The Librarian of Burned Books

by Brianna Labuskes

“Die Bücherfreundin.” “‘A friend of books,’” Diedrich murmured from behind her, his palm heavy on her waist, his chest close enough it brushed against her back when he inhaled.

and her cardigan had valiantly tried to protect her from the wind, but both she and it were well aware of the fabric’s limitations.

WTAF

“It felt like we were playacting, perhaps? Hitler had just been named chancellor, and things went very bad, very quickly. But . . . it was still thirty-three, if you know what I mean.” “You never thought he’d last this long,” Lucien said, following her thoughts.

“The meetings were silly. We talked about economic systems and political theories as if we were going to debate those monsters in the marketplace of ideas. We should have been talking about train tickets and overseas bank accounts and escape plans, instead.”

Hannah knew the assault should strengthen her resolve, make her want to take up a sword. But every day that passed, she was less and less certain the world really was worth saving.

rather than chafing at the scrutiny. “Our little wolf has issued decrees to shut down those filthy lie machines they call newspapers,” Helene said, with a sniff. “Once their kind is dealt with, it makes me hopeful that he will be able to turn his attention to Aryanizing our shops and schools.”

neck. “The first rule of the Reich, darling, is don’t question the Reich.”

“Nazis are portrayed in propaganda as ignorant anti-intellectuals. But the leaders know just how powerful knowledge is. That’s why they want to control it

“Thank you,” Lucien said, as if he had shrugged off a weight. He turned to leave but then paused and looked back. “We need the kind of fire that lives in him. But if we burn the world down to destroy the Nazis . . .” Hannah finished his thought. “There will be no world left to live in when they’re gone.”

“No, Otto. You know the Nazis, you know what they’ll do if you kill one of them. They’ll take it out on the Jews at home. You know they will. They’ll make the victim a martyr of Jewish violence.”

Charlie Kirk

What can we do? Hannah had asked him, sure the answer would be Nothing. Something, anything, he’d said. It is not failure we should fear but inaction.

maybe his work had never been far from her own. It mattered that the Nazis saw the whole world wasn’t standing with them.

Strange Fruit, a novel about an interracial romance in the South, had been published back in February and had since then been banned in Boston and Detroit. Earlier in May, the United States Postal Office had tried to join that bandwagon. The decision had been reversed after Eleanor Roosevelt herself had intervened, but the book remained a controversial topic.

“Betty Smith said she’d be happy to come,” Viv said. “A coup.” Edith knew as well as Viv that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was such a popular novel that they were going to send it out a second time as an ASE. “But she’s been outspoken from the start.”

Althea had been raised to trust her government, trust the people who had done right by her. She had never learned to view the world through a suspicious lens.

They were supposed to be celebrating tonight. The Nazis hadn’t picked up enough seats in the elections the week before to gain a majority in the Reichstag, but Hitler had officially banned the eighty-one elected communists the following day. It was the communists, after all, who had plotted to burn down the Reichstag, Diedrich had said. If you acted like a traitor you couldn’t cry about being treated like one. It made her wonder about the timing of the fire—right before the election, when the Nazis needed the electorate on their side the most. How perfect would it be to label one madman a representative of an entire party and create mass panic of an impending civil war?

And if they could all hold on to those reminders, if they could help each other create them, maybe together they would be able to make it through this godforsaken war. Not necessarily whole, but human.

There had been so many nights in Berlin that she had danced, and laughed and loved, where she’d drunk too much champagne and worn expensive silk dresses and went on bicycle rides on the first day of spring simply to collect tulips in her basket. She had believed in the basic goodness of people, that most were just trying to do their best in a world that could sometimes be hard. She had been open and kind and sarcastic, a good friend and a good sister. Not necessarily a good daughter, but she didn’t blame herself for that. She had loved bread and orange marmalade and a night at the theater, and she had quiet dreams that had seemed like they might be possible.

But if one side of this war was made up of men wild with bloodlust, and the other was made up of men who froze at the sight of violence, Hannah wasn’t sure the latter stood a chance. The

“Anywhere Hitler hates is a good place in my book,” Hannah said, grinning down at Althea.

She didn’t know in what context she’d place the novel, but she knew that would be its central tenet. “So much of this is because of fear, isn’t it? All Hitler had to do was make people afraid: There is a monster out there who will attack you if you don’t let me protect you.”

“And if that requires sacrificing a few freedoms, then that’s the price for law and order, isn’t it?” Hannah finished the thought.

Viv found the essay in a newspaper, clipped it out, and sent it to Senator Taft, along with letters diligently copied from originals pouring in from servicemen stationed around the globe. Men who were watching the invasion from afar, aghast and disheartened that they weren’t fighting alongside their brothers. The ASEs provided them an escape from the feelings that they, just like the rest of the world, didn’t know what to do with. Books gave them an excuse to cry, a reason to laugh, a place to put their relief that they weren’t the ones being slaughtered, a place to put the guilt that they weren’t the ones being slaughtered.

People read back then

yourself.” “You think this is noble? Just?” Althea waved back to the spectacle. “You think this is anything but small-minded men doing their best impression of tyrants? You are nothing but incurious bullies and history will judge you as bigoted, intolerant barbarians.”

ounce of disdain into it that she held for this man, this party, these weak-willed politicians who couldn’t win fairly and so tried to burn any idea that would undermine their house of cards. The slap didn’t come as a surprise. The strength

But it hadn’t felt completely real at the time. Hitler had been installed as chancellor because the moderates had thought they could control him. Most people who paid attention to politics in those days expected him to fade into obscurity, his madness burning bright but then snuffing out quickly. Also, there had been something deliciously subversive about converting the very Americans whom the Nazis hoped would go home and spread their message of hate and bigotry. And Althea had stopped willingly spending time with any Nazis not long after the Reichstag fire. It hadn’t been hard to forget about the reason she was there. Dev, though . . .

All Hannah could think now was that it was people like that who had let Hitler rise to power. The terrible men Hitler had surrounded himself with were absolutely complicit in what was happening, but so were the otherwise decent people who thought that Hitler’s success could ultimately benefit them if they simply held their noses over the parts of him they didn’t like. “The only thing I know is that she’s staying at the Hotel Majestic,” Natalie said, when Hannah questioned her about the run-in she’d had with Dev.

At the end of the day, Otto had chosen what was easy over what was right. And Hannah had watched her entire country make the same choice time and again. Maybe there were countless others out there who would do the same thing. But she found she had no tolerance left for them.

“Few people have to watch their country die,” Hannah said,

“I have had that dubious privilege, and I can tell you that it comes not as a rebel shout but as a sly whisper. The cracks creep in, insidious as anything I’ve ever seen. It can start with rumblings about an unreliable press and rumors about political enemies that will threaten your family, your children. It can deepen with each disdainful remark about science and art and literature in a pub on a Friday night. It comes cloaked in patriotism and love of country, and uses that as armor against any criticism.

helm. I grew up in a place that prized intellectualism, reason, and civil discourse, in a country that held a reverence for books.

I can tell you that there are people out there who want the world to only think as they think.

In fact, long before Hitler had the power to incite countrywide book burnings, he wrote in Mein Kampf that a smart reader should take away from books only the ideas that support their own beliefs and discard the rest as useless ballast.”

“I can tell you that banning books, burning books, blocking books is often used as a way to erase a people, a belief system, a culture,” Hannah said. “To say these voices don’t belong here, even when those writers represent the very best of a country. “I can tell you many things about how men who crave power use fear and panic that’s incited by certain ideas to get what they want,” Hannah continued. “Just as Goebbels and Hitler did that night in May when they convinced a country that setting fire to words that you don’t like or don’t agree with will make you right. But I think, more importantly, I should tell you about that death I witnessed. Of the way Germany’s democracy turned to ash under the weight of itself.

we didn’t realize everything that would come after. “In 1928, my father, along with the rest of my country, was mocking Hitler. They saw him as a joke, someone who could be easily controlled, someone who would burn out after everyone heard his deranged spiels. Only a handful of years later, we had to flee Germany after my brother was dragged to a concentration camp, where he would be murdered for his beliefs.

storming out. “Most of the time, it’s fine,” Althea repeated. “But it can also blind you to the occasions when politics isn’t just politics. World leaders spent most of the years before Hitler invaded Poland pacifying the man. They treated him like he was any other politician who would play by the rules of the game, the unspoken ones that keep millions of citizens from being disappeared in the middle of broad daylight. The unspoken ones that keep the party’s street fighters from murdering their opponents in the town’s square. The unspoken ones that keep countries from brutalizing their neighbors and slaughtering their own people.

world. “There are bigger things in this world than politics,” Althea continued. “There are bigger things in this world than scoring a win for your side just to score a win for your side. This might seem like a melodramatic overreaction for some of you, maybe you scoff at the notion that there should be so much brouhaha over books. There were plenty of people who felt that way in May 1933, as well. And I promise you, if I’ve learned anything from my time in Berlin, it’s this: an attack on books, on rationality, on knowledge isn’t a tempest in a teacup, but rather a canary dead in a coal mine. “There are moments in life when you have to put what is right over what party you vote for. And if you can’t recognize those moments when the stakes are low—let me assure you, you won’t recognize them when the stakes are high. Thank you.” “Jeez Louise,” Viv muttered, but when she turned to grin at Hannah she found the space next to her empty. It threw her, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it. Althea was there in front of her, and Viv couldn’t help but throw her arms around the shorter woman. “I’m proud of you,” she breathed into Althea’s temple, not caring that Althea probably gave about two figs if Viv was proud of her.