LC Agrees to Relinquish 2,300
Nazi-Looted Items
A report released January 16 by the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States affirms speculation that some items held by the Library of Congress were stolen from Holocaust victims between 1933 and 1945. The commission also announced that it has reached “landmark agreements” with LC, as well as with U.S. museums and the New York Bankers Association, to return the items to their rightful owners whenever the individuals can be located. Most of the 2,300 Nazi-looted items at LC are in the Hebraic Collection.
The libraries of Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and New York universities were also identified in the 250-page report as repositories of stolen items. “The custom at the time was not to ask a whole lot of questions about where all this came from,” Kenneth L. Klothen, executive director of the commission, said in the January 17 New York Times.
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 22, 2001.
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