Education: Culture Carnage

Hitler's book burnings, and all that went before, were only a mild beginning. The destruction of books and libraries in World War II "probably exceeds by many times the destruction of all previous wars and catastrophes put together." So report Librarians Milton E. Lord and Kenneth R. Shaffer in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin. Their findings:

EUR| Poland: an estimated 70% of all libraries destroyed or looted. f| Russia: 55 million volumes destroyed in the Ukraine alone.

<) Czechoslovakia: half the libraries and archives gutted. (In Prague a caravan of Nazi trucks carted off to Germany 700,-ooo volumes from the huge Charles University library.)

<|...

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