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Artifacts of Nazi Looting: Fragments of Records of the ERR

Jun 6, 2016

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

Scattered among the YIVO documents that are still being sorted through at the Central State Archives in Vilnius for the Vilna Collections project are items that were not part of YIVO’s prewar collections, but which are artifacts of the looting of those collections.

The records of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg (ERR), the Nazi special task force charged with the looting of Jewish cultural treasures, are widely dispersed and can now be found in over thirty repositories in ten countries.   

Report on the sorting and packing of Jewish newspapers at YIVO, which was transformed into a
sorting center by the ERR, February 20, 1943.
Request by the Judenrat (Jewish administration) of the Vilna Ghetto to the local authorities of the
ERR to transfer furniture into the ghetto from the YIVO building, April 17, 1942. The furniture
includes desks, frames, and card catalogs.

The last document seen here, another ERR report, provides a glimpse of the physical condition of some of the documents that are being digitized for the Vilna Collections project. The materials found in Lithuania were hidden in nooks and crannies and in messy piles in dark chambers, conditions which helped keep them from the prying eyes of officials. Pages are crumpled and dirty, sometimes torn. These materials are now being flattened, cleaned, and repaired by conservators at the Central State Archives.

Roberta Newman is YIVO’s Director of Digital Initiatives.