Page 11 of Library of Forbidden Books

Lena looked back once the car had moved on. “I don’t know which of the options was worse. I thought we were going to end up at the commissary.”

“Well, at least we’re here on time.”

They walked under the two imposing columns and ascended the white stairs. It took some time to reach the designated room in the basement, which was no longer used for classes. Nostalgia seeped through them. Both Helene and Lena missed the luxury of indifference to the world that student life had afforded them.

Several men turned when the two young women entered the room. Right away they recognized Herman Apecy, Alfred Kerr, and Ernst Toller, but the man they were most excited to see was their former professor, Christian Vichow.

The elderly gentleman strode over with his arms held wide when he saw them. He was still in good shape. “Lena and Helene! I should’ve known you would get mixed up in this plot,” he said, embracing them both at once. Any men in the room who had not already turned to look did so now, and Helene and Lena shrank back. Female librarians were few and far between in Germany, and they stood out like shocks of color against a gray background.

“Professor Vichow, how wonderful to see you here—always standing in the gap!” Lena said. She had looked up to Dr. Vichow since she met him her freshman year.

Helene hung back until Dr. Vichow said, “Come now, Helene, I’ve heard of the work you’re both doing in the library. It’s really quite admirable. We need more people with good ideas like yours.”

The rest of the men stayed in their little groups, and a dozen or so more had slipped into the room by the time Apecy sat at a table at the front alongside Kerr and Toller.

Dr. Vichow led Helene and Lena to the chairs and sat between them. Except for wrinkles lining his green eyes and the whiteness of the beard covering his chubby cheeks, he was exactly the same. Helene had heard that Mrs. Vichow had died two years before. The only thing the man had left was teaching, and that was now in jeopardy. Dr. Vichow was unwilling to swear any oath to Hitler.

Apecy started the meeting off. “I imagine you all know why we’ve called this meeting. Rudolf Kummer is making a list of books to be purged from the public libraries of Germany, and after that, something similar with private libraries. Those who are not members of the Nazi Party, who have a political past with the left, who have a drop of Jewish blood, or who simply have the misfortune of being disliked by the Nazis will lose their jobs and salaries.”

He paused as murmurs of indignation ran throughout the room. Abandoned chairs and desks were crammed together on the far side of the dimly light room that smelled of dust and varnish, but no one was paying attention to the surroundings. They were concentrating on Apecy’s words.

Then Apecy turned to Alfred Kerr. Kerr was a prestigious writer as well as a librarian. Despite his advanced years, he was a reference point for his colleagues and one of the most highly regarded intellectual opponents to the Nazis. “Let’s be realistic,” Kerr began. “Most of us here are outside the network of public libraries. I figure that the purge will reach much farther. These fanatics won’t stop locking up or exiling anyone they consider dangerous. The only thing we could do is to beg President von Hindenburg to stop the plan. But, besides being senile, the old military man has always hated books. So I have little faith in that desperate attempt.”

The room fell so quiet that Helene could hear the footsteps of those passing by the upper windows, which were tall enough to let a bit of light into the dilapidated room.

“But there must be something we can do!” Lena cried.

Helene looked at her with both admiration and jealousy, unable to overcome her own shyness in large gatherings. Derek said Helene presented herself well in public, but even so, a voice in her head—her mother’s?—always demanded she be prudent and perfect.

“Of course we must do something, ma’am,” Kerr answered with a frown.

When he did not offer what that thing might be, Helene decided it was time to voice her support for Lena. “I’m Helene Nathan, director of the Neukölln Public Library. My colleague and I are here to advocate for the reinstatement of funds for our literacy campaigns and our traveling library, as well as to speak out against the publication of a list that will get us all fired. Maybe all of us librarians and public employees need to march to the doors of the government administrative buildings, and when people find out what’s going on—”

“They’ll look the other way,” Kerr cut in. “Don’t forget that this monster has won parliament and that all the conservative parties are bowed before him. The army is on his side, and so is the president himself. What good would a strike do? I’ll tell you plainly: nothing. They control the union, and all we’d do is give them an excuse to kick us out for treason or whatever charge occurs to them. Nazis do everything underhanded, and they’re more divided than they seem. We can send a commission to speak with Alfred Rosenberg. Of all the fanatics, at least he’s educated.”

“Rosenberg is the worst anti-Semite of them all! He’s one of the few—very few—Nazi intellectuals, but even so, we haven’t banned his books from the library,” Lena retorted. She knew it was terrible to make his books available, but she held liberty in higher esteem than anything.

“Our only shot is to save what we can,” Kerr concluded.

The meeting broke up with no resolution. Lena and Helene were supremely dissatisfied. They bid farewell to Dr. Vichow and then slipped away without a word to anyone else.

As they walked through the plaza, they spotted Derek, who had offered to pick them up in his new car. He waved them over, and they hopped in as the cars behind started honking. The streetlights flickered on one by one as an uneasy night descended over Berlin. Helene wanted to believe that most of the people she observed around her did not support their executioners, but she had her doubts.

Chapter 8

Escaping the Swastika

Berlin

April 1, 1933

The library was quieter than ever. It had gone back to the still, boring place it had been some twelve years prior, before Helene had become the director.

Helene’s love of books began in childhood. While her parents were both avid readers, her maternal grandmother, Dorothea, had played the biggest role in fostering in Helene a love of reading. Helene’s mother’s family had not taken kindly to Maria distancing herself from Judaism. Most of them had cut her off. Maria’s father only spoke to her when no one else was around, but Dorothea was her own sort of rebel. Never turning her back on the Jewish faith, she voiced eloquent critiques of the chauvinism of Orthodox rabbis. And she read widely, from the Torah and the writings of rabbis both famous and obscure, to Gentile literature, especially novels. It was Dorothea who introduced Helene to the Russian, French, British, Belgian, and Spanish authors.

That afternoon, alone and surrounded by books, Helene’s mind kept wandering to her grandmother. Eventually, she picked up the phone and called Dorothea.

“Grandmo—”