• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.273-295
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• 2010

Germany has started restitution process for most of collections from its occupied countries after World War II which was strongly led by the United Nations. However, this process did not include many of the plundered Jewish collections. In 1989, restitution for the Jewish's properties confiscated by the Nazis became important international issue with success in Jewish material claims against Germany in the U.S and Europe countries after German unification. German libraries has still possessed collections sequestered by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. With Washington conference on holocaust-era assets in 1998, libraries began to sympathize with restoration of their Jewish confiscated collections. In present, by identifying the provenance of those collections at primary level, German librarians focus on various restitution activities for those collections in order to introspect and overcome their past. Specifically, the libraries publish the practical guidebook of studies on the provenance identification and open the database for the pillaged collections to the public. Few libraries start to restore the collections, but the numbers of the restituted collections are still insignificant.