Piotr Nazaruk, an energetic non-Jewish historian of Polish Jewry in Lublin, has found some 400 books belonging to Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin in the basements of the Jewish Archive in Warsaw, according to Yanki Farber of Bechadrei Charedim.
Nazaruk has been spending the past few years hunting down the books that once adorned the vast library of the yeshivah, finding 850 such tomes clearly identifiable as belonging to the yeshivah thanks to its stamp, per a report by the Times of Israel.
Nazaruk firmly believed that many of the missing books, which were once believed to be destroyed in a fire set by the Nazis, could be found at the Jewish Archive in Warsaw. He asked to go down into the archive's basement to check, but it was only when the management changed that he was allowed to do so, where he found a treasure.
In addition to the books themselves and the stamps, some of the finds contained labels or writing indicating the identities of people who donated books to the library.
The 400-book collection includes a Tanach from the 16th century known as the Hutter Bible, as well as books belonging to Rabbi Meir Shapira of Lublin's private library. Some of these may contain written comments of his.
