Comment by jakubadamw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jakubadamw | Hacker News Reader

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> and most of the knowledge lost in the war in todays Poland was actually knowledge of german culture and heritage

Wow. It sounds like you have a grossly misinformed view of this part of the world, with a clear sense of superiority of one culture over the other. So, here's a few facts for you:

> Most likely on October 12-13, 1944, the Brandkommando of the Wehrmacht (Nazi German army) burned collections of the most valuable literary monuments from the National Library in one of the greatest losses to Polish culture in its history, and one of the greatest losses to written culture in history of the world. The National Library lost at least 39,000 manuscripts – and most likely more, perhaps as many as 50,000 – along with some 80,000 books from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, 100,000 books from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 60,000 drawings and engravings, 25,000 musical scores and 10,000 maps. The great family libraries were almost wiped out, such as the famous collection of manuscripts of the Krasiński Library, of which just 78 volumes survived out of more than 7,000.¹

¹ https://www.bn.org.pl/en/news/3855-75-years-ago-the-germans-...

> Mr. Garber, the Second World War was also an inferno for German book and library culture. Do we now know more or less exactly what damage and losses occurred at which collection locations in Germany?

> Yes, most of the damage is known and extends across the entire old German Reich, from Karlsruhe to Kiel, from Munich to Königsberg. The largest German library in the Reich was hit most spectacularly. In July 1943, the Hamburg City Library alone lost 700,000 volumes in “Aktion Gomorrha”. As far as the individual titles themselves are concerned, the relevant data is often still missing - unfortunately. There is no large and accurate work on the books and libraries that once existed and were lost or not returned during the Second World War.

> How do you assess the historical and intellectual damage caused to our cultural memory by the absence of German books?

> I will answer this question with a quote from the first expert on the subject from 1947: “It is a catastrophe that has no comparison in the history of libraries and in the history of science” (Georg Leyh). We have no account of the demise of German libraries. Germany has lost significant parts of its cultural memory forever. But who knows about it? Conversely, the greatest crime committed by Germany has led to an irretrievable loss of urban silhouettes and cultural witnesses. The answer? Never-ending mourning and never-ending work of remembrance.

https://www.fr.de/kultur/literatur/eine-katastrophe-11007951...

Generally, the cultural loss via burning down libraries and knowledge is inherent to war, and obviously does not only affect one country. The article also mentions the Library of Warsaw as an example of lost knowledge, but the loss of german culture "has no comparison in the history of libraries", per renowned librarian Georg Leyh.

P.S.: Germany still does not own the Berlinka - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinka_(art_collection)

The German losses were mostly collateral damage related to the bombings of the cities. The burning of the Polish collections and archives by the German army, on the other hand, was a conscious, deliberate act pertaining to the objective of destroying the culture of the Polish nation – I refer you, amongst other things, to Himmler's and Hitler's clearly expressed intent of razing Warsaw, the nominal, but also cultural and intellectual capital of pre-war Poland, to the ground. That intent is not inherent to war in a universal sense – for one, it is a war crime, for which Alfred Rosenberg was convicted during the Nürnberg Trials – and it looks like you are generally convinced the conduct of the German army in WWII was that like of any other, and that war as carried out by Germany in 1939-1945 was war like any other. At this point, my curiosity in continuing this conversation is limited solely to the question on where you received your history education.

> P.S.: Germany still does not own the Berlinka - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinka_(art_collection)

It does not, the German state dropped it for safekeeping in Lower Silesia and according to international law, its ownership was transferred together with the legal status of the respective territories per the Potsdam conference. Any discussion on the possible return of parts of the collection would need to start with the return of the thousands of Polish works of art held in German collections, to which, unlike Poland's legal claim to the Berlinka collection, Germany has none.

My original argument was: "and most of the knowledge lost in the war in todays Poland was actually knowledge of german culture and heritage"

to which I gave a reference that makes a good case for this to be indeed true.

You chose to ignore it and instead resort to talking about something unrelated (intent), which is a straw man, and you also launch an ad hominem, another logical fallacy. You also resort to faulty generalizations.

In case you have overlooked it, here's the most relevant part of the quotes I gave:

> “It is a catastrophe that has no comparison in the history of libraries and in the history of science” (Georg Leyh). We have no account of the demise of German libraries. Germany has lost significant parts of its cultural memory forever.

But it's not a thesis of Die Deutschen Wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken nach dem Krieg, it's just a quote, and it does not support that "most of the knowledge lost in the war in todays Poland was actually knowledge of german culture and heritage", this is out of the scope of Georg Leyh work

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