The Fate of Libraries in Wartime
The trials and tribulations of an often overlooked victim of conflict, libraries, were the focus of a public lecture presented by Dr. Sem Sutter, titled “Habent sua fata libelli: The Fate of Libraries in Wartime” at the GU-Q library on Thursday, November 14th, 2013.
Dr.Sutter, who is currently the Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources & Services at Georgetown University’s Lauinger Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., surveyed the history of libraries in times of war, when “the enemy’s books can become objects of hatred, fear, envy, reverence, or of uncomprehending disregard.” He also shared the stories of the dramatic efforts to protect books and return them to their rightful owners, by the librarians, civilians, and politicians, who are all connected in their roles as caretakers of a shared national heritage.
He began in Mesopotamia, where the earliest known libraries were comprised of small collections in cuneiform scribal academies as well as large reference collections of literary and scientific works. “Not surprisingly, the earliest known systematic destruction of libraries took place in Mesopotamia, when the Babylonians and Medes defeated Assyria in 614-612 BCE,” said Dr. Sutter, noting that excavations of areas of large-scale destruction included the discovery of shattered written tablets.
Dr. Sutter also shared many examples where invading forces appropriated the book treasures of their enemies, rather than destroying them, or targeted libraries for “acts of symbolic retaliation”, as an act of war itself. Books, he continued, are often destroyed “not as physical objects, but as links to memory…when a group or nation attempts to subjugate another group or nation, the first thing they do is erase the traces of its memory in order to reconfigure its identity. Thus it is not surprising that some of the most violent and thorough destruction of libraries in history has occurred during late twentieth-century ethnic conflicts.” The “ethnic cleansing” that took place in the 1990s during the Yugoslav Wars were accompanied by “cultural cleansing”, where throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, Muslim, Catholic and municipal libraries and archives were destroyed by nationalist Serbs.
The more recent example of the destruction of libraries in Iraq during the Iraq War showed how “enormous harm can come to libraries and archives when the invading nation chooses not to protect them.”
Saddam Hussein’s use of major cultural institutions as propaganda tools made them primary targets for retaliation following the American invasion. “The looting of the national museum while American soldiers ‘guarded’ a nearby intersection drew international attention.”
Looting of books and libraries occurred on an unprecedented scale when the Third Reich, well known as destroyers of books, targeted Jewish, socialist and Masonic libraries. “Sometimes the stated goal was ‘research and analysis’ of enemies of the regime or the nation,” said Dr. Sutter, “In other instances, the declared aims were enriching German library collections or restocking damaged libraries.”
But some of the most shocking looting of enemy books by the Nazis took place under the “Furniture Operation” in occupied France and the low Countries. “On the pretext that the homes of Jews who had fled in haste or been sent to concentration camps contained ‘abandoned property’, crews descended on vacant homes and swept them clean of all personal effects, including books.” By the time advancing Allied troops halted the operation, some 70,000 households had been pillaged, requiring 27,000 train cars to haul the collected million cubic meters of material.
He finished his historical narrative with an example of a successful attempt to safeguard book treasures from invading forces. The librarian of the seminary of Pelplin in Poland, where the core collection came from a Cistercian monastery established in 1274, took decisive measures to preserve Poland’s only Gutenberg Bible by packing it in a custom made suitcase and taking it by taxi and express train to a bank vault in Warsaw. The Bible and another treasure, a beautiful 16th century Psalter manuscript, eventually made it to safety in Canada, but it would take another twenty years before the two massive volumes of the Bible, weighing about forty pounds, would be repatriated to Poland.“And so it is in times of war,” said Dr. Sutter, “that books, like people, have their fate; and those fates often intertwine.”
Dr. Sutter earned a PhD in history as well as a Masters in Library Science from the University of Chicago and spent a year of non-degree study of history and religion at the Universität Marburg. Though trained as an early modern European historian, his current research interest is the fate of European libraries and archives during and after World War II.