Volume 11. Lost book values

From the first days of the war (June 22, 1941), victims of the bombing of Hitler's aircraft became the largest book store in Russia. During the first flight to Moscow on July 22, 1941, 70 incendiary bombs dropped the building of the Lenin State Library of the USSR.

In August 6, 1941 dozens of incendiary bombs were dropped on the building of the Library of the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad. A few days before leaving the city Rostov-on-Don during the bombing, 250 thousand volumes from the collections of the Regional Library were killed.

At the beginning of the war some of the most valuable book collections in Moscow and Leningrad were evacuated to the East.

During the German occupation the buildings of many libraries were given for the needs of military and economic organizations. Books were thrown into the street, they were paved roads, heated rooms...

In 1941, when the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Ribbentrop's initiative created a special "group of Kyunsberg" (it was headed by Sturmbannfuhrer Baron Eberhard von Kyunsberg). Later the group was transformed into a battalion of the SS special purpose. It, in particular, engaged in the export of books from the occupied territories of the USSR. The Battalion set off a significant portion of the selected books to the library, created at the Institute for the Kaiser Wilhelm, and to various academic institutions in Germany.

Large-scale movement of books from the occupied territories were carried out to create a so-called Ostbyuheray (East Library) in Berlin, founded to gather material for the study of eastern lands. For the East Library they selected the literature published before 1917, according to Marxism, the philosophy, Freemasonry, the Jewish question, books on geography, history and art in Russia. Special interest were to the publications issued after 1917, allowing to study the life in the USSR. The Eastern Library served for translations from foreign languages, with significant humanitarian value and containing the Bolshevik introductions."

Some of the books were sent to libraries of the Graduate School of the National Socialist Party (NSDAP) – the elitist "party University".

In October 1943, in Berlin, they reported on the urgent need to export the library of Count Vorontsov from Alupka because of the "probability of disaster - the loss of the Crimea". It was noted that 30 thousand volumes had not political, but historical value.

Libraries from the occupied cities of the USSR exported to the Baltic and East Prussia, then, if it managed, to Germany. In the Reich items for the displacing of cultural values from the USSR were identified. Basically, the library collections were taken to the monastery Bongeym Kemtpen, Hehshtedt on the Danube, the monastery in Lower Bavaria, the castle Colmberg, the monastery Bants, Neuschwanstein (Bavaria), etc. In domestic investigations we are talking about the destruction of nearly 200 million books in the occupied Soviet territory. The part of losses requires the clarification directly in the libraries of the Russian Federation.

The book funds of Stalingrad and the ten districts that were in the occupation zone were completely lost. 181 libraries were destroyed.

In the Orel region invaders destroyed and damaged 115 libraries, 55 thousand volumes were lost by the Regional Library.

On the eve of war in the Moscow region there were 562 public libraries, bookstores possessing of funds in an amount of 3.3 million volumes. The invaders killed more than 200 libraries, 578 159 copies of books.

Considerable damage was caused to libraries in the Kaluga region, which lost more than 150 thousand volumes.

Prior to the occupation in the Kalinin region, there were 315 libraries with a total fund of more than 2,000,000 volumes. After - there were 183 libraries, numbering 710 thousand volumes.

Soviet troops entered the territory of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany and found books of Soviet libraries in settlements.

For example, in Poland, at the station Pshina on the southwest of Auschwitz the train was detected. It had 150 thousand books and 100 thousand journals, taken from Novgorod, Pskov, Vitebsk, and other cities.литература) .After the war, book collections belonging to Soviet libraries, were found in the territory in the American zone of occupation. For example, in the 24 October 1947 from the American zone of occupation 2391 boxes of cultural values were transferred to the USSR. 8 cars were sent from Berlin to Kiev, 5 wagons - in the town of Pushkin, 4 cars - in Novgorod, 2 cars - in Minsk. Totally during the period 1945-1948 from the American zone of occupation to the Soviet 13 transports, which were listed 534,120 items of cultural property (more than 20 cars) were sent. These transports had book collections.