A one-volume Jewish encyclopedia, “Lexikon des Judentums, ” in the German language, will be published by a West German firm, it was reported here today.
The C. Bertelsmann Verlag in Gueterscoh, West Germany, has signed a contract for the encyclopedia with its editor-in-chief, John F. Oppenheimer, a lexicographer who brought out the “Philo-Lexikon, Handbuch des Juedeische Wissens” in Berlin in 1934, the year after Hitler came to power. The new one-volume work will be the first book of this kind published in Germany since the 1934 publication.
Mr. Oppenheimer was connected with the Berlin publishing house of Ullstein before fleeing to the United States in 1939. He started his American career as a member of the staff of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and is now president of Wallenberg and Wallenberg, Inc. in New York City. Many of the experts who worked with him on the 1934 lexicon are again contributing material to the new encyclopedia from cities throughout the world where they settled after leaving Nazi Germany.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
