As the Germans began to lose ground on the Eastern Front, their authorities decided in 1944 to evacuate part of the State Library's collection from Lviv. Mieczysław Gębarowicz, the (underground) director of the National Ossolinski Institute and official head of the Second Department of the State Library in Lwów, was ordered to select the most valuable items for German culture from the collections. However, he decided to hide the most valuable Ossolineum collections, including the manuscript of Adam Mickiewicz's "Pan Tadeusz", in German boxes. The boxes were first delivered to Krakow, where they were destined for the Jagiellonian Library, but due to the situation at the front, they were taken somewhere deep in the Reich.
