Like his father Shmuel, Matisyahu Strashun (1817-1885) was a successful businessman and an accomplished talmudic scholar, as well as a prominent member of Vilna’s Jewish community. He also participated in the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), then in its heyday in Eastern Europe. In his lifetime, he amassed one of the world’s most extensive Judaica libraries. After his death, the collection took on a life of its own. Dan Rabinowitz writes:
At the time of his death, [Strashun had] amassed a collection of over 5,700 books and manuscripts. His collection included incunabula, rare and controversial works, and manuscripts. . . . Strashun’s collection included rabbinic and Haskalah works, and books in non-Hebrew languages.
At his death in 1885, Strashun left no direct heirs. He did, however, provide for the disposition of his library in his will. In the past, those with large libraries had sold [them] or left [them] to relatives; Strashun [instead] bequeathed his library to the Vilna Jewish community writ large, with instructions to establish a . . . public library. His vision for the library was modeled on “the non-Jewish libraries that he saw in the Diaspora.” To that end, Strashun provided not only the books but also the funds to support the creation and maintenance of the library. . . .
[In the early 20th century], many Vilna scholars donated their collections to the library, and, by the 1930s, [it] had grown to over 35,000 volumes.
In the aftermath of World War II, during which the Nazis had looted the library and removed some of its books to Frankfurt, many of its remaining holdings found a home at the YIVO Institute in New York.
Read more on Seforim: http://seforim.blogspot.com/2015/11/finders-keepers-itinerant-history-of.html