In late 1940, on the third day that the nazi army occupied the French capital, the director of the emblematic American Library of Paris, founded in 1920 to satisfy the cultural desires of the fighters of the First war world, received a visit from the inspector in charge of the so-called “Library Gestapo”, who gave him the list of the 40 prohibited literary works, among which were books from Ernest Hemingway Y William Shirer, but also the prohibition of allowing Jews to enter, on pain of closure.
The director, Dorothy Reeder, together with their librarians, made the library a place of resistance against the german occupation, and from books a table of salvation; they planned a home delivery strategy among their “subscribers”, among whom were many Jewish readers, whom they continued to feed with history in the midst of the war and despite the risk of being arrested and killed.
That history of resistance from the American Library of Paris, and the love story for the books of heroes, and especially heroines that until now had remained anonymous has been brought into literature by the American writer Janet Skeslien Charles, in the novel The Library of Paris (Salamandra, 2021), which is a sales phenomenon in the United States and France.
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“There may be many stories that have already been written about the Second War world, but there are 6 million Jews who were murdered in the concentration camps, so until the moment we have 6 million books the stories of life and struggle will never be enough, “he says. Skeslien Charles in an interview with THE UNIVERSAL, from Montana, US.
“What is celebrated is that today in books about World War II there are many more stories written by women than they talk about women. Right now I am researching about World War I and I am reading a 1,500 page book written by a man, which is a comprehensive history of that war and there are only two pages dedicated to the contributions of women; that’s why reading women who are writing about these issues or where women’s point of view is is central, because women have always been there ”, says the narrator.
The also author of Moonlight in Odessa ensures that in times of war or dictatorships, culture and books are attacked and controlled. “On the third day after the occupation of Paris, the Nazis went to the Polish library and took the books, then they went to the Russian library, and then to the Ukrainian one, on the latter they made the librarian catalog the entire collection and then they killed him ”.
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The novel The Library of Paris is published by Salamandra. In the US and France it was a sales phenomenon. Photo: Courtesy
Skeslien assures that this was a very dangerous period for the librarians, especially for those who came from or were in Eastern European libraries because the Nazis wanted to end all the history, culture and knowledge of Eastern Europe and that was their purpose in Paris, and that has been the history in times of war. for many countries.
The writer who carried out a deep investigation on the life and work of the librarians who made the resistance from the American Library in Paris, and tells it through Odile, a librarian who worked there and then recounts that story 45 years later to a american teenager, says that even without barbarism and wars, what we have to do is read to learn and to demand power, “that’s why reading, education and knowledge are so important.”
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Janet worked at the Library Americana from Paris For two years, she met people who worked there in the 1970s and knew the history, then – along with a colleague who had worked in museums and wanted to do a post-WWII librarian presentation – she came across the history of Dorothy Reeder, also with that of Boris Netchaeff, the Countess Clara from Chambrun, among others, he managed to read the confidential report of the occupation of Paris, and built a work full of love for books that, he says, in the darkness of war become a beacon of light.
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