The Strashun Library was one of the most important libraries of Jewish learning in pre-World War II Europe. Its founder, Matityahu Strashun (1817-1885) was a major book collector, who owned thousands of Hebrew texts and manuscripts, including religious writings, fiction, poetry, scientific works, Jewish and Karaite historical works, travel accounts, and Hasidic texts.
He was a fanatical bibliophile, and collected rare books and manuscripts, amassing nearly 7,000 volumes during his lifetime. Childless at his death in 1885, he willed his collection to the Vilna Jewish community on the condition that they would create a Jewish public library. His wish was fulfilled and the Strashun Library was opened to scholars in 1892 and then to the public in 1902.
With donations of books by other scholars and contributions from the Vilnius University Library, the collection expanded to 33,000 titles by 1931. During World War II, the Strashun Library was looted and partially destroyed by the Nazis; only a small side room remained still containing a single metal book cabinet, open and bereft of its precious treasures. In 1945 about 40,000 volumes were retrieved by the U.S. Army in Germany. The YIVO Institute was one of the beneficiaries of the collection. In June 2017 the Strashun Library was entered into the UNESCO Memory of the World Registry in a ceremony held by the Directorate of the State Cultural Reserve of KernavÄ—, which retains 1,300 prints.
There remains one other collection of the Strashun library books in their original home in Vilnius. Those books are the ones that Jews so courageously risked their lives to hide. Hidden in underground bunkers in Vilnius ghetto, they survived.
In a nearly unbelievable twist of fate for months, the books were hidden in a bunker that was at number six Strashun street, a street named after Mattityahun Strashun in Vilnius. For an unknown reason the day before the nazis discovered that bunker and had all its contents destroyed, the library books were moved to a bunker next door where they survived. After the war, they were unearthed and moved and to a massive storage facility, nationalized by the Soviet government and led slowly decaying until the fall of the Soviet Union. Today they have been unearthed yet again and are in the process of being cataloged and digitized
Strashun's collection of Jewish books stored in the National Library won recognition from UNESCO
Sources
https://www.lnb.lt/en/news/2250-strashun-s-collection-of-jewish-books-stored-in-the-national-library-won-recognition-from-unesco
More about The Strashun Library of Vilna
https://strashunlibrary.yivo.org/exhibits/show/strashun-library/strashun-about
https://parodos.lnb.lt/exhibits/show/strasuno-biblioteka?fbclid=IwAR1fuGx_6GQ9eGZ-mU-4PTOptTVrtSy9DKRoAzry68G-UHvha6V8oGTNits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_libraries_damaged_during_World_War_II