Epistolophilia

“An intelligent, humane, and noble book that rescues from obscurity an intelligent, humane, and noble woman. It stands as a testament to the power of reading, writing, compassion, and extraordinary courage.” —David Bezmozgis, author of The Free World

“With this searching, nuanced biography, Julija Šukys introduces the English-speaking world to a genuine heroine of the Holocaust, while at the same time raising vital questions about the role of trauma, poverty, and ill health on women’s literary production.” —Susan Olding, author of Pathologies: A Life in Essays

“This is an important new take on the legacy of the Holocaust. Eloquent and elegantly written, it reads like a Sebald text but with a voice profoundly its own.” —Laura Levitt Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender, Temple University

The librarian walks the streets of her beloved Paris. An old lady with a limp and an accent, she is invisible to most. Certainly no one recognizes her as the warrior and revolutionary she was, when again and again she slipped into the Jewish ghetto of German-occupied Vilnius to carry food, clothes, medicine, money, and counterfeit documents to its prisoners. Often she left with letters to deliver, manuscripts to hide, and even sedated children swathed in sacks. In 1944 she was captured by the Gestapo, tortured for twelve days, and deported to Dachau.

Through Epistolophilia, Julija Šukys follows the letters and journals—the “life-writing”—of this woman, Ona Šimaitė (1894–1970). A treasurer of words, Šimaitė carefully collected, preserved, and archived the written record of her life, including thousands of letters, scores of diaries, articles, and press clippings. Journeying through these words, Šukys negotiates with the ghost of Šimaitė, beckoning back to life this quiet and worldly heroine—a giant of Holocaust history (one of Yad Vashem’s honored “Righteous among the Nations”) and yet so little known. The result is at once a mediated self-portrait and a measured perspective on a remarkable life. It reveals the meaning of life-writing, how women write their lives publicly and privately, and how their words attach them—and us—to life.

Julija Šukys is the author of Silence Is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout (Nebraska 2007). She lives in Montreal, Quebec.