Documenting nazi cultural looting and postwar retrieval: surviving archives of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR)

In earlier presentations today, we have already heard about the ERR seizure and sad fate of Jewish ritual silver and other Judaica from the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam, which Julie-Marthe is tracing in her admirable new database, and her article in the new book she edited. Most of that loot ended the war in Frankfurt area or after 1943 in Hungen, the evacuation site for the Frankfurt-based Institute for Research on the Jewish Question (IEJ – Institut der NSDAP zur Erforschung der Judenfrage), a Rosenberg offshoot institution, under the projected Hohe Schule. Frankfurt and Hungen were likewise the destinations for the Rosenthaliana Library from the University of Amsterdam, for example, among many other Dutch Jewish collections, most of whose fate have been well traced by colleagues here today. Many were returned from the Offenbach Archival Depot (OAD), the postwar U.S. collecting point and book restitution center, whose records my survey covers in the U.S. National Archives (NACP).