Offenbach Archival Depot different from Munich Central Collecting Point
Offenbach Location
By early 1946, however, the U.S. Army had embarked on an organized effort to repatriate some 3 million books that had been looted by the Nazis. They collected the loot in a warehouse in the town of Offenbach am Main, just outside Frankfurt, under the control of Seymour Pomrenze. The Offenbach building had itself been confiscated from the chemicals conglomerate, I.G. Farben, that had manufactured the gas used at Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
The original collecting point in 1945 was the Rothschild Library in Frankfurt, but the overwhelming numbers required them to find a new location in the I. G. Farben building in Offenbach. This five story building was soon renamed the Offenbach Archival Depot. General Dwight Eisenhower issued an order in September 1945 that all trained librarians who were officers in the Western Theatre of Operations were to report to him for possible duty in the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFA&A). Lt. Leslie I. Posté (aka Leslie I. Poste) was selected from the other librarians for this duty, and ended up driving over a thousand miles a week in an open jeep around Hesse and Wuerttemberg-Baden, who helped select and set up the Collecting Point at Offenbach. Cataloging was streamlined under Librarian Leslie I. Posté, and some 300 books a day eventually increased to where millions of books could be returned to their libraries.
Captain Seymour Pomrenze was the first director of the depot. Captain Isaac Bencowitz was the second director.