The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award, Holocaust category (2017) Runner-up for the National Jewish Book Award, history category (2017) The Book Smugglers is the nearly unbelievable story of ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts—first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets—by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. It is a tale of heroism and resistance, of friendship and romance, and of unwavering devotion—including the readiness to risk one’s life—to literature and art. And it is entirely true. Based on Jewish, German, and Soviet documents, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and the author’s interviews with several of the story’s participants, The Book Smugglers chronicles the daring activities of a group of poets turned partisans and scholars turned smugglers in Vilna, “The Jerusalem of Lithuania.” The rescuers were pitted against Johannes Pohl, a Nazi “expert” on the Jews, who had been dispatched to Vilna by the Nazi looting agency, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, to organize the seizure of the city’s great collections of Jewish books. Pohl and his Einsatzstab staff planned to ship the most valuable materials to Germany and incinerate the rest. The Germans used forty ghetto inmates as slave-laborers to sort, select, pack, and transport the materials, either to Germany or to nearby paper mills. This group, nicknamed “the Paper Brigade,” and informally led by poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, a garrulous, street-smart adventurer and master of deception, smuggled thousands of books and manuscripts past German guards. If caught, the men would have faced death by firing squad at Ponar, the mass-murder site outside of Vilna. To store the rescued manuscripts, poet Abraham Sutzkever helped build an underground book-bunker sixty feet beneath the Vilna ghetto. Kaczerginski smuggled weapons as well, using the group’s worksite, the former building of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, to purchase arms for the ghetto’s secret partisan organization. All the while, both men wrote poetry that was recited and sung by the fast-dwindling population of ghetto inhabitants. With the Soviet “liberation” of Vilna (now known as Vilnius), the Paper Brigade thought themselves and their precious cultural treasures saved—only to learn that their new masters were no more welcoming toward Jewish culture than the old, and the books must now be smuggled out of the USSR. Thoroughly researched by the foremost scholar of the Vilna Ghetto—a writer of exceptional daring, style, and reach—The Book Smugglers is an epic story of human heroism, a little-known tale from the blackest days of the war.

Table of Contents:
Author’s Note Dramatis Personae Introduction PART I: BEFORE THE WAR Shmerke—The Life of the Party The City of the Book PART II: UNDER GERMAN OCCUPATION The First Assault Intellectuals in Hell A Haven for Books and People A Rescued Gem: The Record Book of the Vilna Gaon’s Synagogue Accomplices or Saviors? The Nazi, the Bard, and the Teacher Ponar for Books The Paper Brigade The Art of Book Smuggling A Rescued Gem: Herzl’s Diary The Book and the Sword Slave-Labor Curators and Scholars From the Ghetto to the Forest Death in Estonia Miracle from Moscow PART III: AFTER THE WAR From under the Ground A Museum Like No Other A Rescued Gem: Sholem Aleichem’s Letters Struggling under the Soviets Tears in New York The Decision to Leave The Art of Book Smuggling—Again Rachela’s Choice The German Discovery Parting Duties A Rescued Gem: The Bust of Tolstoy and Other Russians Wanderings: Poland and Prague Paris Return from Offenbach, or Kalmanovitch’s Prophecy PART IV: FROM LIQUIDATION TO REDEMPTION The Path to Liquidation Later Lives Forty Years in the Wilderness Grains of Wheat Acknowledgments Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

About the Author :
DAVID E. FISHMAN teaches history at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. His involvement with the story recounted in The Book Smugglers began twenty-five years ago, when he was invited to consult on items discovered in a former church in Vilnius. He is the author of four scholarly monographs and one textbook.

Review :
"[A] fascinating new study."-- "Forward" "[A] gripping narrative. . . . Fishman narrates his story with verve and considerable literary skill, practising narrative history in the literal sense."-- "Times Literary Supplement (UK)" "[A] work that is scholarly and intimate, descriptive and personal. . . . First-rate scholarship that pulses with the beat of a most human heart."-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)" "Masterful prose. What a pleasure it is to have a good read, a first-rate history, and a new perspective on Jewish cultural resistance all wrapped up in one fascinating book."-- "Jewish Book World"