RESEARCH PAPERS The Odyssey of the Turgenev Library from Paris, 1940-2002 Books as Victims and Trophies of War Patricia Kennedy Grimsted Cruquiusweg 31 1019 AT Amsterdam The Netherlands Tel. + 31 20 6685866 Fax + 31 20 6654181 ISSN 0927-4618 IISH Research Paper 42 © Copyright 2003, Patricia Kennedy Grimsted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. IISH-Research Papers is a prepublication series inaugurated in 1989 by the International Institute of Social History (IISH) to highlight and promote socio-historical research and scholarship. Through distribution of these works the IISH hopes to encourage international discussion and exchange. This vehicle of publicizing works in progress or in a prepublication stage is open to all labour and social historians. In this context, research by scholars from outside the IISH can also be disseminated as a Research Paper. Those interested should write to Marcel van der Linden, IISH, Cruquiusweg 31, 1019 AT, The Netherlands. Telephone 31-20-6685866, Telefax 31-20- 6654181, e-mail [email protected]. The Odyssey of the Turgenev Library from Paris, 1940–2002 Books as Victims and Trophies of War Patricia Kennedy Grimsted Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam) International Institute of Social History Amsterdam 2003 Contents Foreword by Hélène Kaplan, Secrétaire générale de l'Association de la Bibliothèque Tourguénev 3 Abbreviations used in text and notes 5 Technical Note 8 Preface and acknowledgments 9 Map of the Odyssey of the Turgenev Library Through Europe 14 Introduction 1. Clues on the trail of the Turgenev Library 15 PART I: Wartime Fate 21 2. Nazi seizure (1940): Contemporary émigré accounts 22 3. The “end of the Turgenev Library”: Soviet published accounts 30 4. With the ERR in Berlin and Ratibor: German wartime documents 35 PART II: Postwar Fate in Soviet Hands 44 Map of Silesia at the End of World War II (1945) 45 5. Silesian sojourns and book transports to Moscow 46 6. The “Leninka” opens its “seventh seal” 64 7. Archival Rossica and Leniniana find new homes 75 8. From Minsk to the island of Sakhalin 84 Epilogue: Russia and Russia Abroad: 1 + 118 books return home to Paris 91 Bibliography 98 Appendices: I List of known present locations of books and archives from the Turgenev Library (with sample images) 115 II Soviet telegram to the trophy brigade in Berlin reporting the location of the Turgenev Library in Legnica (Poland), January 1946 170 III Soviet trophy library brigade report “The Turgenev Library in Legnica (Poland),” 1946 172 IV Act of transfer of administrative records of the Turgenev Library from the Lenin Library to TsGAOR SSSR (18 November 1948) 176 V Books from the Turgenev Library sent from the officers’ club in Legnica (Poland) to the Lenin Library, January 1949 180 VI Transfer agreement for the RSDRP Library to the Turgenev Library (Paris, December 1910) and related letter of Vladimir Lenin 184 VII Book stamps of the Turgenev Library, with pre-1940 addresses, component collections, and added postwar stamps 194 Foreword A dozen or so years ago when the Turgenev Library in Paris started to hope in eventually learning more about the fate of its collections that had been plundered during World War II, it never could have hoped that this subject would attract the interest of an historian as tenacious, pugnacious, and meticulous as Patricia Grimsted. Nonetheless, in her characteristic fugue she has taken on this seemingly hopeless and impossible task and has succeeded in reconstructing what she quite rightfully entitles the “Odyssey” of the Turgenev Library. To be sure, as one of today’s leading experts on the history of cultural plunder during World War II, Patricia Grimsted draws on her vast experience working in archives in the different countries involved in this Odyssey—German, French, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian—to say nothing of many private sources. The results of her research during several years are before us. Having read this work, the reader may wonder what has become of the Turgenev Library in Paris after its plunder in 1940. And also what has been known in Paris, during the past fifty years, about the plundered collections. The Turgenev Library was not extinguished after the deportation of its books. To be sure, the overwhelming majority of its holdings had disappeared—100,000 volumes according to library estimates at the time. A few books and documents nevertheless remained, thanks to the cold-blooded bravery of librarians who spirited them off, practically under the nose of the invader. Others had already been hidden, thanks to the foresight of librarians and administrators. But what had not disappeared were the people who had been caring for the library and who continued to do so. Thanks to their energy and enthusiasm, the library was able to revive rapidly, like a phoenix from the ashes. Tatiana Osorgina-Bakunina (in French Ossorguine-Bakounine), Secretary-General of the Turgenev Library Association during more than forty years, was the heart and soul of that rebirth. Her tireless devotion, her moral and intellectual rigor, her generosity and infinite kindness, permitted her not only to revitalize the library, but at the same time to organize an important research group under library auspices to prepare several fundamental reference works on the Russian emigration. What had not disappeared were the users of the library from throughout the world who assisted its revival by their gifts and their bequests, gifts and bequests that still continue to flow today. And again what has not disappeared are the French Government and the City of Paris, which facilitated the library’s regeneration after 1945 and have continued to assist its operations. Today the Turgenev Library has more than 60,000 volumes at the disposition of its readers. For the past ten years, along with French contributions, there have been Russian contributions as well—from different Russian libraries, such as the Russian National Library (RNB) in St. Petersburg, among others, and different institutions, most notably the Mayor of Moscow. Last but certainly not least, restitution is starting to the Turgenev Library of some of the plundered books, themselves held in different Russian libraries. We received one volume (a Dutch Bible that had earlier been in Minsk) from the Library of Foreign Literature (VGBIL) in Moscow via Amsterdam in 1993. Most recently, in Moscow in February 2002 the State Socio-Political Library (GOPB) – in the presence of the then Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aleksandr Avdeev – returned a group of books with stamps of the Turgenev Library to their original owner. The books found in Poland had been presented many years earlier to the GOPB predecessor library under the Communist Party Central Committee and had long been retained in a special collection. Many thousands of books plundered from the Turgenev Foreword 4 Library in Paris in 1940 are still unaccounted for. The 119 books that have come home recently give us hope that more will follow. As to what had been known in France about the fate of the plundered collections, during the earlier postwar years—practically nothing. We suspected that the books had perished in the course of the war. Then bits of news began to filter through to the West: books with the stamps of the Turgenev Library had been seen in Soviet libraries or in antiquarian bookshops in the USSR, and even in France. Several articles and memoirs published here and there in the Russian press made allusion directly or indirectly to their fate. The sum ensemble of these reports, gathered and preciously guarded by the Turgenev Library in Paris, had, by the end of the 1980s, permitted a vague, but still exceedingly hazy, picture of the fate of the books in the Soviet Union after 1945. But even then, there were still no details at all about what had happened during the war or its immediate aftermath. Today, thanks to the minute investigation of Patricia Grimsted (allusions to Agatha Christie’s celebrated detective “Miss Marple” are not only by chance) these lacunae have also been filled. Besides, her work reveals paths for future research, permitting clarification of still obscure phases and remaining blank spots. The friends of the Turgenev Library thank her warmly. Hélène Kaplan, Secretary-General of the Turgenev Library Association Paris, February 2003 Abbreviations Used in Text and Notes BAB Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives), Berlin-Lichterfelde BAK Bundesarchiv, Koblenz (most records from the Nazi era earlier held in Koblenz are now held in Berlin-Lichterfelde; those cited as BAK, however, remain in Koblenz) CDJC Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation), Paris ERR Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (Special Command of Reichsleiter Rosenberg) GA RF Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation), Moscow, formerly TsGAOR SSSR and TsGA RSFSR GAU/Glavarkhiv Glavnoe arkhivnoe upravlenie pri [NKVD]/Sovete Ministrov SSSR later Glavarkhiv (Main Archival Administration under the NKVD/Council of Ministers of the USSR) GlavPU RKKA Glavnoe politicheskoe upravlenie RKKA (Chief Political Command of the Red Army) GMII Gosudarstvennyi muzei izobrazitel'nykh iskusstv imeni A. S. Pushkina (Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts) GOPB Gosudarstvennaia