Hebrew books in the memory of the National Library of the Czech Republic.
Guided tours
Follow in the footsteps of books that survived one of the darkest chapters in European history. A guided tour of the exhibition From the Shadows to the Light will reveal the fates of books and book collections looted by the Nazis from European Jewish communities, and demonstrate the methods used to identify them today.
You will discover which institutions were involved in the confiscations, what the Nazis had planned for books they stole, and how some of these volumes were successfully identified decades later. Through specific stories, you will also learn about the history of the selected Jewish communities from whose property the books originated from, and the printers and publishers whose works are represented in the identified collection.
The tour is free, but spaces are limited.
Dates:
20 August, 4.30 pm (Czech)
17 September, 4.30 pm (English)
Galerie Klementinum
Mariánské nám. 190/5, 110 00 Prague 1
Meeting point: In front of the Galerie Klementinum entrance
Duration: approx. 60 minutes
Exhibition
The exhibition From the Shadows to the Light presents a selection from an extraordinary collection of almost 700 Hebrew prints stored in the collection of the National Library of the Czech Republic. Behind each of these books lies a unique story. The Nazis confiscated them from the libraries of Jewish communities and institutions across Europe. During the war, they were transported to our territory, where they lay forgotten for decades. Now, a team of Czech historians specializing in the search for confiscated Jewish property has managed to identify individual prints. They have discovered that they come from, among others, Olomouc, Munich, Vienna and Budapest. The exhibition introduces visitors to the fates of individual books, as well as how difficult it is to search for the original owners of books around the world. Visitors to the exhibition will also learn more about pre-war Jewish book culture, Hebrew printing and publishing traditions.
Co-organizers: National Library of the Czech Republic and The Documentation Centre for Property Transfers
of the Cultural Assets of WWII Victims (CDMP)