Near the Mariinsky Theater and next door to the Great Synagogue of St Petersburg, you can see a picturesque building in the Mauresque style at 42 Ulitsa Dekabristov.
The building once held the largest collections of Hebrew books and manuscripts in St Petersburg.
The library, founded in 1878, belonged to the congregation and to the Society for the Enlightenment of Jews.
Together with the library, the building also housed two schools -- one for boys, the other for girls.
Soon after the October Revolution, as religious instruction was forbidden and all schools became state property, the two schools were transformed into the co-educational Jewish secondary school No 5.
Soviet educational authorities did not want the Hebrew Library to remain in the building of the school so in 1918 the library had to move to 18 Stremannaya Ulitsa, and in 1933 was liquidated.
The building at 42 Ulitsa Dekabristov was given to a hospital which is still in it.
The library continued to function at its new place, although it was no longer run by the Society for the Enlightenment of Jews, for the society had been liquidated.
Like all libraries, it became state property, but was still managed by the outstanding pre-revolutionary scholars who worked in the recently founded Jewish University.
The scholars did their best not only to preserve the unique library, but also to increase the number of books in it.
Some private collections which were about to be destroyed by Red Army soldiers were saved by these people and added to the library.
Gradually, book exchange contacts were established with the University of Jerusalem and several European cities.
In 1925, the Jewish university moved to the building where the library was, and incorporated the it. This seemed to ensure additional prospects for the development of the library.
But as anti-religious campaigns increased in 1927, it was strictly forbidden to teach Hebrew. From the late 1920s to the early 1980s, those who tried to do so would usually be arrested.
The charges varied from "religious propaganda" (5-10 years imprisonment) to "espionage" (15 years imprisonment or the death sentence.)
In 1928, both the Jewish university and the library were liquidated. All Hebrew books were available only in "special reading rooms" of Soviet libraries and in fact almost nobody was allowed to read them, so the library at 18 Stremannanya could no longer be opened for readers.
Yet there are reasons for believing that the library, or at least its part, still exists somewhere in Russia, the Ukraine or another country in a special department of a library of the Former Soviet Union or in a private collection.