The acquisition of the volumes by Harvard was greeted with little fanfare in 1950. In his annual report for that year, when Harvard's libraries added a total of 30,000 books to their shelves, University Librarian Keyes D. Metcalf mentioned the Holocaust volumes only in passing.

A bigger coup that year was the donation of a valuable collection of 3,000 Jewish books and manuscripts that were previously owned by a European book collector and had been purchased wholesale after the war by a graduate of the College. The donated collection allowed Metcalf to boast that "the College Library now has one of the outstanding Hebrew collections in the United States."

By comparison, the Holocaust books from Jewish Cultural Reconstruction hardly aroused much interest. In fact, the first time the organization offered some of the books to universities, Harvard library officials lost the paperwork and never replied.

A year later, the group's secretary wrote a second time--this time specifically to Harvard--asking incredulously if Harvard wanted to pass up this chance at enlarging their collection (The group's secretary was none other than famed philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt).

According to Sidney H. Verba '53, director of the University Library and Pforzheimer University professor, Harvard accepted the books almost as a favor to the organization.

"They then sent a letter to us asking if we could store the books....We accepted the books," Verba said.

But at the time, the books were in some demand. According to Jewish Cultural Reconstruction's correspondence with Harvard, the organization thought the books would be in demand and emphasized to potential recipient libraries that it could not guarantee that they would get the books they wanted.