March 2000

This story is making the rounds from Reuters.
Demonstrating the wide reach of Holocaust restitution efforts, the World Jewish Congress said Wednesday that Austria\’s libraries had 186,000 books that the Nazis had stolen from Holocaust victims.
“The documents made clear that the books are almost entirely of Jewish origin — that is, having been seized from Jewish victims in Austria and the Netherlands,\’\’ Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, told Reuters.

Yahoo! News has the entire story.

This story is making the rounds from Reuters.
Demonstrating the wide reach of Holocaust restitution efforts, the World Jewish Congress said Wednesday that Austria\’s libraries had 186,000 books that the Nazis had stolen from Holocaust victims.
“The documents made clear that the books are almost entirely of Jewish origin — that is, having been seized from Jewish victims in Austria and the Netherlands,\’\’ Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, told Reuters.

Yahoo! News has the entire story.

He was referring to documents found in Austria\’s archives that show that on Nov. 18, 1951, the government appropriated the books the Nazis had taken from Jewish institutions, libraries, schools and individuals, and divided them among educational and cultural institutions.

The stolen works cover a wide range of subjects, from religion to sports.
Austria\’s new coalition government has promised to swiftly compensate Nazi-era slave laborers. Once those claims have been settled, the Austrian government says it may compensate Jews whose property was stolen by the Nazis after they overran the country in March 1938. Some historians put the value of stolen assets at $18 billion.

“The point we\’re making here is the comprehensive nature of Holocaust loot in Vienna,\’\’ Steinberg said.
Austria, which identified the books as “unable to return to their owners,\’\’ gave some 128,000 to the national library and the university library, Steinberg said. The volumes also were sent to the parliament\’s library, the chancellor\’s library and the Albertine Museum in Vienna.

“We are now seeking to determine which if any of the books that were redistributed or appropriated in the 1950s have been returned (to their owners),\’\’ Steinberg said.

I was just checking out a new serach engine called Metaclic.com. It\’s a graphical interface, more so than most sites, Unlike other search engines, in MetaClic you create your search queries by dragging and dropping icons, the icons are then a graphical representaion of your boolean search. Dragging and dropping icons is neat idea for a search engine.
You can create your own new directory for a very targeted topic you may be interested in which can then be made into a shared directory for others to use. I\’ll leave judgement on the site up to you, please let me know what you think.

News.com has a story on a move by Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com to post statements that say they don\’t endorse the views expressed in \”The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,\”. The actions are already drawing criticism from an online civil rights group.

\”The book is anti-Semitic (and) used by haters every day of the week to promote their ideology,\” said Myrna Shinbaum, the ADL director of media relations. She said the ADL contacted the booksellers after receiving hundreds of complaints.\”

News.com has a story on a move by Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com to post statements that say they don\’t endorse the views expressed in \”The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,\”. The actions are already drawing criticism from an online civil rights group.

\”The book is anti-Semitic (and) used by haters every day of the week to promote their ideology,\” said Myrna Shinbaum, the ADL director of media relations. She said the ADL contacted the booksellers after receiving hundreds of complaints.\”
The ADL said it had submitted the following statement, although it had not yet appeared at Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com late today:

\”The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, circulated by the Czarist secret police at the turn of the 20th century, is plainly and simply a plagiarized forgery. The Protocols has been a major weapon in the arsenals of anti-Semites around the world, republished and circulated by individuals, hate groups and governments to convince the gullible as well as the bigoted that Jews have schemed and plotted to take over the world.\”

But an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil rights group, called the disclaimers a \”mistake,\” noting that consumers would not find them in a brick-and-mortar bookstore and that they could lead to other groups seeking similar disclaimers on material they found offensive, such as abortion.

\”This is an easy case,\” attorney Deborah Pierce said. \”Most people would find this book distasteful. But what happens when you get to things that have a little less consensus?

This is a follow up to This Story on an ugly battle to ban the book \”My Brother Sam is Dead\” in an Oregon Elementary School. The parents have now decided to pull their children from the school.

“We have lost all faith in the public schools,\’\’ Kelly Dunn said. “Look what they can assign without our knowledge.\’\’

Read the full story at The Register Gaurd

This is a follow up to This Story on an ugly battle to ban the book \”My Brother Sam is Dead\” in an Oregon Elementary School. The parents have now decided to pull their children from the school.

“We have lost all faith in the public schools,\’\’ Kelly Dunn said. “Look what they can assign without our knowledge.\’\’

Read the full story at The Register GaurdEach has filed a formal complaint with the school district – which means that the school board, not district administrators, will have the final say on the book.

The veteran teacher involved in the controversy said Monday that the district was wrong to pull the book, and she hopes it will be reinstated.

“I don\’t want kids to think war is neat and wonderful and `Oh, hooray, we won!\’ \” said Roma Roderick, who has been an elementary school teacher for 30 years, including 16 years at Page. \”They need to know that war is bad.\”

La Grange Park and Lyons public libraries in Chicago are now sending out select chapters of books to their patrons by email. Check out The Chicago Sun Times for the full story.

\”We\’re trying to find a balance between books and computers,\” said Dixie Conkis, executive director of the La Grange Park Library. \”It\’s a marriage of the old and the new.\”

\”The American Library Association said this is the only service of its kind. About 30 libraries across the country have signed up, said Suzanne Beecher, founder of the Chapter-A-Day Internet site, which made its online book club available to libraries in January.\”

La Grange Park and Lyons public libraries in Chicago are now sending out select chapters of books to their patrons by email. Check out The Chicago Sun Times for the full story.

\”We\’re trying to find a balance between books and computers,\” said Dixie Conkis, executive director of the La Grange Park Library. \”It\’s a marriage of the old and the new.\”

\”The American Library Association said this is the only service of its kind. About 30 libraries across the country have signed up, said Suzanne Beecher, founder of the Chapter-A-Day Internet site, which made its online book club available to libraries in January.\”The libraries began offering the free service this month. In La Grange Park, the library has had about 50 people sign up. Lyons doesn\’t have a count yet. But it\’s already seeing a rise in requests for the featured titles.

\”The idea is to get the people who wouldn\’t make it to the library,\” said Denise Ard, executive director of the Lyons Public Library.