By Cindy Mindell

NEW CANAAN – Assistant library director Cynde Bloom Lahey had just finished reading “Sarah’s Key” when she and fellow staff members were planning a summer-read program.
The 2007 novel, by Tatiana de Rosnay, fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations of thousands of French-Jewish families in Paris.

“We wanted to do something different than the ‘one book one town’ event,” Lahey says. “We wanted to do something that would get people talking and inspire a dialog between the generations.”
Last July, the library hosted Elizabeth Bettina, author of “It Happened in Italy: Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust,” and Italian-Jewish Holocaust survivor Ursula Korn Selig. Despite the season and light publicity, the event drew more than 150 people and earned Bettina speaking engagements at several other Connecticut libraries.
Lahey was impressed by Bettina’s passion for her subject and invited the author and Selig to kick off this year’s summer read on June 7, and asked permission to use Bettina’s “It Happened in…” title as a theme. Lahey met with groups at the New Canaan senior center and assisted-living facilities to hear their World War II-related stories, “and the response was incredible,” she says. As is the response to the library’s related book displays, “which are flying off the table,” Lahey says. The summer-reading program highlights the little-known stories of Holocaust survival in each country involved in the war.
“So many survivors are aging and dying off,” Lahey says. “We want to honor Elizabeth Bettina’s signature statement, ‘If you are not indifferent, things can be different.'”
All generations are involved in the project, Lahey says. Library administration engaged New Canaan High School librarians and the director of the Outback Teen Center to design a related summer-reading theme for the town’s teen population. The high school is posting the New Canaan library’s reading list on its Web site and donating copies of several featured selections to the library. Students will conduct oral-history interviews with local seniors about their World War II experiences.
The program includes a full schedule of author presentations and book discussions geared toward adults and students in grades 4 through 9. Films include the BBC’s 2008 production of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” “Six Million Paper Clips,” the PBS “American Experience” documentary on the Nuremberg trials, and “Carrie’s War,” among others.
Lahey has requested library museum passes to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, and is publicizing the Jewish Museum’s current special exhibition on “Curious George” creators Margret and H.A. Rey, who fled Nazi-occupied Europe on bicycles with a portfolio of their artwork.
The “It Happened in…” summer read kicks off at the New Canaan Library, 151 Main St. in New Canaan, on Monday, June 7 at 7:30 p.m. with author Elizabeth Bettina and Holocaust survivor Ursula Korn Selig. The event is co-sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Lower Fairfield County. On Monday, June 14, novelist and Fairfield University professor Michael White will discuss his book, “Beautiful Assassin,” based on the real-life story of a female Russian sniper who killed more than 300 Nazi soldiers.
“We chose a deeply serious subject but it’s one that touches everyone,” Lahey says. “There are many local families with their own stories to tell, and this is a way to bring children into the discussion as well. We hope to open the eyes of people of all ages, in order to use history as a tool for preventing horrors from occurring in the future.”

For full program details and an event schedule: www.newcanaanlibrary.org / (203) 594-5040

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