Germany has returned five books stolen by German soldiers during World War II to a descendant of famous resistance fighter and former French minister Georges Mandel.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said Friday at the handover ceremony in Paris that the return of the books sent a signal that it is never too late to do justice.
The works were in the possession of the Berlin State Library and the Saxon State Library in Dresden. German soldiers had stolen them, when they looted the Jewish politician’s apartment in 1940, from his personal library, which contained about 15,000 works.
Memorial sign at Avenue Victor-Hugo 69, Paris. © Polymagou / Wikimedia Commons
Mandel was, among other things, Minister of the Interior in France, and he firmly refused to surrender to Nazi Germany. Imprisoned in France in 1940, he was sent to concentration camps, and eventually killed as a leading member of the resistance in a forest south of Paris in the summer of 1944.
