Robert Donaldson devoted 27 years of his professional life to the National Library, expanding its national role DR Robert Donaldson, who has died at the age of 94, was profoundly conscientious in his dedication to the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, and to its public role and the readers it served. It was common to see him leaving the library in the evenings, carrying not one but two briefcases with papers for scrutiny at home. He was highly respected within the library and among the wider community of research librarians for his deep knowledge of rare book librarianship and scholarship, and for his intellectual integrity, unfailing courtesy and professional commitment.
Poles and Jews in Wartime Scotland: Setting the Record Straight
Examining the complex relationship between Jews and Poles in Scotland during World War II.
The relationship between Jews and Poles in Scotland during the Second World War was deeply complex. In many ways the interactions were correct, even cordial at best, but fraught, hostile and potentially violent at worst and problems tended to follow the desperate wartime conditions. Attitudes followed patterns that had been formed during the many centuries of Jewish life in Poland and which in the twentieth century represented the greatest Jewish community in Europe. Poland’s three million Jews formed an important section of the country’s thirty million people, forming around a third of its urban population.