
14. Alfred Rosenberg, Pest in Russland! Der Bolschewismus, seine Häupter, Handlanger und Opfer (Munich: Deutscher Volksverlag, 1922); condensed edition by Georg Leibbrandt: Munich: F. Eher, 1937.
15. Georg Leibbrandt, Jüdische weltpolitik in selbstzeugnissen, intro. Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg (Munich: F. Eher, 1938); Moskaus aufmarsch gegen Europa (Munich: F. Eher, 1938 and 1939).
16. Europas Schicksal im Osten: 12 Vorträge der vierten Reichsarbeitstagung der Dienststelle für Schrifttumspflege bei dem Beauftragten des Führers für die gesamte geistige und weltanschauliche Erziehung der NSDAP und der Reichsstelle zur Förderung des deutschen Schrifttums, ed. Hans Hagemeyer with Dr. G. Leibbrandt and Dr. B. Payr (Breslau: F. Hirt, 1938 and 1939). Rosenberg’s contribution appears first ("Deutschland als Bollwerk im europäischen Osten: Weihespiel des Arbeitsdienstes"), and Leibbrandt’s appears second ("Der bolschewistische Aufmarsch des Ostens gegen Europa und die Welt"). Cf. Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors, pp. 75–78.
17. See instruction from Hitler’s assistant Martin Bormann to Rosenberg in the Rosenberg collection in CDJC, CXLIII–258.
18. "Testimony of Alfred Rosenberg, taken at Nurnberg, Germany" (29 September 1945). "Reason for Harsh Treatment of Eastern Peoples," in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression / Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality (Washington: U.S. GPO, 1946), vol. 2, p. 1347.
19. See Grimsted, "Twice Plundered, but Still Not Home from the War: The Fate of Three Slavic Libraries Confiscated by the Nazis from Paris," Solanus 16 (2002): 39–76; updated in Polish: "Dwukrotnie zrabowane i nadal z dala od ojczyzny: Losy trzech bibliotek s
owia
skich przej
tych przez nazistów w Pary
u," Archeion 106 (2003 [2005]): 47–84.
20. Quoted from the English translation of the extensive text of Rosenberg interrogations (26 September 1945), Imperial War Museum, FO 645, box 160, p. 16.
21. The exact date of the formation of the ERR is not established, but letters exchanged with Hitler’s secretary Martin Borman and with Ebert in Paris sketched arrangements—which is why Ebert is often credited with the idea of an "Einsatzstab." No date is established in Rosenberg’s Nuremberg interrogation, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 2, pp. 1333–37.
22. The order was conveyed by Minister of Foreign Affairs von Ribbentrop through General Keitel, Chief of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) to General von Böchelberg, Commandant of the Military Command in France (MVF—Militärverwaltung in Frankreich). Petropoulos offers an analysis of ERR looting in the West and Rosenberg’s alliance with Göring in Art as Politics; see his later The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). See also relevant chapters in Nicholas, The Rape of Europa. Anja Heuss compares plunder in France and the Soviet Union in Kunst- und Kulturgutraub: Eine vergleichende Studie zur Besatzungspolitik der Nationalsozialisten in Frankreich und der Sowjetunion (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2000).
23. Göring memorandum to Hitler (Berlin, 1 June 1941); a French translation appears in Jean Cassou, ed., Le pillage par les Allemands des oeuvres d’art et des bibliothèques appartenant à des juifs en France: Recueil de documents (Paris: CDJC, 1947), p. 90. The same point is reiterated in Hitler’s order (Führererlass) dated 1 March 1942, ibid., pp. 96–97.
24. See Bollmus, Das Amt Rosenberg.
25. Gerhard Utikal (1912–19??) was born in Silesia, joined the Nazis in 1931 (Personalkarte in Berlin Document Center file, BAB, 1190001728), and worked in the Rosenberg Dienststelle from 1937. His antisemitic tract Der jüdische Ritualmord: Eine nichtjüdische Klarstellung (Breslau: H.W. Pötsch, 1935) appeared in several editions. Gerard Aalders describes Utikal’s 1941 pamphlet justifying confiscation of Jewish property in Nazi Looting: The Plunder of Dutch Jewry during the Second World War, trans. Arnold Pomerans with Erica Pomerans (Oxford, New York: Berg, 2004); originally Roof: De ontvreemding van joods bezit tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (The Hague: SDU, 1999), pp. 49–50.
26. Billig, Alfred Rosenberg, discusses the ERR (pp. 123–51), referring to documents in CDJC. See also OSS, Consolidated Interrogation Report, no. 1: "Activity of the ERR in France"; attachment no. 10 lists major Jewish art collections confiscated in Paris with ERR codes. Supplemental secret British MFA&A report ("The ‘Einstazstab Rosenberg’") in PRO, T209/26.
27. On ERR Belgian operations see Jacques Lust and Michel Vermote, "‘Papieren Bitte!’ The Confiscation and Restitution of Belgian Archives and Libraries (1940–2002)," in Grimsted and Hoogewoud, Return from Russia. Lust draws on his earlier De Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg en de bibliotheekroof in België (1940–1943) (Brussels: Werknota Studiecommissie Joodse goederen, 2000).
28. On the Netherlands see Aalders, Nazi Looting; and also Peter Manasse, Verschleppte Archive und Bibliotheken: Die Tätigkeiten des Einsatzstabes Rosenberg während des Zweiten Weltkrieges, trans. Georg A. Pippig (St. Ingbert: Rührig Universitätsverlag, 1997), originally Verdwenen archieven en bibliotheken (The Hague, NBLC Uitgeverij 1995).
29. Willem de Vries, Sonderstab Musik: Music Confiscations by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg under the Nazi Occupation of Western Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996) brings together considerable documentation on the ERR special commandos in the West, one of the first studies to show the significance of Ratibor. See also de Vries’s, "Rosenberg’s Music Theft Apparatus" (pp. 26–32), and my report at same conference, "New Clues Regarding Nazi Archival and Library Plunder," in The Return of Looted Collections, pp. 52–60 and 65–66.
30. On Belgium see Jacques Lust and Michel Vermote, "‘Papieren Bitte!’" The authors quote additional Dutch sources on M-Aktion. See also summary by Johanna Pezechkian, "La Möbelaktion (1940–1963)": http://www.combuysse.fgov.be/mobelaktion.html#topwet (Brussels, 4 September 2000). Aalders devotes a chapter to M-Aktion, explaining that although Dienststelle Weste was in charge in the Netherlands, it actually operated under the ERR-HAG Niederland; Nazi Loot, pp. 203–9. The International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam is currently digitizing voluminous M-Aktion records held in the Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (NIOD) for their website: see http://www.joodsmonument.nl/article.php?thg_id=1005.72&lang=en (English and Dutch).
31. Peter Wörmke to Karl Brethauer (Paris, 17 June 1942), TsDAVO, 3676/1/172, fols. 249–252; and "Die Buch- und Zeitschriftenbestände in Paris, 45, rue la Bruyère," signed Wörmke (Paris, 4 July 1942), Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv derzhavnoi vlady Ukraïna (TsDAVO), 3676/1/172, fols. 241–241v. On the AIU library and archives see Jean-Claude Kuperminc, "Looted French Jewish Archives: The Case of the Library and Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle," in Grimsted and Hoogewoud, Return from Russia.
32. Aalders, Nazi Looting, pp. 207–8.
33. Rosenberg’s order to Reich Commissar Ostland (20 August 1941) was entered in evidence at Nuremberg: Exhibit USA–385 (1015c–PS), Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945–1 October 1946 (Nuremberg, 1947–1949), Documents in Evidence, vol. 26, pp. 530–31.
34. Biblioteky Kyiva v period natsists’koï okupatsiï (1941–1943): Doslidzhennia. Anotovanyi pokazhchyk. Publikatsiï dokumentiv, comp. L. A. Dubrovina and N. I. Malolietova; ed. O. S. Onyshchenko, H. V. Boriak, L. A. Dubrovina, et al. (Kyiv: NBUV; Derzhkomarkhiv, 2004) series "Biblioteky Ukrainy pid chas Druhoï svitovoi viiny"). See esp. the introduction by Boriak and Dubrovina, and Tetiana Sebta on the organization of the ERR in Ukraine (pp. 114–48).
35. Margarita S. Zinich, Pokhishchennye sokrovishcha: Vyvoz natsistami rossiiskikh kul’turnykh tsennostei (Moscow: Institut Rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 2003). See also her "Deiatel’nost’ Operativnogo shtaba A. Rozenberga po vyvozu kul’turnykh tsennostei iz SSSR," Otechestvennaia istoriia 4 (1999).
36. Mikhail A. Boitsovyi and Tat’iana A. Vasil’eva, eds. and comps., Kartoteka "Z" Operativnogo shtaba "Reikhsliaiter Rozenberg": Tsennosti kul’tury na okkupirovannykh territoriiakh Rossii, Ukrainy i Belorossii, 1941–1942 (Moscow: Izd-vo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1998).
37. The ca. 300 registration cards for the Baltic countries (not included in Moscow publication of Kartoteka "Z") remain in the ERR collection in RGVA, fond 1401k, file 75. Approximately 150 ERR cards from Lithuania (and a few from Estonia) remain in Vilnius, LCVA, fond 633, files 3 and 24.
38. Discussion in Grimsted, Trophies of War and Empire, ch. 5.
39. Decree of the Führer (Führererlass) (1 March 1942; 149–PS; Exhibit USA–369) to all offices of the Wehrmacht, the Party, and the State, Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 25, p. 235. English translation in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 2, pp. 190–91. Russian translation in Prestupnye tseli—prestupnye sredstva: Dokumenty ob okkupatsionnoi politike fashistskoi Germanii na teritorii SSSR (1941–1944 gg.) (Moscow, 1963), p. 255. Copies in many other German files, e.g. TsDAVO, 3206/5/4.
40. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 2, p. 1338.
41. Winter (1895–1961) served as first president of Bundesarchiv in Koblenz (BAK) after the war. Brief mention of Winter’s administration first appeared in Grimsted, "The Fate of Ukrainian Cultural Treasures during World War II," pp. 56–57; remaining records of LV ABM now constitute opys 5 of the Reichskomissariat Ukraine (RKU) records in TsDAVO (Kyiv), fond 3206, recovered by Ukrainian archivists in Opava after the war. See details in Liubov A. Dubrovina and Nina I. Malolietova, "Fond ‘Reikhkomisara Ukraïny (1941–1944)’ u TsDAVO Ukraïny: Ohliad dokumentiv z istoriï bibliotek periodu natsists’koï okupatsiï Kyiva," in Arkhivoznavstvo. Arkheografiia. Dzhereloznavstvo: Mizhvidomchyi zbirnyk naukovykh prats’, vol. 4: Studiï na poshanu Ruslana Pyroha, ed. H. V. Boriak et al. (Kyiv,2001), pp. 408–27. See also Maryna H. Dubyk, "Skhema sprav Kraiovoho upravlinnia arkhivamy, bibliotekamy ta muzeiamy pri Reikhskomisariati Ukraïny (1944 r.)," Arkhivy Ukraïny 1–3 (1995): 35–37.
42. Mentioned in a Rosenberg communication to the RKU regarding "Sicherstellung von Kulturgütern in den besetzten Ostgebieten" (3 October 1941), BAB, NS 8/259.
43. Grimsted, "Twice Plundered or ‘Twice Saved’?"
44. A file of fourteen original SD reports of seizures from Russian émigrés in Paris is in the RSHA records in Moscow (most dated 21 March 1941, RGVA, 500k/2/221a), including slips for Miliukov (fol. 10) and for the newspaper he edited, Poslednye novosti (fol. 5). Another report in same file (fol. 8) confirms confiscation from Mikhail Osorgin (Ossorguine). On seizure of the Miliukov papers in 1945 by Soviet authorities in Silesia see Grimsted, "Twice Plundered or ‘Twice Saved’?," pp. 211 and 237–38.
45. See Grimsted, "The Odyssey of the Petliura Library and the Records of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) during World War II," [part 1] Harvard Ukrainian Studies 22 (1999) [=Cultures and Nations of Central and Eastern Europe: Essays in Honor of Roman Szporluk, ed. Zvi Gitelman et al.], pp. 185–87.
46. Michael Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 228–30, based on records of that agency now in BAB, R153. See new details about the Polish Library in Grimsted, "The Fate of Three Slavic Libraries," and esp. the updated Polish translation, op. cit.
47. See details in Grimsted, Odyssey of the "Smolensk Archive,"pp. 20–23, 25–32, updated in The Return of the Smolensk Archive, ed. Marianna Tax Choldin, Ekaterina Genieva, and Patricia Kennedy Grimsted (Moscow: ROSSPEN, forthcoming 2005).
48. See attachment no. 10 to OSS, Consolidated Interrogation Report, no. 1: "Activity of the ERR in France" (15 August 1945), op. cit. Cf. "List of Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) Codes" for French collections in The AAM Guide to Provenance Research, comp. Nancy H. Yeide, Konstantin Akinsha, and Amy L. Walsh (Washington: American Association of Museums, 2001), pp. 299–304 (Appendix K).
49. NARA Microfilm Publication—M1943 (38 rolls): Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) Card File and Related Photographs 1940–1945, Records of U.S. Occupation Headquarters, World War II (RG 260) (Washington: NARA, 2003), including ca. 21,000 art registration cards and 10,000 photographs prepared at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. Since cards are coded by provenance, the list of collections appears in the finding aid (Appendix I), ed. Greg Bradsher and Tim Mulligan. A database planned by the Conference on Material Claims against Germany in New York should eventually link coverage to other sources and additional cards and images in BAK.
50. The AAM Guide to Provenance Research, pp. 58–103.
51. See Grimsted, "The Road to Minsk," esp. pp. 364–69. Further details will appear in a research note in this journal.
52. A photocopy of the March list by ERR-HAG Frankreich, "Gesamtaufstellung der bisher vom Arbeitsgebiet Paris verpackten Büchereien" (Paris, 23 March 1941), is preserved in French restitution files in the Archives Nationales, F17/17996. Jean-Claude Kuperminc kindly informed me about that copy, earlier cited by Nicholas Reymes in "Le pillage des bibliothèques appartenant à des Juifs pendant l’occupation," Revue d’histoire de la Shoah: Le monde juif 163 (January–April 2000): 38–41. Sophie Coeuré kindly sent me a copy with the supplement, "Nachtrag zu den in Paris verpackten Büchereien" (Dr. Wu/Schö, ERR HAG-Frankreich, Paris, 24 April 1941) from the same file, but it lacks the covering memo.
53. Dr. Gerd (sometimes Gerhard) Wunder (1908–1988), a key player in library confiscation and ERR research and propaganda, had headed a DBFU section on Jewry and Freemasonry. From June 1940 to June 1941 he headed the Paris library group and then was transferred to head HAG-Ostland. He subsequently headed ERR research and propaganda operations in Berlin and Ratibor, his own focus being "Eastern European anti-Bolshevism." His ERR reports frequently bear the code "Dr. Wu." According to BDC records ("Personalkarte," BAB, PK 12100011129), he joined the Nazi Party on 1 May 1930, taught in Chile in 1933 and 1934, and then in 1935 took over direction of the Düsseldorf Public Library. Wunder was interrogated in connection with the Alfred Rosenberg trial in Nuremberg (18 and 26 August 1947); transcripts in NARA Microfilm Publication M1019, roll 81, frames 102–121. He was also questioned with Dr. Karl Brethauer by Bundesamt für aussere Restitutionen (Bad Homburg, 5 January 1960) in connection with French claims, but his replies do not clarify the fate of the collections. I am grateful to Willem de Vries for a copy of the transcript. Postwar resumés understandably omit Wunder’s work with the ERR, although they mention his service in the infantry in Belgium, France, and Russia, where he was involved with "a party office for research regarding communism in the Soviet Union," continuing that "work" in Riga, Berlin, and Ratibor. After the war he taught in a gymnasium in Schwäbisch Hall and was active in the Commission for Regional Studies in Baden and Württemberg, writing about local history and genealogy, esp. medieval and early modern. See Dieter Wunder, "Gerd Wunder," in Festschrift für Gerd Wunder (Schwäbisch Hall: Historischer Verein für Württembergisch Franken, 1974), pp. 7–13; and Edith Ennen, Sehr verehrter, lieber Herr Wunder! (Laudatio Gerd Wunder) (Schwäbisch Hall: Historischer Verein für Württembergisch Franken, 1983), pp. 3–9.
54. Wunder to Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich (2 May 1941), with the March list and the April addenda, Anlage II, ERR HAG Frankreich. A complete photocopy remains in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg, MGRA 85621. Those original files were among U.S.-captured German military records returned to Germany in the 1960s. The same photocopy is reproduced in NARA Microfilm Publication T501, "Records of German Field Commands: Rear Areas, Occupied Territories, and Others" (Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich), roll 362, item 85621 (294K–306K), frames 386–88; I have not located the original.
55. Copies of the 23 March and 24 April lists with Wunder’s memo (2 May 1941) are in BAK, B 323/261, fols. 48–60 (cc in BAK, B 323/258, fols. 471–483). A poorly legible photostatic copy also remains in OMGUS restitution files, NACP (National Archives of the United States, College Park, MD), RG 260, Records of the Property Division, AHC, box 468 (slated for microfilming as part of M1946).
56. A handwritten note in the file (PRO, FO 1020/2793) explains, "extracted from a file of reports by Dr. Gerhard WUNDER, found at Tanzenberg and forwarded by Major [John] Hayward, 16 August 45. A copy has been sent to the French." Sophie Coeuré kindly sent me a copy of an earlier version from AN, 38 AJ 5937.
57. A group of retrospective typed confiscation lists, with covering memorandum signed by Dr. Karl Brethauer (21 January 1942) are with ERR records in Kyiv. The lists of private libraries confiscated in Paris confirm (and often add to) the names, addresses, and numbers. "Paris Einsatzstellen aus Schildes Kartothek" (including ERR code numbers), TsDAVO, 3676/1/172, fols. 274–276. Other lists, "Sonderakte Paris," and "Positive Einsatzstellen Paris" (n.d.) are in the same bound file, fols. 273, 283, and 277–282, as is the Brethauer memo (21 January 1942) naming those same lists (fol. 324). Prof. Dr. [Gerhard] Schilde was active in Paris, but was sent to the Baltic in October 1941 heading a special "Kommando Schilde." The fate of Schilde’s Paris card file is unknown.
58. "Aufstellung der Namen der Pariser Akten" (Ratibor, 3 April 1944), BAB, NS 30/56. The list, providing only names and some biographical data, is signed by [Brunno] Helfrich, whose name also appears on an ERR staff list from Ratibor.
59. See Grimsted, "Twice Plundered, but Still Not Home from the War," and updated Polish version.
60. For example, see a letter (10 February 1942) with list of addresses and property plundered from members of the Rothschild family, by President de Boisanger of the French Delegation for Economic Affairs to Minister-President Hemmen of the German Delegation for the Economy (10 February 1942), CDJC, CXVII–38.
61. Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939–1945, issued by Commandement en chef français en Allemagne, Groupe français du conseil de contrôle, Division des réparations et restitutions, Bureau central des restitutions, vol. 7: Archives, manuscrits et livres rares (Berlin, 1948); at least three supplements appeared through 1949 (series available on NARA microfilm M–1949).
62. See the finding aid "Inventaire des archives du Commissariat général aux questions juives et du Service de restitution des biens des victims des lois et measures de spoliation," sous-série AJ38, comp. Marie-Thérèse Chabord et Jean Pouëssel (Paris: Centre historique des Archives Nationales, 1998; Commissariat général aux questions juives). AN, Series F/17 (17994–17996), "Bibliothèques pillées sous l’occupation, 1945–1953," contains Sous-Commission des Livres (1945–1949) records, under Commission de récupération artistique du Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale. The article by Nicholas Reymes mentioned above, "Le pillage des bibliothèques appartenant à des Juifs pendant l’occupation," developed from his doctoral dissertation, one of the first publications to use the newly opened files; however, the author did not find all of the other lists or related documents available in other archives.
63. Plans are under consideration by Jean-Claude Kuperminc, who heads the library and archive of the AIU, and other French colleagues.
64. The AAM Guide to Provenance Research, pp. 80–88, provides a description of these files with lists of individual French claims in numbered folders, available in NARA only in microfilm publication, M–1949; folder numbers still pertain, although without correlation to box numbers.
65. ERR-Belgien, "Übersicht über die Artbeitsverhaben der Arbeitsgruppe Belgien in zeitlicher Reihenfolge" (n.d. [March 1943]), TsDAVO, 3676/1/164, fols. 53–66. "ERR—Liste des collections juives spoliées et transportées en Allemagne (1940–1943)," in Les biens des victimes des persécutions anti-juives en Belgique: Spoliation, rétablissement des droits, résultats de la Commission d’étude [ANNEXES]. Rapport final de la Commission d’étude sur le sort des biens des membres de la Communauté juive de Belgique spoliés ou délaissés pendant la guerre 1940–1945 ([Brussels]: Services du Premier Ministre, July 2001), Annexe 5, pp. 21–23, contains excerpts listing Jewish collections involved.
66. Hans Muchow (ERR chief in Belgium) to ERR Ratibor (Brussels, 23 March 1944), with supplemental list, "Beantwortung der Eilanfrage aus Ratibor" (Brussels, 24 March 1944), BAB NS 30/56.
67. A group of the three files from the ERR Belgian Working Group in a separate fond (TsDAVO, fond 3674/1/1) includes packing lists from Grand Orient de Belgique (fols. 1–34), Supreme Conseil de Belgique (Rite Ecossais) (fols. 35–97), and Loge-Amis du Commerce et de la persévérence réunis (fols. 100–113); other fols. document seizures from Vienna philosophy professor Alfred Stern (fols. 117–21), attorney Léon Kubowitzki (fols. 122–27), and French royal heir, duc de Guise (Manoir d’Anjou) (fols. 140–88), among others. The main ERR fond in TsDAVO, fond 3676, esp. file nos. 159–175, 235, and 239, contain scattered Belgian confiscation reports. The Center for War Documentation (SOMA) in Brussels acquired copies of many.
68. Michel Vermote and Jacques Lust’s excellent survey, "Papieren Bitte," presents details of ERR (and other agencies’) confiscations in Belgium. See also Lust, De Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg en de bibliotheekroof in België; the authors kindly furnished me copies. Belgian government report, De Bezittingen van de slachtoffers van de Jodenvervolging in België: Spoliatie-Rechtsherstel-Bevindingen van de Studiecommissie ([Brussels]: Diensten van de Eerste Minister, July 2001), esp. pp. 132–42.
69. [August Schirmer], "Bericht über die Tätigkeit des Einsatzstabes der Dienststelle des Reichleiters Rosenberg in des westlichen besetzten Gebieten und den Niederlanden: Arbeitsgruppe Niederlande," in Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 25, pp. 247–55 (Exhibit USA–707; 176–PS). English translation: "Report on the Activities of the Einsatzstab of the Bureau of the Reichsleiter Rosenberg in the Occupied Western Territories and the Netherlands, Working Group Netherlands," in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 3, pp. 200–09. Schirmer was Oberreichsleiter (general director) of the Netherlands Task Force (AG Niederlande; later HAG) from September 1940 until May 1941, and hence the list probably dates from April or May 1941. The published version incorrectly gave "Schimmer" as his name.
70. See Aalder’s chapter on "The Looting of Cultural Property," in Nazi Looting, pp. 43–83, and Manasse, Verschleppte Archive und Bibliotheken.
71. A file of originals from AG-Niederlande (1941–1942), most signed by S.S. Sturmbannführer Schmidt-Stähler, is in BAB, NS 30/15; the list has 176 entries: "Einsatzstellen der Hauptarbeitsgruppe Niederlande." The same folder has weekly and monthly reports providing detailed packing and shipping data for Dutch collections. The NIOD "Rosenberg Files" (Amsterdam) has copies of parts of that file from a U.S. microfilms printout, and also lists from other sources.
72. [Schirmer], "Report on the Activities of the Einsatzstab," in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 3, p. 206.
73. Regarding seizure and fate of IISH collections from Amsterdam see Karl Heinz Roth, "The International Institute of Social History as a Pawn of Nazi Social Research: New Documents on the History of the IISH during German Occupation Rule from 1940 to 1944"=International Review of Social History 34, Supplement (1989), with references to related publications and sources. See Eberhard Kautter’s report to Rosenberg (Berlin, 28 April 1941), published in German, pp. S28–S38, and English, pp. S38–S47, from original in BAB, NS 8/252. Reports in BAB NS 30/15 (op. cit.) record some early IISH shipments. More detail appears in Maria Hunink, De papieren van de revolutie: Het Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiendenis, 1935–1947 (Amsterdam: IISG, 1986), with related documents and a list of major collections the IISH had acquired before the war.
74. For seizures in Yugoslavia see "Jahresbericht 1943/1944 der Arbeitsgruppe Südosten," signed Dr. [Günther] Kraft (Belgrade, 29 February 1944), YIVO, RG 215 (Berlin Collection), folder OccE5g–4. The folder includes weekly reports March–December 1943. Boxes 36 and 37, folders E5g–2–5 preserve other reports and confiscated book inventories (photocopies are held in BAB, NS 30).
75. See RGVA, 1401k/1, files 5, 8, 10–29, and 43–47.
76. See memorandum signed by Anton (Belgrade, 28 April 1944) to Hauptabteilung II (Ratibor) with appended shipping crate list, BAB, NS 30/32. Crates were numbered B E 121–140, suggesting that many preceded. Only two are indicated as having held Jewish literature. The first 157 leaves are reports from HAG Südosten in Belgrade, most signed by Anton, earlier head of HAG Ukraine. Photocopies of ERR reports from Yugoslavia in YIVO are also in BAB, NS 30/173–178.
77. "Abschlussbericht über die Tätigkeit des Sonderkommandos Rosenberg in Griechenland" (Athens, 15 November 1941), BAB 30/75. The thirty-four-page report’s original typescript has five appendices: 1) ERR Sonderkommando staff, specialized sub-sections; 2) map indicating cities covered; 3) lists of leaders and branch lodges under Great Lodge of Greece; 4) copy of 1935 printed directory of that lodge; 5) name and address lists of Jewish individuals and institutions "worked over" (bearbeiteten); and 6) subject register of materials concerning foreign relations of Greek Jewish and Zionist organizations, Rotary Clubs, and Masonic lodges. Mimeographed copies (31 pp. + appendices) are in RGVA, 1401k/1/9; and CDJC, CCXXXII–17.Cf. Yitchak Kerem’s account, "The Confiscation of Jewish Books in Salonika in the Holocaust," in The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation, ed. Jonathan Rose (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), pp. 59–65, which did not utilize ERR documentation; I have not found a thorough study of ERR activities in Greece.
78. See AG Italien reports in TsDAVO, 3676/1/171 and 176, and BAB, NS 30/32 (middle section) and NS 8/260 and 262. Several Kyiv reports and one in NS 8/262 (Verona, 28 August 1944) suggest emphasis on ideology and propaganda. A collection of ERR tracts preserved in BAB, NS 30/76, includes a translation of "Eine jüdische Dynastie: Die Sassoon (‘Die Rothschild des Orients’)" about the banking family of David Sassoon. By mid-November 1944 AG Italien retreated to Pension Olga in Zell am See near Salzburg.
79. See Sonderstab Musik reports by Dr. [Max] Unger (Quito near Verona, 10 December 1943 and Verona, 3 June 1944), and his letters to Dr. Gerigk (Florence and Verona, May and June 1944), and Maier correspondence with Gerigk (April–August 1944) in BAB, NS 30/63; the latest Gerigk letter is dated "Langenau ü. Hirschberg, 1 November 1944."
80. Dr. Hans Maier, ERR Sonderkommando Italien, "Monatsbericht Dezember 1943" (21 January 1944), BAB, NS 30/32 (photoprint from film). The Jewish libraries noted were those of Philippson from Pistoia and Prof. Luigi Rossi. Dario Tedeschi, who heads the Italian government commission investigating Jewish losses, kindly furnished me a transcribed copy that led me to the original file in BAB.
81. Stanislao Pugliese, "Bloodless Torture: The Books of the Roman Ghetto under Nazi Occupation," Libraries and Culture 34, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 241–53; reprinted in The Holocaust and the Book, pp. 47–58.
82. F.J. Hoogewoud, "Die späte lines jüdischer Büches aus Hungen über Hannover nach Rom," in the proceedings of the symposium "Jüdischer Buchbesitz als Raubgut" (Frankfurt: Vitorio Kloosterman, 2005, forthcoming) = Zeitschruft für Bifliothekswesen und Bibliographie, (special issue). See Associated Press report "Ancient book returned to Rome’s Jewish community," Jerusalem Post, 23 May 2005.
83. See Alfred Bäumler, Alfred Rosenberg und Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Hoheneichen-Verlag, 1943).
84. An English translation of the Führererlass (29 January1940—136–PS) was published in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 3, p. 184; original German in Trial of Major War Criminals, vol. 25, pp. 229–30. Summary of documentation on work of Hohe Schule in Billig, Alfred Rosenberg, pp. 65–85. See Rosenberg’s memo "Die Hohe Schule der NSDAP und ihre Aufgaben" (Denkschrift, 1937), BAB, NS 8/175; and early sketch, "Die Hohe Schule am Chiemsee," Die Kunst im Dritten Reich 3 (January 1939): 17–19. A published section of Rosenberg’s interrogations at Nuremberg is devoted to "Origin and Activities of the Hohe Schule"; in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 2, pp. 1332–36. Rothfeder, Rosenberg’s Organization has a good chapter on the Hohe Schule, pp. 327–99. Copies of the drawings are preserved in the Library of Congress.
85. A folder of documentation about Tanzenberg during the war is preserved in Archiv der Diözese Gurk in Klagenfurt, Seminarakten, folder 112, with several early images. I am grateful to Evelyn Adunka for arranging my visit.
86. British MFA&A prepared in summer 1945 the most helpful introductory survey (based on Nazi documents and British interrogations), "Preliminary Report on Zentralbibliothek der Hohen Schule (NSDAP)" (1 August 1945), and "Progress Report on Zentralbibliothek der Hohen Schule (NSDAP), Tanzenberg" (to 25 August 1945), PRO 1020/2793. A copy of the initial report resides among records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (Roberts Commission), NACP, 239/11. Other copies and subsequent British reports are found among British records of restitution operations in Tanzenberg after the war—PRO, FO 1020, esp. file nos., 2549, 2793, 2878, and 2879. See also Cruse’s report, "Übersicht über die Buchenteilung des ERR für die Zentralbibliothek der Hohen Schule" (1 January 1944), CDJC, CXLV–159, and full German ZBHS annual report for 1943 in BAB, NS 8/267. A wartime postcard picturing Tanzenberg is in TsDAVO, 3674/1/3, fol. 300, reproduced in my "Rare Books from Voronezh to Tartu and Tanzenberg: From Nazi Plunder and British Restitution to Russian ‘Lost Book Treasures,’" Solanus 18 (2004). See also Gabriela Stieber’s, "Die Bibliothek der ‘Höhen Schule des Nationalsozialismus’ in Tanzenberg," Carinthia I, Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Landeskunde von Kärnten 185 (1995): 343–63, probably the first to utilize British files in PRO, FO 1020. More thorough is Evelyn Adunka, Der Raub der Bücher: Plünderung in der NS-Zeit und Restitution nach 1945 (Vienna: Czernin Verlag, 2002), esp. ch. "Die Bibliothek von Tanzenberg in Kärnten," pp. 15–70.
87. On the Edouard Rothschild library see the Grothe report (26 January 1942), TsDAVO, 3676/1/219, fols. 385–387 (cc. 388–390). Based on shipping papers and postwar interrogations, British MFA&A’s "Preliminary Report on ZBHS" lists cities of origin for consignments arriving in Tanzenberg and analyzes ERR shipping patterns.
88. The British "Preliminary Report on ZBHS" and later British restitution papers (PRO, FO 1020) provide data on looted and purchased collections.
89. Two fragmentary ZBHS acquisition registers recently discovered in the Vienna University Library feature Rosenberg donations. Ingrid Ramirer kindly arranged for me to examine them.
90. Original documents in TsDAVO, 3676/2/1, fols. 7–14, 34; the file includes reports relating to Russian imperial libraries and Kyiv materials plundered by Künsberg Commandos, which the ERR also sent to ZBHS. See also Cruse’s explanation about plans to survey the books and archives seized in Paris, many of which were intended for ZBHS, fol. 31 (cc fols. 32–33). Additional copies of the surveys (initialed by Cruse) are preserved at the YIVO Archives, RG 215 (Berlin Collection), G–223, which also includes an appraisal of the van Zuylen library.
91. Instructions and lists of subjects for shipments survive in Kyiv ERR files—TsDAVO, 3676/1/136, fols. 188, 206, 210, and 213–241. See working instructions (Berlin, 12 March 1942), fols. 433–444; shipping plans and detailed subject profiles, fols. 218–219; and "Aktennotiz" (Riga, 10 November 1942), fols. 222–231 and 234.
92. Dr. Gottlieb Peter Ney (1881–1972) was born in Reval (Tallinn) and educated in Derpt (Iuriev/Dorpat/Tartu) and St. Petersburg. He directed the Estonian National Library and Archives between 1936 and 1940, before being "resettled" in Germany after the Hitler-Stalin Pact. See the British "Interrogation of Dr G. Ney," PRO, FO 1020/2795, and "Statement by Dr Ney" PRO, FO 1020/2878. After British release Ney settled in Germany, but then emigrated to Sweden, where he worked in the provincial archives of Lund. He died in Stierstadt, Germany. I am grateful to Peep Pillak of the Estonian State Archives for information about Ney. Many of Ney’s weekly and monthly reports from the Baltic survive in Kyiv, including TsDAVO, 3676/1/136; and his annual report, Ney, Sonderstab Bibliothek der Hohen Schule, "Jahresbericht für das Jahr 1942" (1 November 1941–31 December 1942) (Riga, 5 January 1943), TsDAVO, 3676/1/136, fols. 237–241. See more details and photo of Ney in Grimsted, "Rare Books from Voronezh," pp. 72–107.
93. Several reports about shipments remain among the fragmentary ERR files in Moscow, RGVA, 1401k/1/6, in addition to those in Kyiv.
94. ERR report to Berlin Headquarters (Smolensk, 10 June 1942), TsDAVO, 3676/1/144, fols. 112–113. Loot from Novgorod is covered in Ney’s ERR-AG Lettland, Sonderstab Bibliothek H.S. report (Riga, 29 July 1942), TsDAVO, 3676/1/136, fols. 203–204.
95. See Anja Heuss, "Die ‘Beuteorganisation’ des Auswärtigen Amtes: Das Sonderkommando Künsberg und der Kulturgutraub in der Sowjetunion," Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 45, no. 4 (October 1997): 535–56; and Ulrike Hartung, Raubzuge in der Sowjetunion: Das Sonderkommando Künsberg 1941–1943 (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1997). On Künsberg loot, see the official transfer document (Berlin, 3 February 1943), precisely noting the number of books from points of origin—TsDAVO, 3676/2/1, fols. 4–6; and report in TsDAVO, 3676/2/1, fols. 42–57. See also earlier despatch (11 July 1942), in TsDAVO, 3676/1/22, fol. 209.
96. MFA&A "Preliminary Report on ZBHS," p. 9, p. 20. That report identifies "ZAB" as "Zarenbibliothek, Qatchina," imperial libraries looted by Künsberg group; more in Grimsted, "Ot Iantarnoi komnaty k knigam iz russkogo imperatorskogo dvortsa: Identifikatsiia i rekonstruktsiia peremeshchennykh kul’turnykh tsennostei," in Kul’turnye tsennosti: Vozmozhnosti i perspektivy obshcheevropeiskogo sotrudnichestva. Sbornik materialov mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii "Kul’turnoe sotrudnichestvo v Evrope: problemy sokhraneniia i okhrany kul’turnykh tsennostei, Sankt-Peterburg," 12 Maia 2003 g. (Moscow: Rudomino, 2004), pp. 108–52 (includes German version). See also my forthcoming article, "Nazi-Plundered Books that Came Home from the War: Forgotten British and American Library Restitution to the USSR."
97. MFA&A, "Preliminary Report on ZBHS," pp. 8–9, 20. See Grimsted, "Rare Books from Voronezh," and Grimsted, Trophies of War and Empire, pp. 199, 207, 230–33, 269, 318, 417.
98. On IISH collections, see Roth, The International Institute of Social History as a Pawn of Nazi Social Research. Roth details rivalries of Nazi agencies, and documents IISH shipment to ZBHS (16 July1943), pp. 19–20 and 88. After the war, the British found 975 crates of books from the Netherlands there, mostly IISH.
99. ERR report (14 September1944), BAB, NS 30/53. Note Frauenberg/ Steiermark address: Gauschulungsburg Martinshof, Post Graz-Strassgans/Steiermark (as per note in same file from Georg Anton, head of HAG-Ukraine, dated 30 November1944).
100. Rosenberg’s original typescript for his address to the opening of IEJ, "Nationalsozialismus und Wissenschaft" (26 March 1941) in CDJC, CXLVI–22. See Joshua Starr’s early account of the library’s formation, "Jewish Cultural Property under Nazi Control," pp. 32–45, and Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors, esp. pp. 97–119. On the power struggles see Dieter Schiefelbein "Das ‘Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage Frankfurt am Main’: Antisemitismus als Karrieresprungbrett im NS-Staat," in "Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses ... " Antisemitische Forschung, Eliten und Karrieren im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Fritz Bauer Institut (Frankfurt/New York, 1999), pp. 43–71.
101. See background discussion of Frankfurt operations in F.J. Hoogewoud, "The Nazi Looting of Books and its American "Antithesis": Selected Pictures from the Offenbach Archival Depot’s Photographic History and Its Supplement," Studia Rosenthaliana (Amsterdam) 26, no. 1–2 (1992): 158–92. A 1945 report prepared under British auspices by ZBHS deputy director, Dr. Adolf Trende, mentions AIU and École Rabbinique books among those evacuated to Hungen—"Das Institut zu Erforschungen der Judenfrage" (August 1945), PRO 1020/2793.
102. F.J. Hoogewoud obtained a copy of the ERR rental contract for rooms in the castle and related documents regarding the Hungen facilities, which he kindly shared with me.
103. See Maria Kühn-Ludewig, Johannes Pohl (1904–1960): Judaist und Bibliothekar im Dienste Rosenbergs: Eine biographische Dokumentation (Hannover: Laurentius Verlag, 2000).
104. Johannes Pohl, "Die Bibliothek zur Erforschung der Juden Frage" (29 April1943—IMT Exhibit USA–383; 171–PS), in Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 25, pp. 243–46 (171–PS), cover note signed by Dr.[Gerd] Wu[nder]. English translation (without attribution) in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 3, pp. 200–203. Poster showcasing holdings listed: BAB, NS 30/19. Reymes cited (without indication of source) figures in Pohl’s report, "Le Pillage des bibliothèques," Revue d’histoire de la Shoah 168 (January–April 2000):38–40.
105. "Abschlussbericht über die Tätigkeit des Sonderkommandos Rosenberg in Griechenland"; see also Kerem, "The Confiscation of Jewish Books in Salonika," pp. 59–65.
106. Many Salonica Jewish Community files taken to Frankfurt are in YIVO in New York City (RG 207); they probably arrived with the Berlin Collection (RG 215), with many IEJ files. Two files sent to Amsterdam by mistake remain in the Municipal Archives. Archival files from Salonica in Moscow are in RGVA, fond 1428k (285 file units for the years 1919–1941), and in two smaller fonds with records of Zionist offices in Salonica for emigration to Palestine (fonds 1435k and 1437k) possibly intermixed; most probably they were seized by the ERR unit at the same time. "Abschlussbericht über die Tätigkeit des Sonderkommandos Rosenberg in Griechenland" (Athens, 15 November 1941); copy in CDJC, CCXXXII–17. See Kerem’s brief survey, "Sources on Greek Jewry in the Special Archives of Moscow," Sharsheret hadorot 7, no. 2 (April 1993): x–xi (in English; Hebrew text, p. 6), and the more recent descriptions in Dokumenty po istorii i kul’ture evreev v trofeinykh kollektsiiakh Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo voennogo arkhiva. Putevoditel’, comp. and ed. V.N. Kuzelenkov, M.S. Kupovetskii, David E. Fishman (Moscow: Rosarkhiv; RGGU: RGVA; Jewish Theological Seminary of America; YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2005 [a publication of "Project Judaica"]), esp. pp. 93–100; that recent guide also describes several other fonds of Greek Jewish provenance.
107. See "Bericht über die vorläufige Sichtung der Judaica und Hebraica in Kiew," TsDAVO, 3676/1/50, fols. 10–13; Zölffel to Benzig (17 September 1942), TsDAVO, 3206/5/16, fol. 417, shows Dettmann and Fuchs in charge; Anton to IEJ (25 September 1942), TsDAVO, 3676/1/39, acknowledges receipt of one wagon in Frankfurt (5 October 1942), fols. 2 and 4. A later report mentions collections from Podil and what the Germans called the "Jewish conservatory in Kyiv" at Pavlovskaia 2 (29 May1943), fol. 1.
108. The Holocaust and the Book, pp. 165–200, excerpts Dina Abramowicz’s and Herman Kruk’s memoirs, two important sources on the fate of Jewish books from Vilnius, also cited by Sem C. Sutter in "The Lost Jewish Libraries of Vilna and the Frankfurt Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage," in Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections since Antiquity, ed. James Raven (Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 219–35. Sources from Moscow, Kyiv, and Vilnius, and post-1991 research now supplement Sutter’s study. See also David E. Fishman, Embers Plucked from the Fire: The Rescue of Jewish Cultural Treasures in Vilna (New York: YIVO, 1996; English and Yiddish); also in The Holocaust and the Book, pp. 66–78.
109. See the 1998 facsimile compendium of ERR cultural registration cards for Belorussia, Ukraine and RSFSR: Mikhail A. Boitsovyi and Tat’iana A. Vasil’eva, eds. and comps., Kartoteka "Z" Operativnogo shtaba "Reikhsliaiter Rozenberg": Tsennosti kul’tury na okkupirovannykh territoriiakh Rossii, Ukrainy i Belorussii, 1941–1942 (Moscow: Izd-vo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1998). Not included are the 300 extant ERR registration cards from the Baltic countries (RGVA, fond 1401k/1/75).
111. Details on shipments from YIVO in Vilnius and other Lithuanian Jewish collections in ERR HAG-Ostland reports; Pohl’s reports (2 April 1942), TsDAVO, 3676/1/128, fols. 163–164; lists of Hebraica from Kaunas (20 April 1942); another Pohl report YIVO (28 April 1942), fols. 179–193; and a note that by October, fifty crates were packed for Frankfurt (15 October 1940), fols. 330–335. A report on special ERR Jewish work force in Vilnius, "Bericht von dem Arbeitsergebnis der jüdischen Arbeitsgruppe beim Einsatzstab RR Wilna" (18 February–8 June 1942), details removals from YIVO, LCVA, 633/5. Some lists of materials confiscated in Vilnius in LCVA, fond 633/4, are available on microfilm in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). See also Esfir Bramson-Alperniené (National Library of Lithuania) re efforts to preserve what YIVO materials were left behind: "Das Schicksal der Dokumente des YIVO in Wilna," in Return of Looted Collections, pp. 45–51; and other Bramson-Alperniené writings on the subject. Sutter suggests a 70 percent destruction figure for Vilnius Jewish collections, "The Lost Jewish Libraries of Vilna," pp. 226–27, but again, without documentation.
112. Redlich reports Riga shipments (15 October 1941), TsDAVO, 3676/1/128, fols. 54–55, and Pohl (Dunaberg, 10 November 1941), fols. 72–74,149, and 152; (21 March 1942); TsDAVO, 1/128, fol. 149, mentions 17,000 Jewish books to be sent from Riga to Frankfurt and 20,000 for waste paper. See also Schäfer’s report (4 December 1942), TsDAVO, 3676/1/145, fols. 5 and 6. Another (Riga, 19 December 1942) lists twenty-five crates for the Jewish Institute in Frankfurt, TsDAVO, 3676/1/118, fol. 16.
114. See "Tätigkeitsbericht für die Zeit vom 10. Februar bis 11. März 1944," YIVO, RG 215; and Langkopf (HAG-Mitte), "Monatsberichte 12.43–1.44" (Minsk, 21 February 1944), TsDAVO, 3676/1/171, fol. 347 (cc 341).
115. Langkopf (HAG-Mitte), Minsk, 6 June 1944, BAB, NS 30/160. Wunder’s report about the missing freight cars from Minsk and Rome is noted by Starr in "Jewish Cultural Property under Nazi Control," p. 44; I have not located the original document. Lommatzsch’s report after visiting Hungen confirms arrival and processing of Judaica from the East (Ratibor, 1 September 1944), IfZ, MA, box 244.
116. To Rosenberg, "Betr: Brand der Hohen Schule, Aussenstelle Frankfurt a. M. infolge Luftangriffes am 22.Marz 1944—Verhalten der Verwaltungsorgane" (Hungen, 27 March 1944), BAB, NS 8/266, fols. 62–72.
117. Lt. Robert Schoenfeld, Report from Hungen (8 April 1945), MII Team 430G, 5th Infantry to Asst. Chief of Staff, G–2, Report no. 44, NACP, RG 94, box 6779.
118. Captain Robert E. Posey’s two-page summary MFA&A report on Hungen (inspected 9 April 1945) is included in "Semi-Monthly Report on MFA&A for period ending 15 April 1945," Headquarters, 3d U.S. Army, G–5 Section (17 April 1945), NACP, RG 331 (SHAEF), MFA&A, box 334; another with records of the Internal Affairs Branch is in RG 751, box 19. See detailed report by U.S. restitution officer in charge, Glenn H. Goodman, "Rosenberg—Institut für Judenforschung, Repositories in Hungen, Oberhessen," [nd], NACP, RG 242, AGAR–S, no. 1454. Goodman estimated over one million total volumes, but others put the total much higher. See also F.J. Hoogewoud’s account reconstructing IEJ operations in Hungen based on U.S. MFA&A reports, "Tracing Nazi Looters," in Grimsted and Hoogewoud. See the published brochure for the Hungen exhibit in November 2004: Geheimsache Schloss Hungen—Die Geschichte der geraubten Bücher in Hungen and Hirzenhain (1943–1946), sowie Dokumente und Bilder zur jüdischen Geschichte von Hungen und Exponate zum Heute von Juden und Freimaurer in Giessen ([Hungen], 2004). The exhibit was restaged in Hannover in connection with the Second Hannover Symposium, "Jüdische Büchbesitz als Raubgut" (10–11 May 2005), and the catalogue published: AUF TRANSPORT! Deutsche Stationen ‘sichergestellter’ jüdischer und freimaurerischer Bibliotheken aus Frankreich und den Niederlanden (1940–1949) (Hameln: Niemeyer, 2005).
119. See the RSHA inter-office memo and instructions, "Freimaurerforschungsinstitut der Hohen Schule der NSDAP" (8 February 1941), BAB, R 58/6499, fols. 773–774, and Paul Dittel note about RSHA Amt II A 3 (later separate Amt VII) receipt of Masonic materials from Paris, R 58/6499, fol. 772.
120. As Rothfeder documented, "The ERR," pp. 24–25. See also Florence de Lussy, "Vicissitudes des archives maçonniques françaises sous le régime de Vichy (1940–1944)," in Return of Looted Collections, pp. 33–44.
121. The two-part article by Dutch Masonic archivist and librarian Evert Kwaadgras, "Roof en recuperatie: Het lot van de verzamelingen van de Orde ten tijde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog," pt. 1: "Voorgeschiedenis; hoe kon dit gebeuren?" Thoth: Tijdschrift voor Vrijmetselaren 51, no. 4 (August 2000): 115–28; and pt. 2: "Wat er gebeurde, en de nasleep," ibid., 51, no. 6 (December 2000): 201–31, depict the Hirzenhain site (also in Hungen exhibit). See Kwaadgras’ shorter English survey, "The Fate of a Special Collection: Library, Archives and Museum of the Netherlands Freemasons," in Hoogewoud et al., The Return of Looted Collections, esp. pp. 122–24; and his 2000 report, "A Great Waste of Time and Energy: The Seizure and Scrutiny of Masonic Documents during and after World War II," with conference proceedings, "Cultural Map of Europe," VGBIL, 20–21 April 2000, http://www.libfl.ru/restitution/conf/kwaadgras_e.html.
122. Few operational files from these institutes survive; some have been identified in Kyiv, others with Rosenberg files in the Bundesarchiv and at CDJC in Paris.
123. David Roxan and Ken Wanstall describe Wolffhardt’s role in the Linz library in The Jackdaw of Linz: The Story of Hitler’s Art Thefts (London: Cassell, [1964]), pp. 177–78.
124. Given the number of crates being shipped there in one quarterly report for July–September 1943: "Unterlagen für den Viertaljahresbericht (1.7.1943 bis 30.9.1943)"; one copy is found in NIOD, Rosenberg files; and another in the Institute für Zeitgeschichte (IfZ), probably from a U.S. microfilm. The same number for Weltdienst appears in a quarterly report: Wunder, "Arbeitsbericht der Abteilung Erfassung und Sichtung für die Zeit vom 1.7.–30.9.1943" (Ratibor, 7 October 1943) in same collection.
125. A 1940 memorandum in BAB, NS 8/217 suggests Leibbrandt’s role in its formation and proposed relations with the Hohe Schule.
126. See Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors, pp. 95–97. The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History acquired many records from the section captured by the U.S. after the war; some maps and materials were distributed elsewhere. Gretchen E. Schafft and Gerhard Zeidler, in an unpublished finding aid, Register of Materials of the Institut für Deutscheostarbeit (Washington, DC: National Anthropological Archives, 1998), describe those in the Smithsonian. The Institute for National Memory (Zespó 113) in Warsaw preserves additional Cracow Institute records; complete copies are available on microfilm at USHMM, RG–15.010, Records of the Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit, Kraków, 1942–1944 (seven reels). The Institute evacuated Cracow in July and August 1944 to Schloss Miltach and Schloss Zandt in Bavaria, where U.S. officers found materials and interrogated staff; see NACP, RG 260, AHC, box 471. Regarding the anthropological work of IDO, see Gretchen Engle Schafft, From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), parts of which are based on the IDO archives.
127. In the latter case, R. Lee Hadden has been researching the so-called Heringen Collection and kindly shared an abstract of the paper he is preparing for publication following a 2003 report to the Geological Society of America. His abstract from the earlier report is available at http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003AM/finalprogram/abstract_64921.htm.
128. Joshua Starr, "Jewish Cultural Property under Nazi Control," Jewish Social Studies 12, no. 1 (1950): 45–46. Starr’s account draws on interviews with survivors associated with RSHA operations, including Dr. Ernst Grumach.
129. Reports about the takeover of the building with the Rosenthal firm as the liquidator (13 April 1938) are in RGVA, 500k/3/367, fols. 11–13.
130. See several spring 1939 reports including "Aktennotiz: Juden-Bibliotheken" (20 May 1939), BAB, R 58/6424 II, fol. 367; "Berichte. Zentralisierung der Judenbibliotheken," fols. 371–373; and "Berichte. Räumliche Unterbringung der Judenbibliotheken," initialed by Paul Dittel (17 June 1939), BAB, R 58/6424 II, fols. 312–315. These recently discovered documents update my coverage in "Twice Plundered or ‘Twice Saved’?"
131. Dr. Ernst Grumach (1902–1967), a former lecturer in Classical Philology at the University of Königsberg, prepared after the war a report on RSHA Jewish library operations, and descriptions of working conditions (under a postwar claim to the German government), published (German and English) by Dov Schidorsky in "Confiscation of Libraries and Assignments to Forced Labor: Two Documents of the Holocaust," Libraries and Culture 33, no. 4 (Fall 1998): 347–88). Schidorsky’s introduction and helpful notes provide context. An alternate English translation is appended to a postwar report by Koppel S. Pinson; an unsigned typescript remains among records of Offenbach Archival Depot: "Report on Confiscation and Treatment of the Former Jewish Libraries by the Gestapo from 1933–1945," NARA, RG 260 (OMGUS), Property Division, AHC, OAD, box 250. See also Dov Schidorsky, "Das Schicksal jüdischer Bibliotheken im Dritten Reich," in Bibliotheken während des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Peter Vodosek and Manfred Komorowski, vol. 2 (Wiesbaden: In Kommission bei O. Harrass, 1989 <1992>), pp. 189–222.
132. Werner Schroeder, "Strukturen des Bücherraubs: Die Bibliotheken des RSHA: Aufbau und Verblieb," Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie 51, no. 5–6 (2004): 316–24; idem., "Die Bibliotheken des RSHA: Aufbau und Verblieb" at http://www.initiativefortbildung.de/pdf/provenienz_schroeder.pdf; and "‘Bestandsaufbau durch Plünderung’: Jüdische Bibliotheken im Reichssicherheitshauptamt," his presentation at an April 2003 conference in Vienna. See also Elisabeth M. Yavnai, "Jewish Cultural Property and Its Postwar Recovery," in Confiscation of Jewish Property in Europe, 1933–1945: New Sources and Perspectives. Symposium Proceedings (Washington, DC: Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, USHMM Occasional Paper, 2002); Yavnai concentrates on RSHA library books that ended the war in Czechoslovakia.
133. See Grimsted, "Twice Plundered or ‘Twice Saved’?"; the updated Russian edition mentions restitutions to France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, described in more detail in the forthcoming volume Return from Russia.
134. Dittel memorandum (9 January 1942), BAB, R 58/7148, fol. 15–15v (microfilm: USHMM, RG–15007M, 362/148). See details about the Genss collection in Grimsted, "The Road to Minsk," pp. 363, 375.
135. Ebling to Six (23 January1942), BAB, R 58/7401, fol. (microfilm: RG–15007M) USHMM, 362/401, fol. 10–10v (microfilm: USHMM, RG–15007M, 362/401); Braune to SD Reval (27 February1942), ibid, fol. 27. A telegram describing the library came from the SD/SIPO (26 February 1942), fol. 34. SD Reval to Braune (28 February 1942), USHMM, 362/148, fol. 34.
136. ERR monthly report for November by Müller (Pless, 1 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/55.
137. Lommatzsch report (Ratibor, 13 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/50. At that point, a list of items to be shipped to Carlsbad included the Genss library, but the Red Army found those items in the echelon at the Pless railroad station in February 1945, including much of the Smolensk CP archive.
138. See Himmler’s letter to Rosenberg (31 January 1939); and Rosenberg to Minister of the Interior Frick (2 July 1940), CDJC, CXLV–515.
139. Full English translation of Rosenberg interrogation, with summaries and analysis, in the British IMT records at the Imperial War Museum, FO 645/box 160.
140. SD Riga memoranda (17–30 September 1942), BAB, R 58/7148, fols. 44 and 49 (microfilm: USHMM, RG–15007M, 362/148.
141. More about these operations, involving the Kyiv Archive of Early Acts, appears in Grimsted, "Dolia Kyiivskoho Tsentral’noho arkhivu davnikh aktiv: Potriina tragediia - nyshchennia, pohrabuvannia, propahandy," Arkhivy Ukrainy 4–6 (2003): 47–76. Electronic version: http://www.archives.gov.ua/Publicat/Archives; English version: "The Fate of the Kyiv Central Archive of Early Acts: A Triple Tragedy of Destruction, Plunder, and Propaganda," Canadian Journal of Ukrainian Studies 29, no. 1–2 (Summer–Winter 2004). See esp. Korpus mahdeburz’kykh gramot ukraïns’kym mistam: Dva proekty vydan’ 20–x–40–x rokiv XX stolittia, comp. Volodymyr Andreitsev, Vasyl’ Ul’ianovs’kyi, and Viktor Korotkyi (Kyiv: "Praim," 2000).
142. Studies do not always put the two elements together, as in Schmaltz and Sinner, "The Nazi Ethnographic Research of Georg Leibbrandt and Karl Stumpp."
143. Evidence suggests that in 1944 an "Institute for Anti-Bolshevism" was being considered with the Hohe Schule. See "Begründung eines Institutes zur Erforschung des Bolschewismus" and protocol of a meeting with Utikal, Härtle, and Wagner, signed by Köppen (6 June 1944), BAB, NS 8/132; additional documentation is in NS 8/241.
144. Revealing list of studies underway or planned in Ukraine in HAG-Ukraine circular report—"Rundschreiben," no. 9/43 (Kyiv, 23 March 1943), signed by Anton, TsDAVO, 3676/1/26a, fols. 204–218. Those underway in Vilnius figure in a supplement to the HAG-Osten monthly report for November 1943 (Vilnius, November 1943), TsDAVO, 3676/1/171, fol. 185.
145. A fifty-nine page report from ERR Sonderkommando Osten (Frauenberg, 22 January 1945), BAB, NS 30/211(x), signed by Rudolf Proksch, Stabseinsatzführer in charge of the Special Eastern Commando, including appended HAG-Ukraine reports and a report from Biaystok (9 March 1944, and 1 June 1944).
146. Will to Utikal (21 June 1943), TsDAVO, 3676/1/22, fols. 79–81. See also interrogation of Rosenberg (29 September 1945), Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Supp. B, p. 347.
147. See Grimsted, The Odyssey of the Turgenev Library from Paris, 1940–2002: Books as Victims and Trophies of War (Amsterdam: International Institute of Social History, 2003; "IISG Research Papers" no. 42; electronic version: http://www.iisg.nl/publications/respap42.pdf.
148. Confirmed in a Zipfel memorandum, TsDAVO, 3206/5/26, fol. 22; archival materials seized later.
149. BAB, NS 30/53, fol. 234–234v. Initial deposit with Foreign Office in Berlin and dispatch of librarian Ivan Rudyshiv are confirmed in Rudyshiv’s account (prepared in Berlin) "Ukraïns’ka biblioteka imeni Symona Petliury v Paryzhi," TsDAVO, 4362/1/5, fol. 4–4v; and in his report to the library council after returning to Paris in December 1942. See Grimsted, "The Odyssey of the Petliura Library."
150. Hermann Lommatzsch’s report (late April/May 1943) (18 pp.) gives the overall plan; the original typescript copy with cover note from Zeiss to HAG-Frankreich (3 June1943) is in NS 30/55; copies were also sent with cover note from Dr. Will (Berlin, ca.10 May 1943) to HAG-Ostland, HAG-Mitte, and HAG-Ukraine, BAB, NS 30/163(cc). An earlier signed copy with hand-written corrections is in TsDAVO, 3676/1/213, fols. 128–146 (published in facsimile and Ukrainian translation in Biblioteky Kyieva, pp. 722–59). Dr. Müller’s reports (Minsk, 8 and 24 May 1943) are in same NS 30/163 file, with Lommatzsch’s summary (Vilno, 8 May 1943). Another plan by Lommatzsch for organization and plunder of the Ostbücherei, "Arbeitsplan für die Ergänzung der Ostbücherei" (Berlin, 2 June 1943, 8 pp.), is in NS 30/55. Cf. preparatory reports by Lommatzsch with same title (Kyiv, 6 April 1944), BAB, NS 30/163 (cc), fols. 35–45 and report on organization of card catalogues with 1,000 titles per drawer, drawn up by Lommatzsch (4 pp.). Additional copies of many remain in TsDAVO, as indicated in Biblioteky Kyiva.
151. ERR Stabsführung, quarterly report, 1 July–30 September, 1942 (Berlin, 9 October 1942), CDJC, CXLI–147, fols. 3–5 (reference to collection of Rosenberg documents, some copies of those used in Nüremberg, others originals). See also ERR report (5 June 1943), BAB, NS 30/163. Reference to earlier September 1942 report quoting holdings as of August. See also Lommatzsch plan for preparatory work in Kyiv for the Ostbücherei (6 April 1943), BAB, NS 30, fols. 35–45, and also in TsDAVO, 3676/1/213, fols. 166–171. See additional summer 1943 reports in TsDAVO, 3676/1/213, esp. fols. 3, 36, 65–71, 74–75, 82–84, 95–96, 108–111.
152. ERR report (2 June 1943), BAB, NS 30/163.
153. See Paul J. Newerla, Ratibor einst und jetzt (Racibórz: Towarzystwo Mioników Ziemi Raciborskiej, 1998); Polish ed.: Opowiesci o dawnym Raciborzu (1996); and Hugo Weczerka, Schlesian (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1977), pp. 426–30. A helpful prewar plan of the city is in Fritz R. Barran, Städte—Atlas Schlesien (Leer: Rautenberg, 1993), pp. 210–12, and in Racibórz na dawnej pocztówce/Ratibor o/s auf der alten Postkarte (Opole: Alfred Otlik, 1998). Pictorial album: Racibórz wczoraj i dzi
(Racibórz: R.A.F. Scriba, 1998). Brief city history in Hugo Weczerka, "Ratibor (Racibórz)," in Schlesien: Handbuch der historischen Stätten (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1977), pp. 426–30. See also Lech Szaraniec, Górny 
l
sk, Maopolska—poudniowo-zachodnia, pónocno-zachodnia, lsk Opawski, Dolny lsk: Zabytkowe orodki miejskie (Katowice: Muzeum lskie, 1992), pp. 305–13 (with illustrations). No local literature mentions the ERR wartime presence. I first visited Racibórz with Ukrainian colleagues in 1991. I am grateful to Prof. Wojciech Kowalski (now an ambassador dealing with restitution issues in the Polish Foreign Ministry) for assistance in arranging my longer visit to Racibórz with Willem de Vries in 1999; and to the director of the Racibórz museum and staff for assisting us locate various buildings in the city that are mentioned in ERR documents, and for providing many photographs.
154. ERR report (24 May 1943), BAB, NS 30/163. See list of planned regional collections in Lommatzsch report "Landbücherein" (Berlin, 24 March 1945), and (for periodicals), "Erfassung der Zeitschriften" in the same file.
155. Lommatzsch memorandum (26 August 1943), TsDAVO, 3676/1/16, fols. 170–171v. See other correspondence and instructions about the move—3676/1/16, fols 144–171, incl. one shipment of 6,000 crates—3676/1/17, fols. 90–108, 116–120; and packing lists (5 August 1943), 3676/2/19, fols. 1–1v, and 2–5. See also report (30 August 1945) in BAB, NS 30/39.
156. Lommatzsch, "Aktennotiz" (Ratibor, 4 September 1943), TsDAVO, 3676/1/16, fols 144–171, and notes on holdings sent to different buildings (10 September 1943), 3676/2/23, fols. 50–53 (copy—3676/2/22, fols. 49–52).
157. Destruction suffered on 22 November 1943 included part of the ERR administrative archive, in ERR report: CDJC, CXXIXa, 15.
158. One of the few contemporary archival references to the ERR presence in Ratibor comes from the monastic chronicle, as reported to me by Belgian specialist Jacques Lust.
159. Pictures of the former synagogue, including one of it burning on 10 November 1938 (i.e., Kristallnacht), are in Newerla, Ratibor einst und jetzt, pp. 194–96.
160. ERR report (30 August 1943) is in BAB, NS 30/39; see additional reports about transfers to buildings in Ratibor: TsDAVO, 3676/2/19 and 22.
161. Lommatzsch report (17 September 1943), TsDAVO, 3676/2/19, fols. 23–30, and no. 22, fols. 49–50.
162. See ERR report and description, with full floor plans, of Pless castle, last owned by Prince Johann Henryk XVII von Pless, Graf von Hochberg (9 September 1943) in TsDAVO, 3676/2/22, fols. 55–56; and additional Lommatzsch report, TsDAVO, 3676/2/23, fol. 80. One ERR report gives an address in Pless of Schädlitzerstr., and mentions barracks housing ERR operations; see BAB, NS 30/220. See also "Pless" in Weczerka, Schlesian, pp. 410–13.
163. I first visited Pszczyna with Ukrainian colleagues in 1991, when the castle was closed. Thanks to Polish colleagues I visited in 1999 with a Dutch colleague; the museum director kindly showed us around, told us what little they knew about the wartime, but they knew nothing about ERR operations in Ratibor/Pless. A local account of the Pless family and castle during the war mentions only the RMbO—Jerzy Polak, "Ostatnie lata rezydencji pszczyskiej (1939–1945)," in Muzeum wntrz zabytkowych w Pszczynie, Materiay 4 (Pszczyna, 1987): 208–26, esp. 218–21.
164. Wunder report (10 December 1943), TsDAVO, 3676/2/22, fol. 5.
165. Wunder report (10 December 1943), TsDAVO, 3676/2/22, fol. 5; Lommatzsch report (20 September 1943), 3676/2/23, fol. 80. We have a good sense of major collections in Pless from Lommatzsch’s December 1944 evacuation plan (Ratibor, 13 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/50.
166. His official letter of appointment, signed by Utikal (Berlin, 9 November 1943), is in BAB, NS 30/47. More of his personal and family correspondence has recently surfaced in BAB, some of it earlier retained in the GDR, e.g., NS 30/208.
167. Waldenburg memorandum (22 February 1944), TsDAVO, 3676/2/23, fol. 12.
168. Lommatzsch reports (17 September 1943), TsDAVO, 3676/2/19, fol. 27, and (28 October 1943), TsDAVO, 3676/2/22, fol. 81.
169. Report on "Zweite Arbeitstagung des ERR in Ratibor am 5–7 mai 1944" features the opening presentation by Rudolf Proksch, BAB, NS 30/211.
170. Several drafts of the exhibition plans are preserved with the ERR report "Arbeitsschau des Einsatzstabes Reichsleiter Rosenberg, Mai 1944," BAB, NS 30/56. De Vries reproduces visual displays in Sonderstab Musik and translates fragments of the text (pp. 107–115); the originals are in the Bildarchiv in BAK. Regarding the document with Roosevelt’s address to a Masonic conference and the letter of Churchill to Léon Blum regarding the Masonic community, see NS 30/215. Regarding Roosevelt, see also the RSHA Amt VII publication by Erich Ehlers, Freimaurer arbeiten für Roosevelt: Freimaurerische Dokumente über die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Roosevelt und der Freimaurerei (Berlin: Nordland-Verlag, 1943).
171. The British MFA&A "Preliminary Report on ZBHS" discusses shipping based on ERR documentation and interrogations in Tanzenberg. ERR stamps from as late as November 1944 indicate the full name was Buchleitstelle der ZBHS.
172. Ruhbaum appears in "Sonderberichte" (1 October–13 December 1943), BAB, NS 8/267, fols. 139–140; earlier his name appears as member of ERR Sonderstab Bibliotheksaufbau in the Netherlands in BAB, NS 30/15. Another report indicates involvement of Frau Irene Wolff (fol. 120).
173. British MFA&A, "Preliminary Report on ZBHS," pp. 7–8. ZBHS librarians under interrogation differed as to whether all books first went through Ratibor.
174. "Positive Einsatzstellen Paris," TsDAVO, 3676/1/172, fol. 277.
175. Lommatzsch report (Ratibor, 13 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/50.
176. ERR report, "Unterlagen für den Viertaljahresbericht" (1.7.1943 bis 30.9.1943); copy in Institute für Zeitgeschichte (Munich), MA 244, another in RIOD, Rosenberg files, 265, box 3; both probably from U.S. microfilms. Papers of Louise Weiss were later returned to Paris from RGVA, but many of her books are in Minsk (from Ratibor).
177. Wunder, "Arbeitsbericht" (Ratibor, 7 October 1943), copy in IfZ, MA 244.
178. Wunder, ERR quarterly report "Vierteljahresbericht für die Zeit vom 1.4.1944–30.6.1944" (Ratibor, 7 July 1944), BAB, NS 30/55; CDJC, XVC–225. De Vries reproduces a facsimile of the first pages in Sonderstab Musik, p. 63.
179. YIVO Archives, RG 215 (Berlin Collection), G–223, and TsDAVO, 3676/2/1. Haefner, named elsewhere as working with Western materials in Ratibor, signed fifteen of the twenty-three surveys prepared in 1944; others were signed by Backer, Gildayart Fögel, Penner (three), Frau Röck (two), and [Dora] Salaman (three). See fn. 90 regarding the other surveys prepared by Cruse.
180. "Die organization des Einsatzstabes in den besetzten Gebieten," p. 8 of what appears to be the final copy of exhibition plans, "Arbeitsschau des ERR, Mai 1944," BAB, NS 30/56.
181. The full list of French archival fonds returned from Moscow is being published for the first time in Grimsted and Hoogewoud, Return from Russia.
182. Lommatzsch report (Ratibor, 13 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/50.
183. Dr. Harry Thomson, "Vierteljahresbericht der Ostbücherei (1.1–31.3.44.)" (Ratibor, 17 April 1944), BAB, NS 30/55. The same file has Thomson’s subsequent quarterly report (Ratibor, 10 July 1944) and a series of other ERR reports on the Ostbücherei during 1943 and 1944, giving statistics about cataloguing, arrivals, staff, and outlying depositories. Surviving photographs of ERR library operations in Ratibor are reproduced in Hoogewoud, "The Nazi Looting of Books and Its American ‘Antithesis,’" pp. 158–92 (esp. 177), from an album depicting ERR activities in NACP Still Pictures, 260–PHOAD. Other ERR Ratibor photographs from BAK are reproduced in de Vries, Sonderstab Musik, passim.
184. ERR report (Ratibor, 14 February 1944), BAB, NS 30/22, fols. 246–247. More in Grimsted, "The Odyssey of the Petliura Library," pp. 189–91; and idem, Odyssey of the Turgenev Library, n. 85.
185. One ERR report: (Ratibor, 8 February 1944), elaborates this point: BAB, NS 30/22, fol. 252v.
186. Report of Herbert Lommatzsch, "Aufstellung über Bestände, nach Lagerplätzen geordnet" (13 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/50. A note records one Petliura Library crate with a life-sized dummy of a Ukrainian man in uniform (likely from the library museum) held in ERR headquarters cellar in the Franciscan Monastery (Sudetenstr. 27). There were suggestions of moving some less used books from the Turgenev Library to the Paulsgrund repository, but in December 1944 the only books listed there were from Minsk.
187. The Berlin Collection (RG 215) in the YIVO Research Institute in New York City, boxes 30–32, Occ 9, 10, E 42, E 3a 20–35, holds extensive original files documenting ERR library plunder from Belorussia (photocopies in BAB, NS 30).
188. See monthly summary, February and March 1944 (1 April 1944), TsDAVO, 3676/1/171, fols. 333–335; BAB, NS 30/167.
189. Report of Lommatzsch (13 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/50.
190. ERR report (8 October 1943), BAB, NS 30/167, fols. 18ff.; (December 1943–January 1944, TsDAVO, 3676/1/171, fol. 349. See initial Horki (Gorkii) library report "Bericht über den Einsatz in Gorki (Bez. Orzcha)" (20 December 1942), BAB, NS 30/83, a photocopy of one in the series of special Einsatzkommando Gorki reports (May–September 1943), YIVO, RG 215, box 32, folder 32.
191. Three preserved wagon lists cover the January–March shipments from Minsk: for example, "Abtransporte in der Zeit vom 31.1 bis 5.2.1944," in YIVO Archives, RG 215; ERR records in BAB, NS 30, esp. folders 55 and 167, and in TsDAVO in Kyiv, hold copies, variants, and related documents. "Niamiha" was a street in a then heavily Jewish area of Minsk; reportedly the ERR collected Jewish books in a building there.
192. See series of ERR HAG-Mitte reports regarding evacuations—(Minsk 10 May 1944), fols. 7–8, (4 April 1944), fol. 9 (14 July 1944), fol. 11. ERR quarterly report, 1 January–4 March 44 (17 April 1944), BAB, NS 30/55. See also earlier plan signed by Lommatzsch, "Arbeitsplan für die Ergänzung der Ostbücherei" (6 April 1943), fols. 35–39, and evacuation report signed by Sporket—(9 March 1943), fols. 82–86.
193. See the annotated list of documents relating to Kyiv libraries during the war prepared by Liubov Dubrovina et al.: Biblioteki Kyieva pid chas natsists’koï.
194. An ERR report, "Arbeitsberichte" (Ratibor, 21 February 1944), BAB, NS 30/55, also contains weekly reports for the Ostbücherei, November 1943–August 1944, and Redlich’s reports (January–February 1944) about the Ostbücherei portion still in Berlin.
195. ERR quarterly report, 1 January–4 March 44 (17 April 1944), BAB, NS 30/55; Lommatzsch report, 13 December 1944, NS 30/50. Details about shipping in reports in Kyiv, TsDAVO.
196. Wunder, "Arbeitsberichte" (Ratibor, 7 December 1943), IfZ, MA 244.
197. ERR quarterly report 1 January–31 March 1944 (17 April 1944), BAB, NS 30/55.
198. ERR report (14 September 1944), BAB, NS 30/53.
199. Lommatzsch report (13 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/50. Figure is up from 83,000 serial and newspaper titles in another mimeographed Ostbücherei report, "Der ERR am Jahresschluss 1944" (Ratibor, 16 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/211, but the categories covered are unclear, perhaps explaining the discrepancy.
200. ERR report, BAB, NS 30/58. More detailed reports in same file cover NR Abteilung and work at "Villa Nova."
201. Boris Souvarine, Staline: Aperçu historique du bolchévisme (Paris: Plon, 1935). Harvard University’s Houghton Library holds Souvarine’s copy on fine paper bound in red morocco with original printed wrappers.
202. "Pariser Einsatzstellen aus Schildes Kartothek," TsDAVO, 3676/1/172, fol. 276 notes seizure of three crates of Souvarine’s library (SOS 1–3).
203. Wunder to Prof. Dr. H. H. Schaeder (Ratibor, 10 November 1944), CDJC, CXL–116.
204. ERR report from Ratibor (7 December 1944) affirms thirty Souvarine library crates unpacked (SOS 1–31, with SOS 16 missing) 5–6 December, BAB, NS 30/50.
205. "Der ERR am Jahresschluss 1944" (Ratibor, 16 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/211; category division is unclear, possibly explaining discrepancies. The plans for cataloging Ostbücherei Western-language section were recently added to ERR records in BAB: NS, 30/212.
206. "Die organization des Einsatzstabes in den besetzten Gebieten," in "Arbeitsschau des ERR, May 1944," BAB, NS 30/55.
207. Thomson, "Vierteljahresbericht vom 1.April bis zum 30.Juni.1944" (Ratibor, 10 July 1944); and "Die Organisation des Einsatzstabes in den besetzten Gebieten," in "Arbeitsschau des ERR, May 1944," BAB, NS 30/55.
208. Several files held earlier with ERR materials in Potsdam were recently added to the main ERR fond in Berlin-Lichterfelde, BAB, NS 30. Files with Ostbücherei catalogues and fragmentary accession lists are in NS 30/217–219.
209. BAB, NS 30/220–221. Ostbücherei correspondence files: no. 220 (30 November 1943–18 January 1945), outgoing, with internal register; and no. 221 (10 November 1944–17 January 1945), incoming.
210. Omeljan Pritsak to Bibliothek der ERR, Ratibor in Schlesien (1 December 1943), BAB, NS 30/220–221. Three issues of two journal titles were located and OB registration numbers indicated, but three (or alternate fourth) books he needed were not located. When I gave Pritsak a copy of the surviving postcard he was amazed.
211. I treat Troppau in "The Fate of Ukrainian Cultural Treasures," pp. 68–69; a chart prepared for the Reichsarchiv by Dr. Walter Vogel appears in facsimile in the Ukrainian edition, pp. 80–86; republished in German by Wilhelm Lenz and Klaus-D. Postupa, "Im Zweiten Weltkrieg verlagerte Archivbestände aus dem Osten—Eine Übersicht des ‘Kommissars für den Archivschutz,’" Mitteilungen aus dem Bundesarchiv 4, no. 1 (1996): 19–26. An expedition to Troppau and outlying locations in 1991 turned up more documentation: Grimsted, H. V. Boriak, and N. M. Iakovenko, "Memorial’na arkheohrafichna ekspeditsiia po Chekho-Slavachchyni: Slidami kul’turnykh tsinnostei, vyvezenykh z Ukraïny pid chas Druhoï svitovoï vi$ny," Ukraïns’kyi arkheohrafichnyi shchorichnyk 2 (1993): 437–45.
212. Lommatzsch, "Aufstellung über Bestande," mentions 380 crates (Ratibor, 13 December 1944), NS 30/50. Apparently at least some of them reached their destination, as postwar reports from Czechoslovakia mention materials from Pskov and Radziwi materials from Belorussia.
213. See full documentation in Grimsted, Odyssey of the Smolensk Archive, esp. pp. 20–23.
214. Its dispatch from Cracow by freight car to Ratibor is confirmed by Hülle, "Halbmonatsberichte 9.–31.Okt.1943" (Cracow, 2 November 1943), with copy of shipping list—"29 Kisten 64 Schachteln und 343 Aktenpakete," and "1 crate of books and atlases and 6 large crates [Verschläge] with paintings—‘die schon im Besitz des ERR waren,’" TsDAVO, 3676/1/225, fol. 296. Hülle to ERR HAG-Ukraine (8 November 1943), fol. 288, and his monthly report, November 1943 (fol. 268) in the same file, confirm shipment to Ratibor with Dnipropetrovsk material on 5 November 1943.
215. Winter report, 3–4 June 1942, TsDAVO, 3206/5/2, folio 631; Winter’s report: "Das Ukrainische Archivwesen im Kriegsjahr 1942," Mitteilungsblatt des Generaldirektors der Staatsarchive 8 (1942):107.
216. In Dnipropetrovsk Lüddeckens found the NKVD evacuation order, dated 18 July 1941, with instruction prioritizing materials to be destroyed. Lüddeckens’ translation (18 July 1941) is appended to his report (Dnipropetrovsk, 15 July 1942), TsDAVO, 3206/5/21, fol. 27.
217. Winter (ERR-AG Ost Ukraine), monthly report (June 1942), TsDAVO, 3676/1/26, fols. 37–39.
218. See Winter on discovery of Dnipropetrovsk archive (3–4 June 1942), TsDAVO, 3206/5/2, fol. 631; detailed inventories by Lüddeckens, "Parteiarchiv des Oblasts Dnjepropetrowsk Repertorium des Fonds Nr. 1—Dnjepropetrowsker Ablast [sic]-Kommitee der Kommunistischen Partei der Bolschewiken der Ukraine (1932–1941)" (typescript, 197 pp.) (22 February 1943), TsDAVO, 3206/5/21, fols. 373–582 (2nd copy—fols. 586–784); TsDAVO, 3206/5/14, fols. 1–150 (3rd copy). Copies of German documents were destroyed by the Party Archive in Dnipropetrovsk in the late 1980s—as reported to me by Dnipropetrovsk archivist Dmytro Meshkov.
219. Winter to RKU (3 December 1943), TsDAVO, 3206/5/8, fols. 160–162; Winter report (30 October–7 November 1943, fol. 182.
220. Lommatzsch report (13 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/50. Dnipropetrovsk files identified in poster showcasing ERR Ratibor activities: de Vries, Sonderstab Musik, p. 114; another copy is preserved in album in NACP, Still Pictures Division, RG 260–PHOAD–III–6.
221. TsDAVO, 3676/1/225, fols. 252–253, 258–259.
222. ERR quarterly report, 1 July–30 September 1942 (Berlin, 9 October 1942), CDJC, CXLI–147, fol. 3. A more detailed report by Lüddeckens resides among ERR materials in TsDAVO, fond 3676, reported to me by Dmytro Meshkov.
223. See reports of ERR AG-South Ukraine head Bruno Skolaude to ERR (Berlin, June 1942), TsDAVO, 3676/1/229, fols. 29 and 31; "Beschlagnahmung eines Parteiarchives in Kirowograd" (fols. 33–34), and "Aktenvermerk" (fols. 29–30).
224. A number of reports mention the collection, e.g., quarterly report from Kyiv noting that Dr. Martin Granzin was working on a "collection" with 3,000 documents: "Vierteljahresbericht" (1 July–30 September 1942) (Berlin, 9 October 1942), CDJC, CXLI–147, fol. 3.
225. Grimsted, "The Odyssey of the Petliura Library," references collecting efforts in several locations.
226. Two inventories prepared by Lange (25 February 1942) and Granzin (8 September 1942) note a finding aid in preparation—TsDAVO, 3676/1/56, fols. 1 and 2. Parts of their registration file are missing and shipping data is not indicated. Another ERR quarterly report by Lommatzsch (Berlin, 9 October 1942) lists 3,000 documents (1917–1923)—CDJC, CXLI–147.
227. Lommatzsch ERR report (13 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/50, mentions this collection in Ratibor (Flurstr. 12). Poster in de Vries, Sonderstab Musik, pp.114.
228. Wunder to Mommsen (Berlin, 6 June 1942), TsDAVO, 3676/1/136, fol. 37; and Dr. Nerling, ERR Sonderkommando im Operationsgebiet der Heeresgruppe-Mitte, to ERR Stabsfürung, Berlin (Smolensk, 17 May 1942), "Arbeitsverhältnisse in Smolensk," YIVO, RG 215 (Berlin Collection), box 32, file 32 (photstat in BAB, NS 30/195). Further details are in Grimsted, Odyssey of the Smolensk Archive, esp. pp. 23–43, updated in Grimsted, "The Smolensk Archive Returns," in Marianna Tax Choldin, Ekaterina Genieva, and Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, eds., The Return of the "Smolensk Archive."
229. ERR file fragments regarding the Smolensk Archive remain in Vilnius, LVCA, R–633/1/30.
230. Pirson (Obereinsatzführerin), "Bericht über den Stand der Arbeiten im Smolensker Parteiarchiv" (17 March 1945), documents 159 and 160 from the Rosenberg File under the Office of Chief Counsel for War Crimes (IMT), from CDJC in Paris. Deputy RGASPI Director Valerii N. Shepelev kindly alerted me to a photostat (fond 71/5/1088, fols. 115–120), missing first page. See Grimsted, Odyssey of the Smolensk Archive, pp. 33–42, and "The Smolensk Archive Returns."
231. BAB, NS 30/78. A registration sheet indicates that Wunder received a copy in Ratibor.
232. Müller, "Monatsbericht für November 1944" (Pless, 1 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/55.
233. Undated fragmentary report, CDJC, CXL–41. Preparatory plan (May 1944) listed a higher figure for exhibit of ERR achievements, spring 1944: BAB, NS 30/56.
234. See earlier subject headings in Ratibor, NS 30/61.
235. Ukrainian archival chief Hennadii Boriak and I initially found and surveyed the Koblenz collection. The gift to Ukraine is described in Grimsted, Trophies of War and Empire, p. 462.
236. NACP, Still Pictures, RG 242, RPG, 1905–1943.
237. ERR Ostbücherei report (October–November 1944), BAB, NS 30/29.
238. According to a July 1946 report, Pshenichnyi, "Dokladnaia zapiska o prodelannoi rabote TsGAFFKD MVD UkrSSR za 1–e polugodie 1946 g." (13 July 1946), GA RF, 5325/2/1620, fol. 113.
239. Wunder, "Arbeitsbericht der Abteilung Erfassung und Sichtung" (Ratibor, 7 October 1943), IfZ, MA 244. Corcos’s name is on one of the spring 1941 ERR Paris confiscation lists, but none of his papers surfaced in the USSR. Louise Weiss’s papers were later returned to Paris from RGVA.
240. "Aufstellung der Namen der Pariser Akten" (Ratibor, 3 April 1944), BAB, NS 30/56. [Brunno] Helfrich, also on ERR staff, signed.
241. "Aufstellung über Bestände" (13 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/50.
242. ERR report (Ratibor, 14 February 1944), BAB, NS 30/22, fol. 146.
243. ERR inventory noted "Friedrich Adler—3 crates without code numbers from Brussels" (Berlin, 5 December 1941), TsDAVO, 3676/2/1, fol. 1. Detailed ERR report on duc de Guise’s materials in Kyiv: "Duc de Guise et Comte de Paris (Jean d’Orleans), Manoir d’Anjou, Brussels," TsDAVO, 3674/1/1, fols. 140–188.
244. Wunder, "Arbeitsbericht" (Ratibor, 7 October 1943), IfZ, MA 244.
245. See Józef Stpie, "Losy akt Midzynarodowego Instytutu Historii Socjalnej w Amsterdamie w wietle informacji komisji powoanej do zbadania ‘archiwum holenderskiego’ z lutego 1955 r.," Teki archiwalne 3 (25) (1998), 317–24.
246. See Roth, The IISH as a Pawn, esp. 19–20. See also Karl Heinz Roth, "Searching for Lost Archives: The Role of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront in the Pillage of West European Trade-Union Archives," International Review of Social History 34 (1989): 272–86; and Karl Heinz Roth and Karsten Linne, "Searching for Lost Archives: New Documentation on the Pillage of Trade Union Archives and Libraries by the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (1938–1941) and on the Fate of Trade Union Documents in the Postwar Era," International Review of Social History 38 (1993): 163–207; on Silesian shipments see pp. 169–71; the author was then unaware of additional sources in Kyiv and Moscow. Most IISH materials went to Moscow from Wölfelsdorf with RSHA collections, although some may have arrived from Polish CP sources.
247. "Handakten Dr. Wunder" (ca. 1922–1944), BAB, NS 30/48. See also Wunder’s four-page essay "Die Heirats-Politik der Rothschilds" (Berlin, 22 March 1943), BAB, NS 30/107, and report on genealogy of "Familie Rothschild" to Dr. Maier, emphasizing their Italian connections (Ratibor, 30 May 1944), BAB, NS 30/32.
248. Official letter from Chief of Archival Administration of UkrSSR Pilkevich to director of TsDIA UkrSSR Oleinik (4 August 1953) complaining about non-fulfillment of 4 April decree. Materials were "packed and ready to go already in 1950" but remained "under the stairwell" until July 1953; "no current TsDIA report accounted for them," hence unless transfer occurred by 1 December 1953 "major unpleasant consequences" would result —TsDAVO, 4703/2/17, fol. 69. I have not yet found follow-up report or evidence of shipment before 1956 among TsDIA URSR or Ukrainian Archival Administration administrative records. Archivists in the successor TsKhDIK admitted finding incoming reports of TsGOA accessions from Ukraine in 1956, but they are classified.
249. Bondarevskii presented a list of thirty-eight fonds (Kyiv, November1947) with memorandum to Gudzenko (11 July 1947), TsDAVO, 4703/2/10, fols. 19–20; with separate list—"Spisok i kratkoe soderzhanie fondov i grupp dokumentov na frantsuzskom iazyke, vyiavlennykh v fonde ‘Aenzatsshtaba Rozenberga’" (compiled by Vaisbergan?), signed by A. Bondarevskii (Kyiv, 26 November 1947), TsDAVO, 4703/2/10, fols. 33–40, 51–52 (cc fols. 41–50).
250. Most of the records of Le Grand Orient de France, including associated lodges throughout Europe and North Africa (fond 113k with over 3,500 file units), came to TsGOA from Wölfelsdorf, but ten kgs. of related files listed in Kyiv as received with ERR records were later transferred to TsGOA. A half kg. of files (1938) from Club du Faubourg that came to TsGOA via Kyiv was incorporated in the existing fond (fond 230k; 1910–1940; 498 units). Both fonds were returned to France in March 2000.
251. Only one kg. of Levy-Ullmann’s (1870–1940?) personal papers came to TsGOA from Kyiv in 1955–1956 (according to RGVA opis’ [finding aid] introduction for fond 233k) (167 units); another portion arrived the same year from TsGAOR BSSR (Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic) in Minsk. Seventeen items in Émile Ullmann’s fond (RGVA, fond 234k; 1876–1934) undoubtedly were the same four kgs. listed in Kyiv. Both returned to France in March 2000.
252. The Kyiv list records one kg. of documents relating to Léon Blum (mostly newspaper clippings 1935–1936), but 425 units (fond 46k, 1920–1940) had already arrived in Moscow from Wölfesdorf; fragments added later from other sources brought total to ca. 1,400 units (returned to France in March 2000).
253. Poster in de Vries, Sonderstab Musik, p. 223.
254. Poster in de Vries, Sonderstab Musik, p. 223.
255. Inventory of Rothschild files in TsDAVO, 4703/1/193, fols. 165–172.
256. According to RGVA records, transfer of Rothschild papers to Moscow from Kyiv (TsGAOR UkrSSR) occurred in 1960, but most (fond 58k with 1,398 units by 1985, dating from 1816 to 1940) came to TsGOA from Glavarkhiv MVD SSSR in 1945, presumably from Wölfesdorf. All but five units returned to France in 1993–1994, five large remaining files (received from TsGAOR SSSR in 1989) consisting of business correspondence and political or personal papers (1912–1940) returned to Paris in March 2000, now in the Rothschild Archive, London.
257. Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov, "Moscow’s Trove of Bank Records," Wall Street Journal, 5 March 1997, claimed that Russians still secretly held the S.M. Rothschild & Sons bank records from Vienna. In fact, Frank Trentmann described those records, open to researchers since 1992, in "New Sources on an Old Family: The Rothschild Papers at the Special Archive, Moscow—and a Letter from Metternich," Financial History Review 2, no. 1 (April 1995): 73–79. Regarding their migration and transfer to Rothschild Archive, London, in 2001, see Victor Gray, "The Return of the Austrian Rothschild Archives," in Return from Russia.
258. Small guide to fonds of Belgian provenance in RGVA, published first in Russian—Fondy bel’giiskogo proiskhozhdeniia: Annotirovannyi ukazatel’, comp. T. A. Vasil’eva and A. S. Namazova; ed. M. M. Mukhamedzhanov (Moscow: Rosarkhiv; TsKhIDK; Institut vseobshchei istorii RAN, 1995); Flemish version appeared in 1997. See also survey compiled by Wouter Steenhaut and Michel Vermote—AMSAB Tijdingen 16 (Summer 1992), extra number: Mission to Moscow: Belgische socialistische archieven in Rusland. I appreciate the assistance of archivists in TsKhIDK (now part of RGVA) and Amsab in correlating Belgian listings.
259. Documents from Masonic lodge "Grand Orient de Belgique" (1834–1935) (1 kg.) were probably added to fond 114 in TsGOA, comprising Belgian Masonic material. ERR report about seizure of thirty-one crates of books and archives from "Le Grand Orient de Belgique" in Brussels (6–8 rue de Persil) in October 1940 is in a second ERR fond in Kyiv, TsDAVO, 3674/1, fols. 1–34, with packing lists and descriptions of other Belgian Masonic confiscations.
260. Group of Brussels Zionist organizations’ materials (two kgs.), added to fond 160 in TsGOA.
261. Six kgs. went to TsGOA (fond 223; 37 units; 1929–1939), returned to Brussels in 2002. Documents (1/2 kg.) relating to Grégoire Koulisher, editor of Le Peuple in Brussels, undoubtedly added to fonds 19 and 109.
262. A subsequent memorandum featured predominantly German materials with a list of forty-three fonds over the signature of TsGIA director Oleinik and division head Skorokhodova (8 January 1948), TsDAVO, 4703/2/15. See list of fonds with transfer papers to Moscow (29 March 1957) in TsDAVO, 4703/1/136, fols. 39–51.
263. Official excerpt from Commission protocol no. 026 dated 30 June 1953. Brief memo from V. Konovalova to deputy TsGIA UkrSSR director Myshak (15 July 1953) noted accompanying sixteen-page list (now missing) indicating files to be destroyed, TsDAVO, 4703/2/29, fols. 1–3. An eight-page list (in two copies) of files destroyed is found among TsDIAK appraisal commission records for 1953, TsDAVO, 4703/1/136, fols. 113–121. Annotations repeat 1947 and 1948 lists of fragmentary foreign archives, including weight, separate from ERR records in Kyiv.
264. I appreciate the assistance of TsKhIDK archivists in verifying these lists in October 1996. Considerable rearrangement occurred after transfer.
265. See lists of French fonds to be transferred with cover memorandum from Sheludchenko to S. D. Pil’kevych (Kyiv, 13 February 1956), TsDAVO, 4703/1/193, fols. 21–23, 77, and (3 April 1956) fols. 105–108. File-level inventories for many of the fonds are in the same folder; see inventory of Bordeaux files in fols. 176–180.
266. Regarding ERR music operations, including move to Ratibor and Schloss Langenau (near Hirshberg), see de Vries, Sonderstab Musik, esp. pp. 50–54, 57–58, 62–63, 75–76, and (with illustrations) pp. 107–17. De Vries’ findings corroborate mine regarding importance of Ratibor, although he assumed a larger music unit than existed and had not realized before our 1999 visit that Langenau was not part of the Ratibor center. We used some of the same documentation, now augmented by ERR reports in Kyiv.
267. Lommatzsch report (4 September 1943), TsDAVO, 3676/2/23, fols. 43–44. Lommatzsch was accompanied by ERR officer Wagner. The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century castle, originally built by the von Langenow family, subsequently changed hands several times. Weczerka, "Langenau, Ober und Nieder," in Schlesien, p. 266. Under usual Nazi practice, some of the family stayed on through the war’s end. In October 1999, the young Polish businessman owner was actively renovating the castle.
268. See above regarding correspondence of Gerigk with Maier of Verona ERR office.
269. Weczerka, "Langenau," p. 266. Source of that report not given, but present owner repeated the same story in 1999. No Soviet reports of reconnaissance or transport have surfaced.
270. Details about shipments from Silesia and Filipov’s brigade in Chapter 7 of Grimsted, Odyssey of the Turgenev Library.
271. Documentation from Filipov brigade and Filipov’s diary available in RGALI, 962/6/1207. Incoming trophy musical instruments are listed in related files of the Committee on Art, but without indication of source.
272. See reports on "trophy" music transfers to the USSR in German translation, Die Trophäenkommissionen der Roten Armee: Eine Dokumentensammlung zur Verschleppung von Büchern aus deutschen Bibliotheken, eds. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann and Ingo Kolasa (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996)=Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie (special issue) 64, pp. 218–32, nos. 37–40 (originals classified in RGASPI [then RTsKhIDNI], 17/132/418).
273. Willem de Vries identified several musical scores of Darius Milhaud during our 1999 visit.
274. Thanks to Soviet documents, I could trace and verify a collection of trophy music scores in the Glinka Museum in 1991. Seizure of one crate from the Artur Rubinstein collection (plundered from Paris by ERR) is mentioned in Trophy Brigade report: "Otchet o rabote ... s 6 maia po 31 dek. 194[5] g.," signed by Manevskii (31 March 1946), GA RF, A-534/2/10, fol. 48 (another copy is in A-534/2/1, fol. 103); in Die Trophäenkommissionen der Roten Armee, p. 105 (doc. 17). See the report of a group of German music specialists permitted to visit in 2004: Helmut Hell, Ingo Kolasa, Wolfgang Rathert, and Willem de Vries, "Wiederentdeckt—Eine Sammlung von Musikhandschriften und Musikdrucken deutscher Provenienz am Staatlichen Zentralen Glinka-Museum für Musikkultur in Moskau," Forum Musikbibliothek 24 (2003/04), pp. 416–25; details about seven scores belonging to Rubinstein are on pp. 422–23.
275. I refer to all three collections in "Bach Is Back in Berlin: The Return of the Sing-Akademie Archive from Ukraine in the Context of Displaced Cultural Treasures and Restitution Politics," Spoils of War: International Newsletter 8 (June 2003): 67–104. Electronic version (revised and illustrated): http://www.huri.harvard.edu/work7.html (June 2003).
276. See documents in Die Trophäenkommissionen der Roten Armee, n. 274 above.
277. Lommatzsch ERR report (13 December 1944), BAB, NS 30/50. Carlsbad is mentioned as a prospective evacuation site for part of Smolensk archive, but no evidence suggests materials were taken there.
278. Wunder, "Meldung an den Stabsführer" (Staffelstein, 23 February 1945), BAB, NS 30/50.
279. Gunter Schöbel, "Eine kleine Geste an die Ukraine: Rückgabe von verschleppten Büchern," in Displaced Books: Bücherrückgabe aus zweierlei Sicht: Beiträge und Materialien zur Bestandsgeschichte deutscher Bibliotheken im Zusammenhang von NS-Zeit und Krieg (Hannover: Laurentius Sonderheft, 1999), pp. 68–74.
280. Many ERR records in Kyiv (TsDAVO, fond 3676) appear to be from Berlin or Ratibor. An official transfer document from the Committee on Cultural and Educational Institutions of the Ukrainian SSR (12 December 1945), TsDAVO, 4703/2/3, fol. 1, records files constituting the first inventory (opys 1), transferred from Dresden to Central State Historical Archive (TsDIA URSR) in December 1945. See Grimsted, Trophies of War and Empire, ch. 8, and my forthcoming survey of ERR records.
281. See U.S. Army report on removal of ERR materials from Staffelstein and Castle Banz (8 December 1945), BAK, B 323/550. Wunder’s office files are found among Bundesarchiv ERR records in Berlin-Lichterfelde, BAB, NS 30: e.g. file numbers 47–50, 107–117, 144, and 145. Regarding U.S. Army recovery of ERR materials after von Berg and his wife’s suicide see also Grimsted, Odyssey of the Smolensk Archive, pp. 52–53, and "The Return of the Smolensk Archive."
282. ERR Stabsführer Gerhard Utikal to Rosenberg, "Aktenvermerk für den Reichsleiter—Dienstgut in Oberschlesien" (25 January 1945), BAB, NS 8/261; copy in NS 30/7.