Most of the books that had been stored in the synagogue of Trieste were lost. The most valuable ones (including some from the famous Stendhal collection belonging to Bruno Pincherle [1903-1968]) had been removed during the war. Many of the books are known to have been stamped, with either the inscription of the Jewish school (“Scuola di religione Comunità Isrealitica di Trieste”) or that of Sabato Raffaelle Melli's library (“Legato Rabb. Mag. S. Melli”). Melli (1825-1907) had been a rabbi in Trieste from 1870 to 1907. Both collections had become part of the Trieste Jewish community's library. Others had ex-libris: an outline of the bookplate of Elda Luzzatto Pollitzer (1868-1962) was handed over to Allied authorities in order to facilitate the search.

Ex-libris of Elda Luzzato Pollitzer Vienna, Bundesdenkmalamt, Archiv Restitution Materialien, box 40-2, folder Luzzato-Pollitzer, Elda © 2020 BDA-Archiv Wien

In 1949, the director of the Klagenfurt Studien-bibliothek informed the local Italian consulate that 147 books had been found among the library’s holdings. Rodolfo Siviero (1911-1983), the Italian 'plenipotentiary minister' for recovering artworks stolen from Italy during the Second World War, commissioned Luisa Mortara Ottolenghi (1930-2017), later president of the Milan Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (Cedec), to write up a report. Her report, dated 10 November 1976, stated that the search of books, presumably stored in the libraries of Vienna and Klagenfurt, was still on-going at that time.

As for manuscripts, monsignor Pier Francesco Fumagalli, who in 1975 was a student preparing his university thesis on Hebrew manuscripts existing in Italy, found that of the twenty-four manuscripts listed and described for Trieste by the historian and bibliographer Isaia Sonne (1887–1960) in his "Relazione sui tesori bibliografici delle Comunità Israelitiche d’Italia" in 1935-1936, one had still not been located. However he adds: “Everything that remained after the war is now in storage in Jerusalem. But after the war were all the 24 mss. still there?" ("Tutto ciò che rimase dopo la guerra ora in deposito a Gerusalemme. Ma dopo la guerra i 24 mss. c’erano ancora tutti?”).

Today there is a project underway to digitalize the Sonne's reports, promoted by Cedec. The part of the "Relazione" concerning Trieste is available online.