Dovid Fishman: The Book Smugglers

Dr. David E. Fishman, author of The Book
Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish
Treasures from the Nazis (ForeEdge, 2017). Fishman's book tells
the incredible story of the "Paper Brigade" of the Vilna Ghetto,
who rescued thousands of books, manuscripts, documents, and
objects of art from the murderous Germans seeking to both loot
and destroy the Jews' cultural heritage. After the war, an effort
was needed to save the collection from neglect or possible
destruction at the hands of the officialdom of Soviet Lithuania.
The book acquaints the reader in depth with the deeds and fates
of the five key heroes of the Paper Brigade -- Shmerke
Kaczerginski, Zelig Kalmanovitch, Rachela Krinsky, Herman Kruk,
and Abraham Sutzkever -- as well as those of the chief villain,
the Nazi book looter Johannes Pohl. The Book Smugglers won the
National Jewish Book Award in 2017 for a work on the Holocaust.
Additional info is available at the publisher's web page, here:
http://www.upne.com/1512600490.html

The interview is conducted by Sholem
Beinfeld, a regular contributor to the Yiddish Voice,
co-Editor in Chief of the Comprehensive Yiddish-English
Dictionary, and Professor of History, Emeritus, Washington
University, St. Louis. Dr. Beinfeld served as principal
consultant on the film Partisans of Vilna (credited as Solon
Beinfeld). He was senior consultant and historian to the Kovno
Ghetto Exhibition project of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum and consultant to the Museum on the Ghetto archive
holdings in the Lithuanian State Archives in Vilnius.

Music:

The song Vilna is heard "thematically" at several points
throughout the program and played nearly in full at the end.
Words by Efraim-Leyb Wolfson, music by Alexander Olshanetsky,
performed by the Klezmer Conservatory Band, musical direction and
piano by Hankus Netsky, sung by Judy Bressler, from the Record
Album Yiddishe Renaissance.

Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS, an instrumental
track from the CD Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz



Air Date: May 2 2018