The Leo Baeck Institute London invites you to the launch of our Library of Lost Books exhibition at Leo Baeck College Library. The Library of Lost Books is a project that tells the story of one of the most important Jewish scholarly libraries of the twentieth century - and asks the public to help find its missing volumes.
The exhibition focuses on the library of the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies (Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums) in Berlin, founded in 1872 and closed by the Nazis in 1942. Its collection of around 60,000 books was looted, dispersed and scattered across the world. Many of these volumes now sit, unnoticed, in libraries, archives and private collections in the UK and beyond.
Roundtable: Looking back and beyond the Library of Lost Books
The vernissage of the exhibition at Leo Baeck College will revisit the work of Bettina Farack, Dr Irene Aue-Ben-David and Dr Kinga S. Bloch. The women behind the Library of Lost Books (2023-2025) project will address learnings from the implementation of Bettina Farack’s ground-breaking idea to invite the public in a global search for a German-Jewish library that was confiscated by the Nazis and dispersed after 1945. In conversation with Cassy Sachar of Leo Baeck College Library, they will discuss their experiences in creating this pioneering citizen science project and bringing it to libraries and archives across three continents, with a particular focus on its implementation at Leo Baeck College in London.
Dr Joseph Cronin, Director of the Leo Baeck Institute London, said:
The Library of Lost Books is not only about recovering objects; it is about restoring the intellectual world that the Nazis tried to destroy. By working together as ‘book detectives’, we can help piece together the journeys of these volumes and keep alive the memory of the scholars and communities who once read them.
The exhibition will remain on view at Leo Baeck College Library from November 2026 to October 2027 - further information here.
Date: 26 November 2026, 6:00–7:30pm
Venue: Leo Baeck College Library, 80 East End Road, London N3 2SY
To attend: Please register on the LBC Library website at https://lbc.ac.uk/library-events/
