The Leningrad Public Library remained open throughout the siege and became a place for people to congregate. "People came to the library to read, even when weak from cold and exhaustion," one of the librarians explained. "Some died in their places, with a book propped in front of them. We would carry the bodies outside, hoping that the truck would take them away, but increasingly, they were simply left in the snow." --M.T. Anderson, Symphony for the City of the Dead.
Among the many astonishing things I learned from Anderson's magnificent National Book Award-winning history of how Dmitri Shostakovich came to write his Seventh Symphony during the three-year Nazi siege of Leningrad was the vital role librarians played in maintaining the spirits of the city's starving residents. Not only did they provide a place for Leningraders to congregate, but they also continued to acquire books for their collections, buying books from the starving, desperate to sell anything for food, and scouring bombed-out ruins for volumes.
Librarians rock!
