The irony of fate has led to the appointment of Dr, Joachim Kirchner, formerly the director of the Carl von Rothschild library as commissar for the “cleansing” of this city’s municipal libraries of Jewish books. The “cleansing” process which is still in progress throughout Germany, however, will not result in the destruction but merely in the withdrawal from public circulation of books by Jews.
Jewish books in the famous Rothschild library will not be confiscated since, in any case, the library is not open to the general public. Nevertheless, all Jewish books there will be marked with red labels and will be issued only to bona fide research workers on presentation of proof that the books are required in the particular scientific investigation for which they are requested.
The “cleansing” is still continuing in the city of Berlin, but apart from the eighteen hundred books consigned to the flames in the book holocaust May 10 the disposition of some twenty thousand other volumes confiscated, still remains in doubt. The Nazi commissar in charge announced that their destruction is still under consideration while the offer of a London bookseller to purchase the banned books has been definitely turned down. If the books are to be destroyed, they will not be burned, but will be sold to paper mills which provided the trucks used in their collection, to be repulped.
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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.
