Bring in the UN! Stop the looting!!!

The Independent (UK): Curator is charged as 30,000 books are 'lost' by French national library

«More than 30,000 books, including 1,000 rare and priceless items, are believed to have been stolen from the French national library in Paris.

A former senior curator of the library will appear before an investigating magistrate today accused of stealing at least 100 rare old books and manuscripts. Michel Garel, an internationally known expert on Hebrew texts, initially admitted stealing a 13th-century French copy of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament).

M. Garel said he had warned his bosses over many years that rare items were going missing. The basement of the library's old building, in the first arrondissement in central Paris, was connected by a labyrinth of underground passageways to nearby antiquarian bookshops, he said.

"Personally, I have located four places you could get into the library without any problem, before pilfering at will," he said.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Garel case, an audit of the library's stocks, the first for many years, suggests that at least 30,000 books or manuscripts are missing.

More disturbingly, 1,183 priceless books or documents from the library's "precious core" cannot be traced. More than 200 of these are medieval manuscripts or books from the dawn of the age of printing.

The curator said yesterday: "I have proclaimed my innocence from the first day they put handcuffs on me. I am the perfect scapegoat because of the poor relations I have had with my superiors for years. I have never accepted a centime for anything belonging to the BNF or any other public collection." »

Oh, the loss of history! The theft of treasures!