Brandeis University Rediscovering Books From Looted By Nazis

Chaiel Schaffel

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is someone's what is this a play?

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Lou Hartman is showing me a book plucked from the shelves,
written in an old timey German font. There's a stamp
on the front cover, so unlikely in this place that
I need to look twice.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
I saw, Oh, it has a stamp from a German library.
I speak German. Let's say it was the Institute for
the Advancement of the Jewish Question.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Oh, it's a Nazi eagle with a swastika still clearly visible.
The book is just one of more than eleven thousand
tucked away in the Brandeis University Library. They were eluded
by the Nazis and then recovered after the war. Randis
got them as a gift when it was founded in
the forties, and there they sat, lost to the world,
in gathering dust between other books for eight decades until
now Randis is pushing ahead with an effort to find

(00:44):
and identify all the books. In that way, this is
a kind of cultural defiance, preserving what the Nazis tried
to destroy.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
You're dead and now I'm everything you hate, and I
work at Brandison. I'm touching your stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Kyle Schaffel Debibs, Boston's news radio