From November 1940 until March 1942, the building was within the Warsaw Ghetto borders. It hosted the headquarters of the Jewish Social Self-Help, a staging point for Jews forcibly resettled from Germany and a storage unit for furniture stolen in the ghetto. The edifice endured the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising, although it sustained damage. The Library’s collections were looted by the Germans. Some were restored after the war (according to other sources, the Library had lost all of its stock, i.e. 40,000 units).
