In 2019 the Terezín Memorial took advantage of an offer made by the Jewish Community in Prague to acquire its books kept in the depository of the Library of the Czech Academy of Sciences at Jenštejn.
The books in this collection come from various sources. Some had been seized from individual Jewish communities and persons of Jewish origin deported from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in World War II. Such books were stored in the Treuhandstelle warehouses in Prague and some of them were also kept in the Terezín Ghetto. The book collection also contains volumes that had been confiscated from the German Jewish institutions and kept and cataloged in the Terezín Ghetto from 1943 onwards. There are also books from the Terezín Ghetto library from the years 1942–1945. After the war the books thus gathered were incorporated into one large collection which was later moved to the Jerusalem Synagogue in Prague and still later stored in the above mentioned Jenštejn depository.
The entire book fund was relatively large, amounting to roughly 8,000 volumes. One may find old prints (published up to 1800), just as books from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Most of them are liturgical books, such as, e.g. siddurim (prayer books), machzorim (prayer books used on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) and Hagaddot. Moreover, luachs (Jewish diaries) or educational literature may also be found in the collection. In view of its great extent it was impossible for the Terezín Memorial to take the whole collection. It was gradually checked and cataloged by the employees of the Memorial´s Departments of Documentation, Collections and History. As a result, only the books somehow related to the former Terezín Ghetto inmates, eventually volumes that may be documented as having belonged to the so-called Terezín Estate (i.e. the property left behind in the Terezín Ghetto after its liberation). This involves some 600 volumes.
And what makes this particular new accession so interesting for the Memorial? First and foremost, the books contain a wealth of personal information. Thanks to combined efforts of the Departments of Documentation, Collections and History we succeeded in assigning some of the acquired books to specific former Terezín Ghetto inmates. Whenever we have not yet managed to identify persons connected with the books, such volumes are prepared for further research. Some of the books give information on transport numbers of prisoners. We often come across information of genealogical nature dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A large number of the books has additional evidence value, because the owners time to time made some sketches inside, mostly the children to the textbooks, or pasted there ex libris bookplates. It is also rewarding to keep track of the rubber stamps printed in the books. Many of these belong to the original owners, to the Jewish communities from the Protectorate, libraries, eventually other institutions, but what is most significant for us is that some books are known to contain several kinds of rubber stamps from the Terezín Ghetto Library (Ghettobücherei). No less noteworthy is the existence of rubber stamps from the German environment. It is only very rarely that we find in the books photos of their owners. All this makes the book collection an exceptionally interesting source of information that could be employed in the future not only in the Terezín Memorial´s exhibitions; it could be also exploited in terms of genealogy research. There is strong likelihood that the information contained in these books could help us fill in existing gaps in the genealogy of some Jewish families.
However, there is still a long way leading up to this kind of research. First of all, the books have to be disinfected, scanned and then restored, or conserved. Nevertheless, we are positive that in the future these books will prove to be instrumental in fully utilizing their information potential and aesthetic values.
Michaela Dostálová
