Where they have burned books, they will end in burning humans
Heinrich Heine
OPPRESSION
The year 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, marked the beginning of one of the most traumatic periods in Jewish history, a time of terror and increasing repression. The Jewish Seminary in Breslau was not immune to these developments. The Nazis limited the number of students, and many lecturers left the country under duress. The Seminary building and library were partly damaged during the Night of Broken Glass in 1938. The Nazis banned classes and imprisoned many students in the Buchenwald concentration camp. The students that were not deported completed their education thanks to secret examinations held in their teachers’ homes. In the Seminary’s records from February 21, 1939, Dr. Albert Lewkowitz noted that students Hoch and Hoffman passed their exams on Jewish law. That date marked the last day of the Seminary’s existence.
CONFISCATION
The Fraenkel Foundation Board of Trustees attempted to rescue the Seminary and library by negotiating with the Nazi authorities. In order to avoid confiscation of its collections and premises, members of the board suggested the establishment of a Jewish museum and archival collection managed by the German authorities. The proposal was turned down. A decree issued by SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler in March, 1939 ordered that an inventory of the Seminary’s library be prepared. A few months later, the Seminary’s property was confiscated in its entirety.
DISPERSAL
The books of the Seminary, along with 46,000 other books confiscated from Jews in Breslau, were transported to Berlin. The looted Judaica was incorporated into the main library of the Central Reich Security Office as part of the “enemy resource collection.” It remained there until 1943, when Allied bombings forced the Nazis transfer it to various venues in Lower Silesia, southern Germany, and Bohemia. The Seminary library collection was further dispersed amid the wartime turmoil. One of the book transports arrived in Prague, where the Nazis are said to have planned to establish a „museum of an extinct race.”
HOMEWARD BOUND
In the 1980s, books stored in the National Library of the Czech Republic were recognized as having been part of the Saraval Collection. It was not until 2001, however, that Ronald S. Lauder, head of the Commission for Art Recovery, notified Jerzy Kichler, erstwhile chairman of the Jewish Religious Community of Wroclaw (Breslau before the war) about the discovery in Prague. Negotiations between the Polish and Czech governments regarding recovery of the collection by the Wroclaw Jewish Community as the heir to the Jewish Breslau Seminary started a year later. The Czech National Library held an exhibition of the surviving manuscripts and incunabula before sending the collection to Poland, and the collection was digitalized. In December 2004, pursuant to international agreements and in the presence of the presidents of both countries, 34 manuscripts and six incunabula were turned over to Polish representatives. The return to Wroclaw marked a new stage in the history of the Saraval Collection.
JEWISH STUDIES IN WROCLAW
Zacharias Frankel, in a letter he wrote about the Saraval Collection, called the Seminary a guardian of scholarly works. Although the Seminary was destroyed, the mission of protecting the valuable remnants of the Saraval Collection is now in the hands of a new generation of Jewish studies scholars in Wroclaw. The postwar Jewish Studies program at Wroclaw University was founded by Professor Jerzy Woronczak (1923-2003). It was thanks to his efforts that a Jewish studies research center was established in 1993 at the Faculty of Polish Philology; the center expanded into a two-year program in 2005, and then, in 2016, into a Department of Jewish Studies headed by Prof. Marcin Wodziński.
GENEROUS DONORS
The Saraval Collection is the most valuable collection of Wroclaw Judaica, but it is not the only collection. The Jewish Studies library now contains more than 10,000 volumes on Jewish history, culture, religion, arts, history of literature, and belles-lettres. The first librarian was Jan Paweł Woronczak, Ph.D., who was succeeded by Monika Jaremków, currently head of the Jewish Studies Department library. The collection continues to grow due to the generosity of donors in Poland and around the world.
PRESERVING THE HERITAGE
The Saraval Collection is a witness to Jewish history. Perusing its precious volumes, readers literally take the past into their own hands to get a glimpse of Hebrew literature and the religious and intellectual life of the greater Jewish community. The collection also records the history of a major rabbinical center. Yet the historical perspective is only part of the story. The return of the lost manuscripts and incunabula was merely the first step in making the collection more accessible for scholars. The books must also be protected against external threats to their material existence. Many copies require conservation so that their valuable heritage can be preserved for future generations.
FUTURE RESEARCH
These manuscripts and old books are an excellent resource for researchers. While earlier studies dealt with individual positions, the collection is a rewarding opportunity for historians of religion and literature, paleographers, and art historians studying text illumination and ornamentation.
DIGITALIZATION PROJECT
The return of the Saraval Collection was a rare success in the restitution of cultural property after World War II. At the same time, the vast majority of the books of the Breslau Seminary remain dispersed throughout the world, some are in private hands and many in libraries in Warsaw, Jerusalem, Moscow, New York, Zurich, and Geneva. The Wroclaw collection is the only one that has been digitalized; the others are not easily accessible. Restoring the Breslau library in a digital format may serve to revive interest in the collection: its fate is now in the hands of Wroclaw scholars.
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