Prague exhibition reveals how the Nazis sought to build the world’s largest Jewish book collection

Burned synagogues and smashed shop windows are some of the best-known images of Nazi persecution of Jews. But the Nazis also systematically confiscated Jewish books, hoping to build a huge collection that could be used to provide a ‘scientific’ justification for their racist ideology. During the war, more than half a million volumes were moved to the occupied Czech lands, where many remained for decades. An exhibition at the Klementinum in Prague, From the Shadows to the Light, now looks at what happened to these books and the efforts to uncover their stories.

I spoke to historians Jana Jirásková and Jiří Blažek, both from the Documentation Centre for Property Transfers of the Cultural Assets of WWII Victims, and began by asking them why the Nazis went to such lengths to collect Jewish books, and what they intended to do with them.

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Author: Ruth Fraňková