"The complex, hitherto murky, and too often deliberately distorted story of the postwar destiny of this greatest of all Jewish public libraries has finally and definitively been recounted in Rabinowitz’s superb study..."

Allan Nadler | Jewish Review of Books

“Rabinowitz demonstrates a mastery of his subject . . . and effectively deploys the Strashun Library as a lens through which to examine wider cultural and geopolitical forces in the 19th and 20th centuries.” 

Reviews in History

“A fascinating work about Vilna’s Strashun Library, bringing to light this institution which serviced a wide diversity of Jewish men and women and changed the nature of what a public library’s function could be.”

Jewish Voice and Opinion

“A serious contribution to the history of Jewish Vilna. . . . . this book will be read with great interest and profit by anyone interested in Jewish or Eastern European history, Vilna/Vilnius, or the intricacies of intellectual property restoration after World War II.”

Polish Review

“Rabinowitz has done a brilliant job in his moving and important book. . . . He vividly portrays the restoration of the books of the Strashun Library, a testimony to the indomitable Jewish spirit.”
 

Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat, author of Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II

“Rabinowitz detects a breathtaking history of loss and mourning, of illegal claims and desires, of appropriation and incorporation that expresses the rupture of the Holocaust and the contested visions of Jewish life after catastrophe.”
 

Elisabeth Gallas, author of A Mortuary of Books: Rescue of Jewish Culture after the Holocaust

"Rabinowitz demonstrates a mastery of his subject. . . . Rabinowitz effectively deploys the Strashun Library as a lens through which to examine wider cultural and geopolitical forces in the 19th and 20th centuries. An essentially tragic story—of a lost culture and of the mistreatment of its material remains by those who claim to be the heirs to that culture—ends on a more sanguine note."

Reviews in History