Bol'shaya Entsiklopediya Slovar' obshchedostupnykh svedenii po vsem otraslyam znaniya

Saint-Petersburg: Tovarishestvo „Prosveshenie“. Good+. 1904. First Edition. Hard Cover. Vol. 14; Publisher's dark brown gilt-stamped half morocco over blue-gray linen. Volume 14 only (of 22) of the reknowned "big encyclopedia" published in St. Petersburg, Russia between 1900 and 1909 -- under the editorship of Sergei Nikolayevich Yuzhakov (1849-1910). Handsome illustrations throughout including several double-page chromolithographs. Russian text throughout. Apart from a peculiar closed tear to the front cover (now neatly repaired) and two paper labels on the spine, this volume is internally clean and impressive -- all of which is beside the point, which is that this volume bears evidence of its role in the crime of the millenium: the extermination of the Jews of Europe by the Nazi regime in the German Third Reich. There are two official ruberstamps indicating ownership of this volume by the Nazi Party's "Institute for Research into the Jewish Question" -- [one stamp in blue ink, lettered in Fraktur, in circular form with the Nazi's eagle surmounting a swastika, stamped at the foot of the half title page; the other, in Roman type in purple ink, on the verso of the title page]. The Institute was founded by one of Hitler's major associates, Alfred Rosenberg. His long involvement with the so-called "Jewish Question" may have predated Hitler's own, leading to the infamous Institute in Frankfurt, which existed only between 1939 and 1945. Its formal opening was in Frankfurt am Main in 1941, as the first portion of the NSDAP's Advanced Institute -- located at Bockenheimer Landstrasse 68/70. The Institute's avowed purpose was to make possible what later social scientists would call "enemy research" for use in Nazi propaganda, focused on the Nazi's murderous program to deal with world Jewry by elimination. Rosenberg appointed another odd character, Johannes Pohl [1904-1960], as chief librarian. Pohl had been a Catholic Priest, and had earned a pair of doctoral degrees and pursued further studies in Jerusalem and the Holy Land. But he became more and more enamored of National Socialism, eventually giving up the priesthood and joining the party in 1940. Pohl traveled throughout the Nazi-occupied territories under the special action group of Alfred Rosenberg -- tasked with gathering materials which might have been of use to the cause. To put it bluntly, he stole on an unprecidented scale from some of the very best collections of material related to Jewish religion and culture. Our book stood on shelves which contained thousands of volumes, "thoughtfully" selected as the most important parts of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Paris, the Ecole Rabbinique, also in Paris, the Library of the Federation de Societes des Juifs de France, the rich collections of several members of Rothschild family, the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana in Amsterdam, and the Library of the Sephardic Jewish Community, also in Amsterdam. Of course, there were many volumes plundered from other occupied territories including conquered parts of the Eastern campaign, the Jewish communities in areas as far flung as Greece, and the Baltic States. In January of 1942, it is known that Pohl was responsible for the looting and destruction of Jewish Cultural assets in Vilnius. He cherry picked a small number to send to Frankfurt and is reported to have sold the remainder to a paper mill as pulp. In all, records indicate that about 550,00 volumes were stolen or "donated: to the Institute -- of which over 300,000 were sent to Frankfurt to join this focused collection. But only about a tenth of that number appear to have been catalogued. The headquarters building is thought to have held about 40,000 volumes. Many of the remainder were housed in the main public library in Frankfurt. As luck would have it, much of the collection was sent from Frankfurt to Hungen in the district of Gießen -- Hesse, Germany in the autumn of 1943, presumably for safekeeping as the Nazi's war went less well. An Allied bombing attack in March, 1944 caused the destruction of the Institute's buildings above the cellar level on Frankfurt's Bockenheimer Landstrasse. Both Alfred Rosenberg and Johannes Pohl were fixated on Russian and the eastern campaign. Pohl wrote a book about Soviet Jewry, and Rosenberg was appointed head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. His various racial theories appear to have been too complex for Hitler and some of the other Nazi high officials. Hitler complained about some of Rosenberg's more "advanced" thoughts on the subject -- 'no one understands them." At the end of the war, Rosenberg faced serious charges in the Nuremburg Trials and was hanged on 16 October 1946. Pohl the libarian was interned for a year, and then spent his remaining fourteen years working in publishing. Some of the unique and identifiable holdings of Rosenberg's Institute were eventually restored to their former owners. Tons of books (literally) were seized by the Allies and sent to the U.S. Library of Congress -- including this volume, which has the LC bookplate on the front paste down endpaper and a shelf-label mounted to the lower spine, just under the (presumed) label from the NSDAP's Institute ["R 1820"]. There is a surplus-duplicate stamp from the Library of Congress in red ink on the rear free-endpaper, making this volume legal to buy and sell. A handsome volume, apart from its former provenance of surpassing ugliness. .