"On 16 October 2023, a young man and woman sat down in the back row of the second-floor reading room of the university library of Warsaw, Poland. Their reading cards carried the names Sylvena Hildegard and Marko Oravec. On the desk in front of them were eight books with yellowing pages that they had ordered up from the library's closed-storage 19th-century collection: rare editions of classic works of poetry, drama and fiction by two greats of the Russian canon, Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol."
"When the duo did not return from a cigarette break and the invigilators checked their desk, they found that five of the eight books had gone. One of the missing Pushkin works was a narrative poem about the adventures of two outlaws, The Robber Brothers. It was as if the thieves had wanted to send a message. In the days that followed, a more thorough investigation of the library's stocks revealed that a further 74 books"
Two people ordered eight rare 19th-century Russian books at the University of Warsaw library and studied them closely before five volumes disappeared. Invigilators discovered the missing works after the pair failed to return from a cigarette break. One missing book was Pushkin’s narrative poem The Robber Brothers. A subsequent inventory revealed that an additional 74 Russian-literature volumes had been taken over preceding weeks or months. The thieves replaced originals with high-quality facsimiles to avoid setting exit alarms. Older books lacked magnetic strips because an expert warned adhesive could damage paper. The thefts provoked major public attention and concern.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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