Offenbach Archival Depot
The Offenbach Archival Depot (OAD) was the central collection point in the American occupation zone for books, manuscripts, documents and ritual objects. Between 1946 and 1948, around four million volumes were collected in it. It was directed first by Captain Seymour Pomrenze and later by Captain Isaac Bencowitz of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section (MFA & A). Initially, the depot was housed in the Freiherrlich Carl von Rothschild public library in Frankfurt am Main , which soon proved to be too small, which is why a former IG Farben building in Offenbach became a new location. Up to 140 employees researched the ownership structure. Over three million volumes were restituted, so that when the depot was closed, the remaining 286,610 volumes were officially handed over to the State of Hesse . In the following years, other owners were identified, mainly from the labor movement, who got their libraries back. A large part of the library holdings of former Jewish Eastern Europeans was given to Jewish organizations outside the Warsaw signatory states.
The Dutch archivist Dirk Petrus Marius Graswinckel was able to locate the holdings of the library of the Jewish-Portuguese seminary in Amsterdam , the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana , the Spinoza Society and other deprived Dutch organizations. In the summer of 1946, several thousand boxes of Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian-language books were handed over to the Soviet officer accredited at the institute. After Gershom Scholem criticized this ( the books are supposed to go where the Jews go ), the procedure was changed. When the depot was closed in June 1949, 1.4 million objects had been returned. The YIVO , the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction took care of the remaining one million books and several thousand ritual objects .
literature
- Elisabeth Gallas : Offenbach Archival Depot. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 4: Ly-Po. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-476-02504-3 , pp. 397-402
- Gabriele Hauschke-Wicklaus: Almost forgotten: The American book depot in Offenbach am Main from 1945 to 1949. Offenbacher Editions, Offenbach 2011, ISBN 978-3-939537-14-4
Individual evidence
- ^ Rüdiger Zimmermann: Berlin - Offenbach - Washington - Bonn: The Offenbach Archival Depot and the union holdings of the library of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. First published in: AKMB-News: Informations zu Kunst, Museum und Bibliothek, Vol. 8 (2002), H. 2, S. 11-17, online resource accessed on March 18, 2014