Dear Editor: I went to the library to check out Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Riche, by a historian recently outed as an “anti-Semite.” Actually, I first heard of the book in 1996, when I read in the paper that St. Martins Press, the publisher, was pressured by the Anti-Defamation League to cease publication. St. Martins stood by the book, by the eminent British scholar David Irving, author of over a score of esteemed works, but caved in, as all do, to avoid name-calling and bad publicity. Naturally, I was curious. As soon as I entered the library I experienced disorientation. What had happened? The room was naked. Gone were the dozens of old easy-sliding wooden drawers full of alphabetized 3 X 5 cards. Darn! I’ll miss those cards, because sometimes, on an afternoon with an hour to kill, I’d wander in, open a drawer at random, and let my fingers browse through the cards until I found a book that looked good. Now — in the interest, I guess, of Progress and Efficiency — a lone computer, on which you can only find what you’re looking for. I was really confused, however, when after I located the book, the librarian went into a huddle with two or three others and emerged to tell me politely but firmly that it was not available. “But here it is, on the screen.” “That’s right, but it’s not available.” So I want to Barnes & Noble, the giant chain that smothered our homey neighborhood store, Blackwater Books. But I shouldn’t have wasted my time. I’m reading the book now. I won’t advertise where I got it (thank you, Internet) for fear the ADL will hound that source to death, too, then we’ll really be in the dark. The author, a hardworking researcher, unearthed Goebbels’ diaries in a Moscow archive, where they’d lain untouched since the war, and translated them. Goebbels was a faithful diarist. The entries go on day after day for years, right up to the time in 1945 when he and his wife took the lives of their children and themselves in Hitler’s Berlin bunker minutes before Russian troops arrived. The diaries challenge perceived truth. History says that Hitler burned down the Reichstag (German Parliament) and blamed it on the Jews and communists as a pretext to seize power. Well, according to the diaries, it was the communists. Hitler and Goebbels were as shocked and angered as anyone else. The communists were surging during those chaotic years in Germany between World Wars when the National Socialists (“Nazis”) were competing with them to recruit members. The partisans would often brawl in the streets after beerhall orators had worked them into a state of patriotic truculence. (I wish our so-called “democracy” was even half as lively.) Goebbels records it all, including, also (despite being a clubfoot, and vertically-challenged), his quite complicated love-life. Nor was Hitler responsible for Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass,”when mobs all over Germany went around smashing Jewish-owned shops. Hitler, in fact, was manning the phones all night, furiously trying to stop the rampage, unaware that it was his own Minister, Dr. Goebbels, who had incited the pogrom. Not hard to do in a Germany impoverished by unjust World War I reparations and resentful of a minority who controlled a disproportionate share of the wealth and power. Eventually, Goebbels, too, became alarmed (insurance claims!), but was unable to control or arrest the vandalism until it had run its course. I resent the ADL determining what books we Americans may read. What are they so afraid of? And I’d like to know why our public library, supported by our tax dollars, has allowed a group of organized well-funded zealots to take away our God-given freedom to read or write or think any damn thing we please. T. Weed