Stolen Words: Hebrew Books from the Theresienstadt Ghetto

Even as the Nazi regime targeted the Jewish people for destruction, it made great efforts to preserve Jewish books—albeit for a dark purpose. During World War II, Jewish libraries across Europe were systematically plundered, their contents reassembled into Nazi research libraries. Here, Judaism would be studied from a racist perspective with the aim of providing retroactive justification for the atrocities of the Holocaust.

The Stolen Words: Hebrew Books from the Theresienstadt Ghetto exhibition presents Hebrew books cataloged under duress by Jewish scholars imprisoned in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. While nearly all those who carried out this work perished, the books they cataloged—intended for a Nazi research library—endure as material witnesses to one of the darkest periods of modern history.

The Stolen Words exhibition is curated by Miriam Barr Librarian for Jewish & Near Eastern Studies Sam Glauber using materials from the Brisman Collection in Jewish Studies.