After taking the German city of Offenbach near the end of World War II, American forces found hundreds of boxes of books, recently moved there by the Nazis from nearby Frankfurt-am-Main when the latter came under bombardment. The task of sorting these books, mostly looted from Jewish libraries, fell to one Captain Isaac Benkowitz. Daniel Lipson explains:

The Nazis stole millions of books during the Holocaust. Nearly two million volumes had found their way from Eastern and Western Europe to the Institute for the Research of the Jewish Question in Frankfurt. Founded by Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi regime’s chief ideologue, this institute was just a small part of his grandiose plan to establish a network of research institutes for Nazi studies, for which he had received Hitler’s personal blessing. . . . [T]he institute in Frankfurt began to operate during the war and its library became the largest “Jewish library” in Europe. . . .

It was Benkowitz’s predecessor, another Jewish officer by the name of Seymour Pomrenze, who established the Offenbach Archival Depot, as it came to be known. A huge and daunting task lay ahead of him, but within a short while he had the whole process of sorting and organizing the books up and running. In a matter of months, he was able to return roughly a million-and-a-half books. Pomrenze was fortunate not to have to sort through all of them, as a large portion of the books, mainly from the Netherlands and France, were still in the crates from their original libraries. . . .

Benkowitz, on the other hand, who had been Pomrenze’s assistant and right hand until the latter’s departure, knew that he would have to deal with hundreds of thousands of other books from all across Europe, each from a different place. . . . The army had placed under his supervision German workers who were assigned a variety of jobs after the war. . . .

As most of the books’ owners had been murdered, and the institutions that housed them destroyed, the majority found their way to such major Jewish libraries as the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City.

On Tuesday, a Hizballah drone attack injured three people in northern Israel. The next day, another attack, targeting an IDF base, injured eighteen people, six of them seriously, in Arab al-Amshe, also in the north. This second attack involved the simultaneous use of drones carrying explosives and guided antitank missiles. In both cases, the defensive systems that performed so successfully last weekend failed to stop the drones and missiles. Ron Ben-Yishai has a straightforward explanation as to why: the Lebanon-backed terrorist group is getting better at evading Israel defenses. He explains the three basis systems used to pilot these unmanned aircraft, and their practical effects:

These systems allow drones to act similarly to fighter jets, using “dead zones”—areas not visible to radar or other optical detection—to approach targets. They fly low initially, then ascend just before crashing and detonating on the target. The terrain of southern Lebanon is particularly conducive to such attacks.

But this requires skills that the terror group has honed over months of fighting against Israel. The latest attacks involved a large drone capable of carrying over 50 kg (110 lbs.) of explosives. The terrorists have likely analyzed Israel’s alert and interception systems, recognizing that shooting down their drones requires early detection to allow sufficient time for launching interceptors.

The IDF tries to detect any incoming drones on its radar, as it had done prior to the war. Despite Hizballah’s learning curve, the IDF’s technological edge offers an advantage. However, the military must recognize that any measure it takes is quickly observed and analyzed, and even the most effective defenses can be incomplete. The terrain near the Lebanon-Israel border continues to pose a challenge, necessitating technological solutions and significant financial investment.