• 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

Air Date: May 2 2018