A library often sheds light on its owner’s life, interests, and convictions – which is why I was rather surprised to discover Nazi-era propaganda in the library of a German Jew I recently acquired.
This Jew owned several classic and obscure anti-Semitic works, including a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, translated by Alfred Rosenberg, later head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories.
Printed in 1923, while Hitler was still a relatively minor figure, Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion und die jüdische Weltpolitik became an instant success and was reprinted numerous times during the Nazi era. Facing the title page of this copy is an advertisement for an early Pro-Hitler book, Adolf Hitlers Ziele und Persönlichkeit (Adolf Hitler’s Goals and Personality) by Johannes Stark.
Even more unusual is that the Jewish owner of this works bound it together with four Jewish books: a collection of rabbinic Jewish parables, a defense of shechita, a guide to Hebrew, and a German translation of Medrash Lekach Tov.
