When the Nazis occupied Warsaw in September 1939, anti-Jewish laws were immediately enacted, some of which restricted access to books. Lending libraries were closed in the Jewish quarter and Jews were prohibited from visiting the libraries.
A ghetto was created in the fall of 1940. Nearly half a million Polish Jews were confined in an area surrounded by 3-meter-high brick walls, which constituted only 2.4% of the city’s surface. . Meager daily rations of 184 calories were distributed to the inhabitants. It is estimated that 83,000 of them died of starvation in less than two years. The survivors will be deported by the hundreds of thousands to the Treblinka extermination camp in the summer of 1942.
While many Jewish leaders and charities in the ghetto focused primarily on providing food, clothing and shelter to cope with hunger, overcrowding and the harsh Polish winters, some were concerned with other appetites.
Basia Berman [1907-1953] was one of the few Jewish librarians employed by the Warsaw Public Library before the war. Before the ghetto closed, she had created a traveling library in her travel bag, distributing books from her collection to homeless children.
Save structures from destruction
In November 1940, when the Warsaw ghetto was sealed off, a branch of the Warsaw Public Library at 67 Leszno Street was included in its perimeter, forcing the premises to be evacuated. Basia Berman obtained permission to use the building to house Centos, a children’s aid organization, and set up an underground children’s library there.
Many books in his collection were acquired by Lejb Szur, founder before the war of the Tomor publishing house in Vilnius. He saved books from destruction, collected banned books and preserved private libraries, amassing between 10,000 and 20,000 volumes for the lending library in his apartment at 56 Leszno Street. Szur often took books from his library to add to Basia Berman’s. He was to end his life in August 1942, during the Actions (deportations).
To hide her precious collection of books in Yiddish and Polish, Basia Berman decorated the rooms with toys, dolls, paper cut-outs and simple illustrated books, making the place welcoming for children. Occasionally, readings, debates and conferences around books in Yiddish were organized in the library. It did not take long to grow, time slots for loans were planned.
Resisting the annihilation of Yiddish culture
Basia Berman encouraged children to read books in Yiddish, to immerse themselves in their own literature, language and cultural identity, with the aim of resisting the annihilation of Yiddish culture, carried away with that of the Jews. from Europe. She lent the children two books, one in Polish, the other in Yiddish. Many of them discovered books in Yiddish for the first time and thus learned the Hebrew alphabet.
Importantly, this library also lent books to the poorest children in the ghetto, to those in hospitals, or in quarantine due to typhus, and finally to those who had taken refuge in the ghetto from other parts of Warsaw. “The children’s thirst for knowledge during those dark hours was extraordinary, will comment on Basia Berman in her diary [écrit en polonais, celui-ci a été traduit en anglais sous le titre City Within a City (2012), mais pas en français]. Books had become a vital need, almost like bread.” Many books were never returned, the children having taken them with them to the death camps.
Rachel Auerbach, survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, recalls seeing a young boy in the courtyard of 66 Leszno Street during a Action, while he and his mother gathered their things. They were going to be taken to thetranshipment point, the rallying point for the deportation. Around the child, all was chaos and confusion, wrote Auerbach in his 1974 memoir, Varshever Tsavoes [“ Témoignages de Varsovie”, livre publié en Israël en 1974, mais lui aussi non traduit en français] :
“This 12-year-old boy, immersed in the worlds he has just discovered, fascinated, transported, stands at one of the corners of the courtyard, neither seeing nor hearing anything that is going on around him. He is reading a damaged book with a red cover.
In the spring of 1941, the Judenrat, the Jewish council of the ghetto, received authorization from the Nazi authorities to issue licenses to lending libraries, limited to books in Yiddish and Polish. By then, Basia Berman had been secretly lending books to children in the ghetto for months.
Basia Berman and her husband Adolf escaped from the ghetto in September 1942 and found help on the “Aryan” side of Warsaw, where they joined the Jewish resistance. Become double agents, they pretend to be Poles [non juifs] and accept dangerous missions to save their co-religionists from the ghetto. After the war, Basia Berman salvaged books from destroyed libraries all over Poland, some of which remained in Warsaw, others being sent to the National Library of Israel.
As an underground librarian in the Warsaw ghetto, Basia Berman contributed to a subtle, yet fierce form of resistance. Books were a source of life and sustenance, a way of preserving one’s humanity in a dehumanizing context.