A poster from Duncan Emrich’s collection. Photo: St. Olaf College.

A rare collection of Nazi propaganda posters that was forgotten for decades will now be restored, housed for research and displayed at Minnesota’s St. Olaf College, the Star Tribune reported last week.

The posters were collected by the late folklore professor Duncan Emrich, who tracked them down while serving in Europe as a US Army major during World War II.

With much of Nazi propaganda destroyed as countries were liberated, Emrich went after printers and locals to eventually obtain some 150 posters, many depicting Jews as sub-human.

Also included in the collection are German announcements of the executions of partisans, or resistance fighters.

Emrich reportedly sent the posters back to his wife in America and exhibitions were subsequently put on in New York and Washington, DC to raise money for the war relief effort.

At some point, Emrich sold the posters to a St. Olaf alumnus. It was while sifting through that individual’s art collection after his death a couple of years ago that curators from the college’s Flaten Art Museum discovered the Nazi materials.

The school has embarked on an effort to conserve, restore and digitize the posters, a project on which St. Olaf has already spent a total of $25,000.

According to the report, conservation could cost anywhere between $2,000 to $25,000 per poster, with some of the collection heavily damaged after 70 years in storage.

Faculty will have access to the materials for research and use in lectures, and a public exhibition is planned at the Flaten museum for 2020.

Earlier this month, St. Olaf students attempted to force the ejection of a former congressman from a school advisory board due to his affiliation with AIPAC.