MORE LIBRARY LOOTING � IN FRANCE:

Biblioteque Hebrew archivist held for mass theft
By Haaretz Staff

The head of the French National Library's Hebrew-language archives has been arrested on suspicion of destroying or stealing irreplaceable books and documents he was responsible for, the French newspaper Liberation reported yesterday.

According to a prosecution source, "many dozens, perhaps hundreds, of documents were either mutilated or disappeared completely" from the shelves of the famous Biblioteque nationale de France.

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The documents date back as far as the 14th century when king Charles V gave the order to begin collecting them. It is considered one of the richest Judaica collections and contains works from Yemen, Byzantium, North Africa, central Europe, France, Germany and England.

The works deal with all aspects of the Jewish religion, Hebrew language and literature, medicine as well as other philosophical and secular subjects; the collection also includes a Torah fragment from Constantinople written in 1505.

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