In this meticulously researched and detailed exploration of the efforts made after the war to salvage what remained of Jewish cultural treasures looted by the Germans, Elisabeth Gallas gives us a powerful, sometimes horrifying and often moving tale of loss and destruction. It seemed likely at one time that Jewish culture could be totally annihilated but much was thankfully saved, and the work of identifying and when possible restoring artefacts, especially books, to their rightful owners was carried out by dedicated and tireless experts. It was a difficult and sometimes contentious task but thanks to their efforts much was indeed saved and returned. I found it a fascinating and ultimately uplifting story if an often heart-breaking one and the book is an important and valuable work of Jewish scholarship and history.

This book is a must read, especially for those interested in this time in history. It is very specific and detailed but never becomes a dull or heavy read.

I was really intrigued by the topic of this book - how activists worked to save and preserve Jewish books and relics after the Holocaust. But this might not have been the right book for me. Although there is so much emotion and pain surrounding the topic, the writing felt really academic and dry to me. There was a lot of stating dates and people, but it was extremely hard to keep the names straight. I would have loved one or two people to focus on - maybe if the info was given through one person's lens, it might have been more fluid. My favorite parts of the book were when the author included firsthand anecdotes or quotes from letters by the people who were working to heal and recover from the Nazi reign. I would have been happy with much more of this and less of the sort of list of facts that this felt like. I can appreciate that this was translated from German as well; perhaps there might have been a little more cohesion if it was originally written in English.

This would be an amazing read for people who are studying or researching the topic and want to understand more, but for someone like me, I couldn't get past the writing style.

Oh my gosh!! I did not know what to expect when I requested this book, but it was astonishing! Everyone needs to read this especially history buffs, world war II lovers and of course book lovers. I never thought about what happened to the books after the war and the looting so this was a great insight. Def recommend!

A Mortuary of Books is a interesting subject, the stirring is a bit slow to get through. I did find it interesting.

A subject everyone is interested in but won’t openly admit I really enjoyed reading this one very different

To a certain reader, this is a goldmine of information and historical discussion, centring on how the many thousands (nay, many hundreds of thousands) of books and synagogue properties purloined by the Nazis were treated and returned by the victorious Allies. Even a general layman like me can see the narrative drive in sections of this book, and learn how the general rule – that of giving the recovered bounties back to the states from where it came – had to be changed, in sympathy of the fact many places no longer had the Jewish culture left alive for the stuff to be fitted back into, and partly because some of that was Germany and Austria, and they should never have received any of it for their state institutions. It took a look of thought and debate at the time about how to return some sense of normality to Jewish culture in Europe that meant people and private collections could claim their properties.

Unfortunately, I'm not that certain reader, and I found this book – which is commendably translated and updated from the German original – to be too academic for what passing interest in the topics it might have engendered. I guess the proof was that about 60% of the book is the text, with a huge chunk for notes, bibliography and index, etc. That didn't make the bulk of it as quick to read as I would have hoped, and I found a little too much dryness and too much concentration on being the definitive volume on the theme, for a general browser such as I. It clearly is an important tale – consider how much this material was first looted from the dead, then became a ghostly warehouse of culture in a German factory, then was sent around the world to prop up Israel and Jewish diasporas; the tale of the development of Israel clearly has a few lines devoted to this story. Which is one reason why this is unfortunately less accessible than it might have been.