Clearly, World War II exacted a grueling toll on libraries under Nazi occupation. In six years of occupation, some estimate the Reich claimed upwards of 10 million books and over two thousand libraries during the war. In Poland alone, they ransacked and/or burned an estimated 500 public libraries before their defeat. Why go to all this trouble?
Control and power.
In a war where propaganda and information control mattered just as much as military enlistment and technology, it is easy to see why the Nazis viewed libraries in occupied territories as a threat to European conquest. Despair over this systematically senseless destruction of knowledge retains its place amongst the great tragedies of the twentieth century because the printed victims often shared the fate of their protectors and authors. For the Nazis, destroying the Jewish people meant stripping them of their culture and history as well as their lives.
For all the horror that this destruction encapsulates, it reveals a great deal about the importance of libraries. In the broadest sense, the Nazi's willingness to take on such a monumental task in the first place speaks to the increasing importance of libraries as centralized, stabilizing staples of European and American communities. The conflict between the Nazis' passions for destruction and their Jewish prisoner's dedication to preservation reveal just how divisive (and powerful) a library can be as a legitimizing symbol of cultural legacy. Even while some German librarians bowed to Joseph Goebbels blacklists in 1934, dedicated Jewish and Polish librarians like those at the Krasinski Estate Library risked imprisonment and/or death to try to save their valuable collection while the building burned down around them a decade later. In the end, while the Nazis did indeed cost the world dearly in human lives and knowledge, their legacy of book stealing and building burning has also succeeded in ensuring that the library is more respected and better protected against future threats.
Control and power.
In a war where propaganda and information control mattered just as much as military enlistment and technology, it is easy to see why the Nazis viewed libraries in occupied territories as a threat to European conquest. Despair over this systematically senseless destruction of knowledge retains its place amongst the great tragedies of the twentieth century because the printed victims often shared the fate of their protectors and authors. For the Nazis, destroying the Jewish people meant stripping them of their culture and history as well as their lives.
For all the horror that this destruction encapsulates, it reveals a great deal about the importance of libraries. In the broadest sense, the Nazi's willingness to take on such a monumental task in the first place speaks to the increasing importance of libraries as centralized, stabilizing staples of European and American communities. The conflict between the Nazis' passions for destruction and their Jewish prisoner's dedication to preservation reveal just how divisive (and powerful) a library can be as a legitimizing symbol of cultural legacy. Even while some German librarians bowed to Joseph Goebbels blacklists in 1934, dedicated Jewish and Polish librarians like those at the Krasinski Estate Library risked imprisonment and/or death to try to save their valuable collection while the building burned down around them a decade later. In the end, while the Nazis did indeed cost the world dearly in human lives and knowledge, their legacy of book stealing and building burning has also succeeded in ensuring that the library is more respected and better protected against future threats.