Inspired by true events in World War II of the Warsaw librarians’ resistance, Madeline Martin’s 2023 historical fiction novel, The Keeper of Hidden Books is her strongest novel so far. As Poland tries to avoid succumbing to the invasion of Germany, young Poles are organizing themselves into various forms of resistance work. Zofia and her Jewish friend Janina are assigned to assist the Warsaw public librarians as they work to preserve and protect Poland’s national collections. When Poland falls and the Germans take control of the libraries, the librarians work to hide and protect the books from the German eradication of all works which do not support Hitler’s agenda.
This story is powerful and very well done. I continue to be very impressed with Martin’s ability to tell clean and exciting stories that have literary value and historical significance. For mamas and teen readers, these books are more elegantly written and more complex than Jennifer Nielsen’s YA novels but have much of the same flavor and interest. I cannot wait to see what she writes next!
Martin was inspired by the courageous attempts of the Warsaw librarians to protect their national culture through the preservation of their library collections. The German officers who overtook the libraries started by banning “objectionable” authors – like those of Jewish descent. Then they culled “questionable” authors and texts – like those written by Americans. And then they thinned the collections further by removing anything that wasn’t specifically on the master lists from Germany. The Warsaw librarians were forced to watch their treasures be destroyed. But they fought back. Hiding books in plain sight and taking them to abandoned libraries for safekeeping.
The first half of the book is about life in Poland leading up to and during the German invasion. The second half of the book is about the resistance work that started in libraries but extended to the smuggling of Jews out of the Ghettos. Of course, Martin gives us a pair of young women who are typical of the Polish people: one Jew and one more Aryan. Through their friendship, we see the horrors of life in the ghetto, and we witness the heroic work of the resistance to protect Jewish life (and books), and we also see the attempts to destroy the Germans.
I think that in my library, I will pair this book with Nielsen’s Resistance and encourage my teen readers to start with Nielsen, where we witness the ghetto uprising from inside the walls, and then follow it with this slightly more hopeful account of the uprising from outside the walls.
As in any war story, we lose characters we love. But Martin has nearly all of the drama happen off-scene, so we are spared the details. I respect her for killing off one of my favorite characters, even though I held out hope for the safe return of that character because the death was accurate to what was happening – and it counted for something meaningful.
This WWII Warsaw story was a joy to read and is a joy to recommend. Well-written, exciting, and historically more accurate than others like it, this one is a work of solid historical fiction that is clean, hopeful, and lovely to hand to teen and adult readers.
I have also reviewed Martin’s Librarian Spy and The Last Bookshop in London.