A Trip to the Library

Un viaggio nelle biblioteche israeliane.

"I went on a trip, a library trip, to Israel to see archives and manuscripts and scrolls. I saw words preserved and words unearthed, words ordinary and sacred. ... 

We went to Yad Vashem. We rode down the elevator to the bowels of the place where 170,000,000 documents the museum has received have been processed, copied, placed in files, and registered. There are boxes and boxes of identity cards. Documents from the Nazis on Jewish nose size. Diaries from the Warsaw ghetto.  ...

We went to the National Library. Among a gathering of librarians from all over the world we were shown into a small room where under glass there was a brown-lined notebook with Kafka’s writing. ..." Anne Roiphe, tablet.