Karina Goulordava's Page

            For several decades those interested and even those not interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been debating issues of settlements, the wall, Gaza and two vs. one state solution and more. However, the discussion on Palestinian cultural preservation throughout Israeli occupation has been largely non-existent. The Great Book Robbery focuses on one of the first and most devastating events of the looting of Palestinian culture. In 1948, in a systematic and collaborative…

This last and final post contains quotes from Gish Amit's essay which features an excerpt from the National Library's annual booklet entitled, "The National Library News." The following quote comes from their January 1948-June 1949 report. "Throughout the years of fighting, the National Library has collected tens of thousands of abandoned books, thus saving them from ruin. This operation has been carried out with dedication and sacrifice on the employees' part. We wish to take this…

In the summer of 1948, another memo was published concerning the looted Palestinian books. This time the memo was issued by Dr. Strauss, the head of the Eastern Sciences Department at the National Library. Dr. Strauss received, catalogued and stored the books. His memo was entitled, "Processing the Arab books from the occupied territories."

His memo read, "Since the National Library was granted the right to collect abandoned libraries in the occupied territories and began a…

On July 26, 1948 Kurt Warman, the director of the National Library received a letter from an unknown source. The letter read, "According to my estimates, 12,000 books or more have been collected so far. A large portion of the libraries of Arab writers and scholars is now in a safe place. Several bags of manuscripts, whose value has not been evaluated yet, are also in our hands. Most of the books come from Katamon, but we have also reached the German Colony and Musrara. We found some…