Harvard Defends Its Possession
of Holocaust Assets
Within days of the Library of Congress agreeing to return to their rightful owners some 2,200 items in its collection brought back from Europe by Allied forces after World War II, Harvard University Library officials defended their possession of similarly acquired books. Harvard University Librarian Sidney Verba said in the January 19 Harvard Crimson that he considers it fortunate that the items are in libraries “because they’re preserved and available to people.”
According to a January 16 report by the Presidential Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, the books and periodicals—many of them sermons and commentaries on Jewish law and the Bible—were given to Harvard, LC, and other libraries for safekeeping some 50 years ago by the since-disbanded Jewish Cultural Reconstruction organization. The commission contends that Harvard, Brandeis, and Yale alone hold some 10,000 items, some 1,900 of which are at Harvard. But Harvard has identified only several hundred provided by JCR.
“I would be happy if anyone came along and identified themselves as owners,” Verba said in the January 24 Boston Globe. “We wouldn’t give them any grief.”
Note: The preliminary story above contains information based on incomplete and misleading media sources. For a more accurate version, refer to the March 2001 issue of American Libraries.
Posted January
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