In 1939, Vilnius was the “Jerusalem of the East” epicenter of Ashkenazi culture with more than 100 synagogues and the richest public or private libraries. The library of the Khevrat Mefitsei Haskalah (Society for the diffusion of Enlightenment among the Jews), of the YIVO (Yiddisher vissnshaftlekher institute) and many others, contain all the great reference works of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe. East, in Yiddish, in Hebrew, in Russian, in Polish… Some are very rare and very old.

More than seventy years after the Holocaust, the systematic and planned destruction of my culture by the Nazis touches me to the core of my identity. I inherited a fragmented Yiddish and Jewish culture. Without books, the reconstruction of identity and soul, the passing of knowledge to subsequent generations becomes almost impossible. I know it intimately.