Follow Jan. 30, 2021 Deep sadness overwhelmed David Fishman last summer when the National Library announced that it was closing its doors temporarily under the constraints of the coronavirus pandemic. Although Prof. Fishman lives a very long way from the reading rooms of the Jerusalem institution, his study of the heroic operation to rescue Jewish books during the Holocaust had brought home to him how crucial they are for the spiritual and cultural survival of humanity. In a conversation from his home in New York last month, he said, verging on tears, that he found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that the protagonists of his book – a group of Vilna Ghetto prisoners – had risked their lives to rescue volumes from the clutches of the Germans 80 years ago, but now the Jewish state was being forced to shut down libraries because of the epidemic.