The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust

by Lisa Moses Leff

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jewish historian Zosa Szajkowski gathered up tens of thousands of documents from Nazi buildings in Berlin, and later, public archives and private synagogues in France, and moved them all, illicitly, to New York.In The Archive Thief, Lisa Moses Leff reconstructs Szajkowski's story in all its ambiguity. Born into poverty in Russian Poland, Szajkowski first made his name in Paris as a communist journalist. In the late 1930s, as he saw the threats to Jewish safety rising in Europe, he broke with the party and committed himself to defending his people in a new way, as a scholar associated with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.Following a harrowing 1941 escape from France and U.S. army service, Szajkowski struggled to remake his life as a historian, eking out a living as a YIVO archivist in postwar New York. His scholarly output was tremendous nevertheless; he published scores of studies on French Jewish history that opened up new ways of thinking about Jewish emancipation, modernization, and the rise of modern antisemitism.But underlying Szajkowski's scholarly accomplishments were the documents he stole, moved, and eventually sold to American and Israeli research libraries, where they remain today.Part detective story, part analysis of the construction of history, The Archive Thief offers a window into the debates over the rightful ownership of contested Jewish archives and the powerful ideological, economic, and psychological forces that have made Jewish scholars care so deeply about preserving the remnants of their past.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Holocaust, World War II, Jewish, Biography, War

287 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 21, 2015

About the author

Lisa Leff is a historian of Europe whose research focuses on Jews in France since 1789. Her first book, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity (Stanford UP, 2006), examines the rise of Jewish international aid in 19th century France. Her most recent book, The Book Thief (Oxford University Press) tells the story of Zosa Szajkowski, who moved tens of thousands of documents from France to the U.S. during his time as a soldier in WWII. It examines a larger set of questions about Jewish nationalism, Jewish archives, and Jewish history writing in the era of the Holocaust and its aftermath. She received her BA from Oberlin College and her PhD from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Leff's work has been funded by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation.

Reviews

[Kristine Brancolini · Rating 5 out of 5]

I primarily read fiction for pleasure. I read The Archive Thief for the Jewish Book Group that meets at my university library. A modern European historian chose the book and I can't wait to discuss it with her and our entire group later today. Our library has an archives and the theft from archives has been an ongoing problem and debate for decades. About a decade ago, I read another book on this topic, The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime that was also fascinating. So, I was intrigued by the title of this book. But it was so, so much more than a tale of theft. There are four compelling components to this book: the biography of the thief, Zosa Szajkowski; his contributions to Jewish Studies as a discipline; how he came to be one of the biggest archives thieves of all time; and the impact of his thefts. I admit that the last point is probably academic librarian/archivist geeky stuff, but it's important to the story. Librarians and archivists do not come out looking very good in this whole sordid tale. But as in all things, the story is complicated...

Szajkowski was born to a working class Jewish family in 1911, in Zareby, Poland, but he came to Paris as a teenager. He is considered French-American, because during World War II, he fled to the U.S., where he joined the military, returning to Europe. He moved back and forth between New York and Europe for most of the rest of his life, researching Jewish history, primarily in France, and stealing books and documents that he later sold to libraries and archives in the U.S. and Israel. He had a number of justifications for stealing Jewish documents from European archives, but ultimately, his motivations were political, personal, and financial. He truly believed on one level that in the aftermath of World War II, these materials would not be safe in Europe. They were at risk of being destroyed. He did not believe that Europeans cared about Jewish history and he needed to safeguard the documentation. Second, he was a self-taught scholar. He wrote and published extensively on Jewish history throughout his lifetime. The materials he needed for his work resided in French archives. The best way to insure that he had easy access to these materials was to steal them. Finally, as he lacked proper credentials to work as an academic (he never graduated from high school, let alone university), Szajkowski later sold these materials to libraries and archives. From his perspective, this was all good.

Chapter 7,"French Losses," and Chapter 8, "The Buyers," provide insight into how Szajkowski got away with these thefts for decades. Although he was caught in 1961 in France, which prevented him from returning to Europe, he continued his thefts in the U.S. from that time until 1978. At that time, he was caught stealing from the New York Public Library (which is actually a research library) and arrested. No one was surprised by this turn of events, especially the librarians: "they had heard talk of Szajkowski's sticky fingers in libraries and archives" (p. 199). "French Losses" explains how the got away with these thefts, by providing a glimpse into the symbiotic relationships between archivists and researchers. Szajkowski was a well-known scholar and prolific author. He was given unusual access to large troves of Jewish documents and other materials that were uncataloged and inaccessible to the average researcher. He was a Jewish researcher working in Jewish archives. The archivists and librarians were generous with him. They wanted to protect him and their reputations. When these archivists and librarians discovered the thefts, they chose to bypass the authorities and go directly to the libraries that purchased these stolen materials. But that didn't work out so well for them. "The Buyers" explains why. It all came down to a zeal to collect and a willingness to ignore questions of provenance; the librarians just didn't ask, "Where did you get these materials?" They didn't want to know. They buyers had deluded themselves that they were "reuniting the scattered, orphaned remnants of the Jews' diasporic past" (p. 197) and helping a colleague, who was also "a struggling survivor." Ultimately, Szajkowski's thefts led to fragmentation in access to the records: "While some documents useful for studying a certain topic were now held in American and Israeli institutions, still others remained in France" (p. 195).

The Archive Thief is a page-turner and I attribute this to Leff's skill in telling the tale in a way that is both well-documented (with about 100 pages of notes and bibliography) and fascinating.

[Natalie Weinstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly, highly recommend "The Archive Thief."
This biography/history book is obviously well researched -- which is what I expect from a history professor -- but it is also so well written and so readable.
I am also genuinely impressed at Leff's insights into Zosa Szajkowski's life experiences and the possible motivations for his extensive thefts.
Finally, I feel like I have a much better understanding of the history of Jews in France and of the behind-the-scenes world of archives.

[Dvora Treisman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zosa Szajkowski, a Polish Jew, came to Paris in 1927 when he was sixteen. He had attended school but had no higher education. He became a well known scholar, specializing in the history of the Jews of France. He also became a book and rare documents collector. And a thief.
During WWII he served in the French Foreign Legion, and later, rescued from the occupation, in the US military. He helped to rescue thousands of books and documents that the Nazis had looted and later collected more in small villages where they were lying dormant. Then he started stealing them from the libraries and archives where he went to do his research.
His original aim was to save these books and documents that represented the history of the Jews -- the soul of the Jewish community and take them to American or Israel where the future of the Jews lay. But after the war his motives eventually began to change.
This book is a biography, a social history, an intellectual history, and could be a crime novel except that it is true. As for Szajkowski in spite of it all, I didn't find that I could condemn him.

[Elizabeth Rynecki]

A really interesting look at the history of Jewish archives in the aftermath of the Second World War. Insightful both in terms of lending insight into understanding the structure of Jewish history, archival holdings, and research but also in terms of providing in-depth details about the life of Zosa Szajkowski. Lisa Moses Leff does an outstanding job of balancing the inevitable academic nitty-gritty with the compelling portrait she tells of a man whose actions so thoroughly shaped Jewish archives around the world.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leff does an incredible job of presenting a complex set of issues in an accessible way, drawing the reader in through the story of Zosa Szajkowski's life. There are a great many important issues to consider about archives, memory, the writing of history, and more.

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impressive scholarship, and it is very readable.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly relatively readable, although still dense and dry at times, and requires more than cursory background knowledge on WW2 and the Holocaust. Occasionally inserts Hebrew or Yiddish words without translation.

[Marian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not care for this book. I recommend, instead, The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis by David E. Fishman. The Archive Thief's story development and connecting thesis was lacking. I gave up after listening a few hours as the ambiguity was too pronounced. Speculation rich, the actions and the motives of the "Archive Thief" leave too much unclear. I do not think the author's grasp was good enough to make a compelling story. I think she published prematurely, and not every Holocaust-related story needs to be published in a book. A You-Tube of the facts would have been better. Of value to me as I thought about the general problem of archival records on Jews, I reflected on how so many European records hold documents of atrocities over the centuries without shame. I thought about how in the United States, we debate reparations for slavery shames of the past. I thought also about how most European cultures and countries do not acknowledge their torchings, expulsions, bad laws, . . . Resolution may not be with monetary reparations; I think the best reparations has to do with present and future behaviors. It is complicated, for sure, and I do not have the answers.

Since I did not finish the book, I cannot make a conclusion on the premise that this is a biography of a man who salvaged French Jewish History or not; there were some anecdotes, but I felt the speculative nature of the presentation and the seemingly gaping holes in data were large. Do Jewish historians and archivists have a "right" to the documents of, for example, the history of Jews of Speyer and their felt atrocities over 1000 years? Of course. Is snipping pages out of archives surreptitiously right? No. Is the documentation kept as a neutral document, a source of pride, or a source of shame? Were actions taken to reconcile the wrongs of the past by the archive possessors? This is where the story begins. In the now. Thank goodness we now have scanners!

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting caper! I laughed every time the author referred to stolen archival material as booty. Impeccably researched and although scholarly this is very readable and not dry.

[Hannah Rotwein · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not my favorite book in the world, though I did gain greater insight into both the looting and destruction archives faced during WWII, as well as the importance rebuilding (and transporting abroad) these archives took for some members of the Jewish elite following the Holocaust (as a way to preserve the cultural patrimony of a stateless people). Though important insights, I found some of Leff's points to be repeated so much they became redundant, especially those positing that what Szajkowski did was understandable given his experiences, and had both good and bad repercussions. Overall, I found this to be an interesting yet repetitive read on a polarizing individual.

[Carmen212 · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is so much substance and texture to this book. If one were to read these GR reviews, they would not get the fullness of what this book offers. Yes, the story of a man, a survivor, definitely a little crazy and his thefts of rare Jewish manuscripts, which he then sells to other libraries, other archives. Stolen from France and sold in the US and Israel. A micro-history that easily segues into questions such as who owns archives? as France was glossing over and redacting important facts in its archives about French complicity and collaboration, Szajkowski felt compelled to free these documents. It's all rather murky. As brilliant a scholar as he was, wrote dozens of highly researched books, made historical discoveries that opened new fields of study, he could not get a university job because because he had no initials after his name.

[Saul · Rating 4 out of 5]

The man at the center of this book—the archive thief himself—can be seen as a hero or villain in the maintaining of Jewish cultural history. He steals in aid of his own research and then to sell to the most trusted institutions in Jewish historical study. The author seems more sympathetic to his mission than critical of it, and when his story ultimately leads to ruin, she questions the way in which we regard archives in general. Are they maps for exploring our past, or are they more like rubbish heaps?

[Haley Wofford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an interesting read. I've studied the Holocaust before, but never from the French perspective, so it was illuminating to learn what the French Jews went through and also the debate on how someone would decide what to steal and why and the function of archives. Zosa Szajkowski was interesting to learn about and you definitely feel for him.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book that questions where the archives of a people displaced in a diaspora belong.

The story is mostly a narrative of the subject's life and was thus rather different from many of the books that have been read for a class.

[Leslie Balkany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but too redundant.

[Devra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling work. I alternated between being outraged by Szajkowski 's thefts, to having total sympathy for his situation.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the title alone one would be forgiven for thinking this was a biography about the Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger & the National Archives.

In reality, however, as the subtitle makes clear, it is about a prolific Jewish scholar and document dealer during and after World War II & an extended meditation on historiography and the role of archives in the reconstruction of the past.

[Erika Dreifus]

I'd heard the author talk about this book (twice!), and was fascinated by what she said about it, before I managed to pick up a copy. I was drawn into the story immediately (although I'll confess that as the book went on, there were moments when I lost a bit of that focus). Throughout, however, I never stopped marveling over the personage of Zosa Szajkowski, the central actor in this account. What a life. And what a tragic end.

[Ellen]

History, but it gave me some fascinating ideas that I'd never thought about before. Didn't know much about archives or their provenance. Read this for a book group and had one of the best discussions. A lot to think about and consider, Right and wrong, ownership, etc.

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

the book could be better edited in orfer to eliminate repetitions and reiterations, but otherwise it is excellent.