Janet Skeslien Charles s The Paris Library: the untold story of heroic librarians in Paris during World War II watoday.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from watoday.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Reading is my passion. I can’t imagine not having access to books, yet this is exactly what happened to Jewish readers in France during World War II. During the Nazi Occupation, Jewish people were stripped of their rights. They could no longer work in many professions. They did not have the right to enter parks or libraries.
They were in tremendous danger: a quarter of France’s Jewish population was killed. Yet librarians at the time reached out to Jewish readers to ensure they remained part of the community. My novel,
The Paris Library, tells the true tale of the international team of librarians who defied the Nazis in order to hand-deliver books to Jewish readers.
Janet Skeslien Charles s The Paris Library: the untold story of heroic librarians in Paris during World War II smh.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from smh.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Janet Skeslien Charles Finds Her Way to Her New Book
February 19, 2021
The American Library in Paris sits in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Its collection of 100,000 books is spread over three stories. Members from 60 countries can work at long tables or whisper at the coffee machine. As the programs manager, I oversaw the ALP’s weekly Evening with an Author series, hosting journalists, debut novelists, and National Book Award winners. At events, I stood in the back of the reading room, one eye on the crowd, the other on my journal as I jotted down the writers’ words. During the day, at my desk in the bustling back office, I also took note of what colleagues said and was particularly captivated by the World War II story of the courageous librarians who defied the Nazi “Library Protector” in order to hand-deliver books to Jewish readers.