Piotr Nazaruk

2024 has been the most amazing year for our Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin library project! As many of you already know, we have uncovered documents and press reports from the 1940s proving that the library of the Lublin Yeshiva–once the largest religious Jewish library in Poland–was not burned during the Second World War, as claimed by many sources, but rather looted and scattered around the world.

To make a long story short: A few years ago, we knew only about five volumes with stamps of the Lublin Yeshiva Library that survived the Second World War. Then, in 2020, we uncovered one hundred and thirty such books in the holdings of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. Subsequently, through laborious and painstaking research and thanks to the help of numerous individuals, we have started uncovering dozens and hundreds of volumes in libraries, yeshivas and private collections around the world—The National Library of Israel, Herzog College, Yeshivat Har Etzion, the Jewish Museum in Prague, Penn Libraries or Yeshivat Birkat Moshe to name just a few. In December of 2023 our catalogue of identified books with the Lublin Yeshiva stamps had eight hundred and fifty records. This very December of 2024 the number of identified books reached… ONE THOUSAND AND FOUR HUNDRED, a sixty percent increase from the year before!

This year has brought us so many adventures! Besides cataloguing and creating comprehensive book records, mapping provenances and tracing turbulent history of individual copies, we embarked on two expeditions in search of the lost Yeshiva books, co-organized three exhibits, commemorated the one hundredth anniversary of the Yeshiva cornerstone ceremony, had a very special guest from Germany, and met hundreds of Israeli teens visiting Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin. Please take a look at my Second Annual Report for all the details and developments regarding our activities in 2024.

Old books in the library of the E. Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (Monika Tarajko)

Expedition to Włocławek

In February 2024 our small team consisting of Monika Tarajko, Professor Andrzej Trzciński and me travelled to Włocławek, a town located 140 km (87 mi) north west of Warsaw, to investigate a lead about possible Lublin Yeshiva books held by the therein Higher Catholic Seminary. After two days of searching we finally uncovered three books with stamps of both the Yeshiva and Józef Kruszyński, a Catholic priest and pre-war rector of the Catholic University of Lublin. Kruszyński was a complex figure—a renowned biblical scholar, keen Hebraist, author of one of the first Polish translations of the Hebrew Bible directly from the original languages, and, at the same time, author of fifteen hateful antisemitic brochures. Despite his antisemitic activities, Kruszyński, as claimed by some sources, established a relationship with the Yeshiva and was even invited there for some scholarly debates. As claimed by others, during the Second World War he was concerned by the destruction of libraries by the Germans which is most certainly related to the fact that he came into possession of some Lublin Yeshiva books. The exact manner of how he came into their possession and what are the whereabouts of other Lublin Yeshiva books he might have had remains, for now, a mystery.

Me holding Imre emet by Rabbi Yehuda Leib Eiger, volumes 1 and 2 bound together, Lublin 1902 and 1903 with stamps of the Lublin Yeshiva (Andrzej Trzciński) / Monika Tarajko and me inspecting Hebrew books in the library of the Higher Catholic Seminary in Włocławek (Andrzej Trzciński)

Postcards from the Lublin Yeshiva returning home

On April 11th, 2024 the Lublin Yeshiva witnessed the most moving event, when Karla McCabe brought back to Lublin a collection of forty pre-war postcards and envelopes addressed to the Lublin Yeshiva that had been looted by her own grandfather, a German soldier. 

During the event in the Yeshiva, Karla said:

„(…) these cards are neither a gift nor a donation. I am simply bringing home Holocaust loot that should never have been in my family in the first place. And I humbly thank you for accepting this from me as a descendant of a German who was himself a cog in the catastrophe that was the Second World War and subsequent Annihilation of Jewish Life in the East.”

The postcards were officially given to the State Archives in Lublin where they will be safely stored, preserved and made publicly available. All the postcards, together with their English and Polish translations (the translation by Géraldine Trom was financed by Karla) are available on our website, and their copies are exhibited in the Yeshiva. We have also identified living relatives of some of the senders of these postcards. The first, Toby Orlander Thaler of Antwerp, a niece of Mayer Benzion Lamet, was identified thanks to our dear Jackie Schwarz. Tzvi Grossman, a nephew of Shlomo David Grossman, found our project online and recognized the name of his late uncle. Additional relatives were identified thanks to Meir Bulka of Israel.

You can read more about the return at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an article penned by Shira Li Bartow.

The joyful return of postcards handed over by Karla and Iwona Hermon (the coordinator of the Lublin Jewish Community) to the directors of the State Archives in Lublin, Agnieszka Konstankiewicz and Krzysztof Kołodziejczyk (Monika Tarajko) / Part of the collection returned by Karla (Monika Tarajko) / Translating Karla’s emotional speech in the Yeshiva (Monika Tarajko)

The 100th Anniversary of the Yeshiva Cornerstone

On May 22nd, 2024, together with the Jewish Community of Lublin (coordinated by Iwona Hermon) and the Jewish Lublin Foundation (headed by Agnieszka Litman) we organized the one hundredth anniversary of the Yeshiva cornerstone ceremony. A century ago, during Lag baOmer of 1924, approximately fifty thousand people celebrated that glorious event. In 2024, although in much smaller numbers, we had a wonderful evening full of events, culminating in opening a new exhibit in the Yeshiva. The new exhibit, consisting of ten bilingual boards (we are grateful to Leora Tec for proofreading!), depicts the history of Jewish printing in Lublin and the Lublin area, tells the story of the Yeshiva Library and delves into the turbulent faith of its books. The main objects displayed in the exhibit, however, are ten books from the original Lublin Yeshiva Library—the ones discovered years ago by professors Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska and Adam Kopciowski as well as the books returned in 2023 by Freie Universität Berlin and Meir Bulka. Additionally, in the reading room near the synagogue we installed an old-fashioned catalogue cabinet with catalogue cards of identified Lublin Yeshiva books held by libraries around the world. The catalogue cards of the books that returned to the Yeshiva were subsequently stamped by the elders of the Jewish Community of Lublin. The exhibit in the Yeshiva was made possible through the generous support of our dear friends—Shelley Capozzi, Esther Minars, Leora and Ronald Tec, David Elbaum, and local institutions—the UMCS library and the National Museum in Lublin.

Our board exhibit travelled next to the nearby town of Łęczna 25 km (15 mi) east of Lublin, where, on September 26th, 2024, we opened its local instalment with two additional boards depicting the history of Hebrew books penned in Łęczna. On November 20th, 2024, we headed with our exhibit to Józefów, a town located 115 km (71 mi) south of Lublin known in the history of Jewish printing due to its notable printers–Szaja Wax (direct ancestor of our dear Lubliner Brigitte Waks Attal) and brothers Zecer. The exhibits in Łęczna and Józefów were organized together with local public libraries and took place in the former Łęczna beth midrash and Józefów synagogue respectively, and its audience was mainly local youth.

Elders of the Lublin Jewish Community stamping catalogue cards / An example of a stamped catalogue card of a book that returned to Lublin thanks to Meir Bulka and Yehuda Brayer / The youth of Józefów genuinely fascinated by our exhibit. (Monika Tarajko)

Schools from Israel bringing back books to the Yeshiva

This summer, thanks to the initiative of Meir Bulka (JNerations) and Yehuda Brayer (Tiferet Auction House), five more books from the Yeshiva’s pre-war library returned to Lublin. These books were brought by Israeli groups visiting Lublin, and only their guides knew that they had books with Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin stamps with them. I had the great pleasure of meeting with each of these groups and speaking with them about the history of the library and the books returning to Lublin. At one point, in agreement with their guides, we revealed to the groups that they too had such books with them, which were just returning to the Yeshiva after several decades of exile.

It was a great pleasure meeting each and every one of these groups and seeing genuine spark of astonishment in the eyes of Israeli youngsters visiting the Yeshiva. Although we had only little time together and the groups were soon heading to various other places in Poland, I cherish every single of their visits, hoping that they also took the best memories of Lublin with them back home. 

The groups that brought the books back to Lublin were from the following schools and organizations:

Ulpenat Tveria, guided by Idan Opotowski
Ulpenat Givat-Shmuel, guided by Gilad Samuel
Ulpenat Modi’in, guided by Danny Hirshberg
Amit Modi’in, guided by Elisha Peles
Employees of the Bezeq telecommunications company, guided by Yaki Gantz

Additionally, after identifying a book from the Yeshiva library in their holdings, Jeffrey Saks, director of research at Beit Agnon in Jerusalem, brought me a printed copy of that very book while visiting Lublin with a group organized by his institution.

School groups from Israel bringing back books to Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin / Together with Jeffrey Saks from Beit Agnon in Grodzka Gate

Expedition to the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH)

The recent increase of identified books is mainly due to our cooperation with the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. Due to the signing of a cooperation agreement between our two institutions, in early December our small team (Monika Tarajko, Andrzej Trzciński and me) had the opportunity to spend four long days in the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute. There we checked thousands of volumes–book by book–searching for the ownership stamps of Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin. With the help of the library staff at the Jewish Historical Institute, Magda Bendowska, Agnieszka Jeż, and the library manager Wiktor Sybilski, we found nearly four hundred books from the pre-war collection of the Lublin Yeshiva–old and modern prints (some dating back even to the 16th century), tiny and enormously huge, single books and even five titles bound in one volume. The entire collection was photographed by Monika Tarajko and Andrzej Trzciński, and now we are working on cataloging and processing it.

When we embarked on our expedition to the Jewish Historical Institute, all I wished for was to exceed the number of one thousand identified books. I have never dreamed that in just a few days we would uncover so many of them in one place! It is hard to describe the feelings accompanying such a search—a curious entanglement of excitement, fatigue, satisfaction and, from time to time, genuine boredom. And we have not checked all the books at the Jewish Historical Institute yet! At the end of January we plan another expedition during which we will check the cabinets we have not had a chance to go through yet.

All the puzzles of the complex history of the Lublin Yeshiva Library have been in front of us for years. Our visit at the Jewish Historical Institute once again proved that the Lublin Yeshiva Library was not burned, as claimed by Nazi fake news, but survived and patiently awaits for its rediscovery. And regarding the latter you can count on us! 

Monika Tarajko, Magda Bendowska and Andrzej Trzciński seen from the heights of a ladder in the library storage of the Jewish Historical Institute. The shelves visible in the photo are just a small part of the collection we checked during our visit / Piles of identified Lublin Yeshiva books waiting for their turn of being photographed The joy of discovery! Taking Lublin Yeshiva books from the shelves to Monika and Andrzej working on their photographing

The future awaits!

The developments of 2024 have surprised and amazed us all in our tiny team of the Lublin Yeshiva Library project. Our cooperation with the Lublin Jewish Community, the Jewish Lublin Foundation, the State Archives of Lublin, the Jewish Historical Institute, Tiferet Auction House and many more institutions and individuals is the most heartwarming proof that combined effort can move mountains. In the last weeks of 2024, thanks to the support of Daniel Reiser, we signed a cooperation agreement between the Grodzka Gate and Herzog College and are hoping that it will lead to discovering more books from the Lublin Yeshiva Library. Additionally, just a few days ago I received a letter from the Genazym Auction House whose director Chaim Stefansky decided to donate two books to the Lublin Yeshiva. Together with Agnieszka Litman and Iwona Hermon (the Jewish Lublin Foundation and the Lublin Jewish Community respectively) we have plans of expanding our exhibit and taking it to many more towns in the Lublin area.

We also received great support from journalists worldwide who covered our work—Shira Li Bartov (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), Gabriela Bogaczyk (Polish Press Agency), Yanki Farber (Behadrei Haredim), Dovi Safier (Mishpaha Magazine), Ofer Aderet (Haaretz), Alex Winston (The Jerusalem Post) to name just a few. My essays on the history of the Lublin Yeshiva Library were also printed in the newest Pakn Treger, a magazine of the Yiddish Book Center, and (in translation of Neta Avidar) Kol Lublin, a yearly issue of the Lubliners in Israel.

We are grateful for every word of appreciation, comment and support. We are just a few in our team but together with you we are hundreds! We have identified fourteen hundred books from a library that was supposed to burn down but our quest did not end. On the contrary—it has just begun! 2024 has been more than great, and, believe me, I simply can not wait for what awaits us in 2025.

Piotr Nazaruk
Ośrodek „Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN”
ul. Grodzka 21
20-112 Lublin