Urn
An urn with the ashes of the National Library collection burned during World War II
In September 1939, 22 most valuable manuscripts from the National Library collection were evacuated from Poland and eventually reached Canada, where they safely survived World War II. The remaining manuscripts, as well as early prints, drawings, engravings, maps, musical scores and books from the National Library collection were moved by the Germans during the occupation to the Krasiński Library building at Okólnik Street 9. In October 1944, following the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, special Wehrmacht units entered the Krasiński Library building with flamethrowers and, violating a peace treaty which guaranteed the safety of Polish cultural assets, burned all the collections located there.
The National Library lost at least 39,000 manuscripts (probably up to 50,000), 80,000 books from the 15th to 18th centuries, 100,000 books from the 19th-20th centuries, as well as 60,000 drawings and engravings, 25,000 sheets of music and 10,000 maps. It is one of the greatest losses in the history of the Polish culture and one of the greatest losses in the global history of the written word.
There are accounts of librarians trudging through the rubble of Warsaw, only to reach the destroyed building of the Krasiński Library. This is how Professor Bohdan Korzeniewski described it:
“The entry to the cellar was not blocked by rubble, so I made it downstairs. At first glance, one experienced overwhelming joy. The collections survived! They were lying in thick layers. The impression of order was striking – we hadn’t ordered the books when concealing the bunker. There were no metal sheets or sandbags. But the stacks were much lower. The volumes no longer reached the ceiling as they did when we stacked them. A closer look revealed the secret of these changes. It was pure horror. When touched, the evenly stacked copies didn’t fall apart – they vanished. The collections had completely smoldered in the fire, which must have slowly consumed them for many days. It was easy to guess how they were destroyed. The members of the Brennkommando or Vernichtungskommando or some other organization of the state of thugs undoubtedly had vast professional experience. They took their time, completing tasks in defeated Warsaw. They grabbed the books from under the ceiling, doused them with gasoline and set them on fire. With their foot on Warsaw’s throat, they carried out the sentence of extermination pronounced on a neighboring nation. Alongside genocide, they committed mass murder of books.”
Tadeusz Makowiecki recalled it in a similar manner: “Silence. All the windows black and vacant. Yet we know that the Library survived the uprising. With our boots sinking in the ashes, we make it down to the huge cellars. They must have been set on fire separately, one by one. They had sheltered the greatest treasures: manuscripts, early prints, drawings, engravings, musical scores, maps, the Załuski Library [the first Polish National Library and the largest library in the 18th-century Europe], king Stanisław August’s collections, the remaining Rapperswil collections, the Krasiński archives, artifacts from all the libraries in Warsaw. Nothing. Nothing. […] Again, we slump helplessly, as we did upon hearing the cruel reports of the losses of our loved ones. Helpless, we drag our feet along the dark corridors. In a large boiler room at the back, we find perhaps a hundred wooden crates – completely empty, prepared for the evacuation of the collection. The Germans did not set them on fire – why should they? We stand there, lighting the vaulted cave with a few candles. Finally, we take a few crates, two each – they will be useful in other libraries – and slowly leave. Stumbling over the rubble, climbing over piles of bricks a floor high, we walk the streets in silence – a funeral procession carrying ten long wooden caskets with not as much as ashes inside”.
In the transparent urn, in which the ashes of the most valuable collections of the National Library have been placed, one can still see the shapes of books and manuscripts. No one will ever read them.