letter that "no other Italian Jewish library had so many priceless books and very few outside Italy exceeded it". Looting With the surrender of Italy on 8 September 1943, Germany occupied northern and central Italy, including the Italian capital, Rome. The libraries of the Jewish community in Rome soon attracted German attention. According to an eyewitness, two uniformed men visited the Biblioteca della Comunità Israelitica and the Italian Rabbinical College library, located in the same building, on 30 September and 1 October 1943. One of the two introduced himself as a teacher of Hebrew at an institute in Berlin, most likely Johannes Pohl from the Institute for Study of the Jewish Question, who had fulfilled a similar role at the Jewish libraries in Amsterdam. Attempts were made to receive support from the Fascist Italian government to retain the contents of the libraries in Italy, but these received no sympathy there. On 14 October 1943, two days before the raid on the Roman Ghetto, the contents of the Biblioteca della Comunità Israelitica and parts of the contents of the Rabbinical College library were taken away. The remainder of the contents of the Rabbinical College library were taken on 23 and 24 December 1943. A few isolated books and prints survived the looting either by being hidden by members of the community or overlooked by the Germans. Under the control of the German military administration, the contents of the library were loaded onto two railway cars by an Italian company and sent to Germany via Switzerland. A letter by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (ERR) from 21 January 1944, most likely referring to the second load of loot, stated that it had been delivered to an institute in Frankfurt am Main. The priceless contents of the community library were of special interest to the Rosenberg organisation, and it had set up a special organisation, the Sonderkommando Italien, for their activities in the country. The records of the correspondence of the ERR were destroyed by a bombing raid on Berlin in November 1943. The Italian commission trying to locate the library contents came to the conclusion that the first train in October did not go to Frankfurt but to Berlin, which would explain why some of the contents of the second train were found after the war. None of the contents of the first train were ever recovered. Fate of the contents Only part