The Keeper of Hidden Books

Zofia's mother, whom Zofia calls Matka (Polish for “mother”), tries to get everyone into their study, which they have made airtight in preparation for a gas attack. Zofia’s father and brother debate whether the planes overhead are German; they doubt that Hitler would be so bold as to attack the capital city. However, Antek confirms that German forces attacked the Polish town of Gdansk that morning. After a few hours, a radio announcement informs them that an area just outside Warsaw has been bombed. The sirens wail again, and Matka urges Zofia and Antek into the basement bomb shelter, but their father, who is a doctor, goes to the hospital to care for the wounded. Zofia, Matka, and Antek spend the day in the basement with their neighbors. Zofia’s father gets home late, covered in blood from his patients. After Zofia goes to bed, she overhears a whispered conversation in which her father tells her mother that the Germans are targeting hospitals.

For the next few days, air raid sirens warn of bombings, and the residents of Warsaw seek shelter in basements and cellars. England and France, both allies with Poland, declare war against Germany. Zofia and her friends join the crowds in the street to celebrate, imagining that the war will be over soon. Later, their Girl Guides captain, Krystyna, asks them to help dig trenches and put out fires. The city is barraged by air strikes for a week. The Polish government retreats from Warsaw and asks even the young men of the Boy Scouts to join the fighting. One morning, Zofia wakes to find Matka crying over a letter from Antek; he has gone to join the battle raging outside the city. 

German tanks surround the city, and Zofia can hear gunfire in Warsaw’s suburbs as she helps to extinguish fires. Janina and Zofia are worn out from the work and frustrated after days of power outages and water shortages. Zofia gives Janina a bar of chocolate in honor of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. Janina is surprised by the gift because of the recent food scarcity. As Zofia observes the burned-out buildings, she longs for a quiet day in the library with her friends. She reflects on how quickly their peaceful existence has vanished.

Zofia and the other Girl Guides encounter a group of wounded soldiers returning to the city after fighting in the suburbs. The soldiers report that they have managed to keep the German tanks out of Warsaw for the time being. The next morning, Zofia discovers that the Jewish Quarter was bombed during the night. She rushes to Janina’s home. Janina and her parents are safe, but her grandparents were killed in the bombing. A week passes. While Janina is home mourning her grandparents, the Soviet Union invades Poland from the east. Food becomes even more scarce, with people harvesting meat from horse carcasses and waiting in lines for food even when planes are firing bullets down onto the streets.

One day, Janina and Zofia are working with the Girl Guides when a huge explosion shakes the ground. They are asked to help with rescue efforts. Janina, Zofia, and Maria fight fires for hours before a plane appears overhead. Janina freezes. Zofia runs toward her as the pilot begins to fire bullets at them. Maria shoves Zofia from behind, protecting her from being hit. Maria is shot and dies while Zofia tries to staunch her bleeding. Zofia goes into shock, and Janina drags her to safety.

The day after Maria’s death, Krystyna reassigns Zofia and Janina to join Danuta and Kasia at the library. Despite the danger and the sound of air raid sirens outside, Zofia feels a little calmer and safer once she is there. On that day, there is a one-hour ceasefire, a short but welcome break from the fighting. During the ceasefire, the Germans drop fliers from planes. The fliers are written in garbled Polish and make false promises of safety if Warsaw surrenders. Everyone believes that the bombing will be worse after the ceasefire and views the German pamphlets as a sure sign of Warsaw’s impending defeat.

In preparation for the increased bombing, the library staff has been moving manuscripts and books from the library shelves to the warehouse for safekeeping. Zofia is awed by the number of books in the warehouse. Once there, she and Janina meet a man named Darek. He is confident and kind, and Zofia keeps her guard up against his relaxed charm. Janina and Zofia return to the library the next day, this time to help Kasia in the children’s reading room. When the power goes out, they comfort the children by reading a story about the mermaid of Warsaw, Syrenka, who protects the city. Warsaw’s residents give up hope that England and France will come to their aid, and the German attacks on the city intensify. The following Monday, Matka and Zofia awaken to the sound of air raid sirens. Though she is expected at the library, Zofia shelters with her mother in the basement of their building. A particularly violent bombing follows.

Zofia and Matka see Zofia’s father emerge from the smoke. Zofia is grateful that the three of them are safe, at least for the moment. The bombings have destroyed the phone lines. Matka prevents Zofia from leaving to check on Janina, but Janina sneaks out to visit Zofia. The next morning, the two girls meet at the library to continue their work. Mrs. Berman sends them to another branch of the library, which was struck by a bomb. The two friends join volunteers who are sifting through the rubble of the library, searching for salvageable books. There, they meet Marta Krakowska, a Polish author of popular romance novels. Zofia is star-struck, as she has read all of Krakowska’s novels many times. Janina tells the famous author that Zofia would also like to write. The author tells Zofia that when she has a story to tell, it will “burst” out of her. Krakowska also says that Zofia must experience true pain in order to write powerful emotional descriptions. Zofia is upset by this advice, wondering how much more pain she will have to endure.

The following day, Warsaw’s military defense surrenders, and the Nazis enter the city. Later, when Zofia is on her way to the library, she encounters a group of defeated Polish soldiers whom the Germans are escorting to war camps. Anxious for news of her brother, Zofia asks one of the Polish men if they fought alongside any Boy Scouts. The soldier laments that untrained and unskilled young men were sent into battle. Zofia concludes that her brother is likely dead.

Zofia and Janina watch German troops perform a ceremonial march through Warsaw. Janina recalls all the Jewish people who were forced to leave Germany to resettle in Poland the previous year. She worries that similar cruelties might now be focused on all the Jews in Poland. Over the next week, Germany and Russia divide Poland between them. Warsaw is in the German-controlled area and is now governed by the German-led General Government. Some of Zofia’s acquaintances plan to flee to Soviet-controlled regions. Recent violence against Boy Scouts leads the Girl Guides to disband. Zofia and Janina continue to volunteer for the library.

Soon, schools reopen, and Zofia and Janina return to class to finish their final year of high school. Enrollment is low, and some of the students who attend class are now cruel to Janina because she is Jewish. Zofia punches one classmate for spitting at Janina and is expelled. That evening, Zofia’s father praises her for standing up for her friend and supports her plan to get a job at the library. Zofia’s mother, on the other hand, disapproves of her behavior. Danuta, a friend who works at the library, agrees to get Zofia and Janina jobs if they restart their book club. The next book on their list is Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

Zofia is assigned to work for Mrs. Mazur in the library warehouse, while Janina joins Kasia in working in the children’s reading room. Janina’s parents have complied with an order to register themselves as Jewish, but their family has not yet been forced to move from their home. Zofia is filled with indignation because of the Jewish registry and the rumors of Nazi cruelty toward the Jews. Janina, Zofia, Danuta, and Kasia meet for their first book club meeting since Maria’s death. They discuss Metamorphosis, and, in the context of a conversation about familial care, Zofia reflects on the cold disapproval she often feels from her mother. They select their next book—The Time Machine by H. G. Wells—and Zofia passes around a bottle of vodka so they can toast to Maria. This becomes a tradition after every book club meeting.

As they are leaving, the friends see a German soldier with one of the librarians. She is flustered because she doesn’t speak German, so Zofia intervenes. The soldier hands Zofia a list of banned books to be removed from the library shelves. When she scolds him for his harsh treatment of the elderly librarian, he hits her. The Nazis arrest the library director, who is seeking to defend the library’s Polish history museum from destruction. On her walk home from the library, Zofia notices that the sidewalks have been repaired; the Nazi-led General Government is working to create a sense of normalcy. Later that evening, Zofia reflects further on the book club conversation about Metamorphosis. She realizes how much work her mother puts into keeping them safe and fed and arrives at a newfound appreciation for Matka. She decides not to tell her mother about the soldiers at the library, but she vows to tell her father when he gets home.

Zofia and her father stash his personal book collection under the floorboards of his study. Included among them is Antek’s collection of H. G. Wells books. They run out of space under the floorboards, and Zofia comforts her father by promising to find a different place to hide his copy of All Quiet on the Western Front. While they work, they discuss the lies that the Nazis are spreading about the Jewish Quarter. In an effort to poison the general public against the Jewish people, the Nazis are claiming that the Jewish Quarter is a nexus for infectious diseases. Zofia’s father worries that disease will begin to spread in earnest as more and more Jews are forced to live in close quarters with each other. He tells Zofia that he has been corresponding with another doctor, Dr. Weigl, who might be able to help Janina and her family if illness begins to spread.

The Germans order all Jewish people to wear white armbands. Zofia insists on picking Janina up at her apartment to spare her from the risk of walking alone. Janina worries about how the children in the library’s reading room will react to her armband, so Zofia helps her prepare to answer the children’s questions. Zofia finds Darek looking for his aunt, Mrs. Mazur, in the library warehouse. He asks Zofia to dinner, but she refuses. His attention makes her feel flustered, and she doesn't think that wartime is an appropriate time for dating. Darek validates her concerns and mysteriously tells her that there is “something” (98) they can do to resist the Nazis, but he leaves before saying more.

In December, Zofia reflects that the holiday season is extraordinarily subdued. One day, all Jewish employees of the library are fired. Zofia wants to quit in protest, but Janina urges her to stay. When Zofia returns home, she finds her mother crying in the living room. Her father has been arrested, and his study has been searched and ransacked. Zofia is grateful to see that the soldiers did not discover the hiding spot where her father stashed his correspondence with Dr. Weigl.

The morning after her father’s arrest, Zofia goes to the Polish police station to ask after him. The indifferent officer says that her father has been taken to Pawiak Prison. At the prison, the Gestapo guard refuses to give her any information about her father but tells her that her father is allowed to receive packages. Frustrated that she cannot do more, Zofia returns that afternoon with a package of warm clothes and some food. Zofia also sends a note to Dr. Weigl, asking him to correspond with her—rather than with her father. She tells him that he can reach her at the library.

After Christmas, the Germans appoint a new commissioner for the library, Herr Nagiel. He announces that all French and English books must be removed and that German books will be moved to a special reading room for Germans only. Zofia doesn’t want to tell Herr Nagiel that she speaks German, because she doesn't want to work for the German patrons. For their next book club meeting, the friends convene in the library warehouse; Zofia sneaks Janina in. Darek finds them, and when they tell him about their book club, he insists that they come up with a name other than the Anti-Hitler Book Club. He suggests the Bandit Book Club, taking inspiration from the Nazis’ use of the word “bandit” to refer to people who disobey them. Darek then asks to join the club.

In January of 1940, Zofia delivers a package to the prison for her father every week. One day, the guard tells her that her father is no longer there. At the library, one of the oldest librarians, Miss Laska, has been fired, along with many other staff members. Before she leaves, Miss Laska tells Herr Nagiel that Zofia speaks German; this allows Zofia to keep her job.

Three months pass. In April 1940, Zofia and Mrs. Mazur are given another list of books and authors to be removed from the library. Following the literal instructions from Herr Nagiel to remove all the banned titles “from the catalog,” Zofia and Mrs. Mazur leave some of the banned books on the shelves so they can be found by people who know where to look. The previous month, violence against Jews escalated, but Janina and her family have been spared from the worst because they do not yet live in the Jewish Quarter. Now, Zofia escorts Janina on her weekly grocery trips, shopping with her friend at Jewish stores because those are the only places Janina is allowed to enter.

Zofia is angered to hear that Janina’s mother was picked up on the street with some other women and forced to clean a house to prepare it for German residents. Janina expresses gratitude that her mother was not sent to a work camp afterward. Rounding a corner, Janina accidentally walks straight into a drunken Nazi soldier. He accuses her of having been in the café they are passing by. Zofia defends Janina, switching to German and insulting the soldier. Enraged, he hits Janina and points his gun at her. Terrified, Zofia apologizes to the soldier. When he asks Zofia if she would die for Janina, she answers that she would. He forces Zofia to her knees and hits her over the head with his gun, then leaves. Zofia is frightened by this violent encounter and is horrified that she put Janina in danger.