Uploaded January 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
A Rare Books Presentation with the texts and contexts of Judaica collections at McGill and the Jewish Public Library
For Jewish texts, the genealogy of ownership has been subject to both the careful chronicling of ownership and vagaries like the theft of millions of books by the Nazis during the Holocaust. After the war, the Offenbach Archival Depot was tasked with repatriating three million looted books. Some libraries were returned to their caretakers in their entirety but not in those cases where libraries had been destroyed. For these books, changing borders and governments in the post-war political climate conferred an urgency on this initiative and amongst those books that had been orphaned, the Jewish Public Library received the largest donation from Offenbach in Canada through a deal brokered by the Canadian Jewish Congress.
By contrast, the Judaica Collections at McGill’s Rare Books and Special Collections—the Lewin Collection, the Joe Fishstein Collection of Yiddish Poetry, and the Saul Shapiro Collection of Anglo-American Judaica—were donated either through the families of the original collectors or in some cases through the intervention of McGill’s faculty.
Presenters:
Welcome: Jacquelyn Sundberg, McGill Rare Books and Special Collections
Introduction and note: Dr. Rachel Hatcher, McGill Office of Spiritual and Religious Life
Presentation: Eddie Paul, Jewish Public Library,
Presentation: Jacquelyn Sundberg.
Recorded at McGill University, January 23, 2024.
A Rare Books Presentation with the texts and contexts of Judaica collections at McGill and the Jewish Public Library
For Jewish texts, the genealogy of ownership has been subject to both the careful chronicling of ownership and vagaries like the theft of millions of books by the Nazis during the Holocaust. After the war, the Offenbach Archival Depot was tasked with repatriating three million looted books. Some libraries were returned to their caretakers in their entirety but not in those cases where libraries had been destroyed. For these books, changing borders and governments in the post-war political climate conferred an urgency on this initiative and amongst those books that had been orphaned, the Jewish Public Library received the largest donation from Offenbach in Canada through a deal brokered by the Canadian Jewish Congress.
By contrast, the Judaica Collections at McGill’s Rare Books and Special Collections—the Lewin Collection, the Joe Fishstein Collection of Yiddish Poetry, and the Saul Shapiro Collection of Anglo-American Judaica—were donated either through the families of the original collectors or in some cases through the intervention of McGill’s faculty.
Presenters:
Welcome: Jacquelyn Sundberg, McGill Rare Books and Special Collections
Introduction and note: Dr. Rachel Hatcher, McGill Office of Spiritual and Religious Life
Presentation: Eddie Paul, Jewish Public Library,
Presentation: Jacquelyn Sundberg.
Recorded at McGill University, January 23, 2024.
