The library featured in this episode of Ex Libris is truly inspirational and remarkable. It is a shrine, a beacon, a memorial. Sacred ground, no less. Moreover, the conversation that takes place there - with acclaimed novelist Rachel Seiffert - is visceral and compelling. The Wiener Holocaust Library - found in an elegant Russell Square townhouse in Central London - holds one of the world's leading and most extensive archives on the Holocaust and Nazi era. Formed in 1933, the Library's unique collection of over one million items includes published and unpublished works, press cuttings, photographs and eyewitness testimony. It is a place that holds huge resonance for Seiffert: a fertile ground of inspiration and a professional home-from-home. Moreover, the library afforded her a voyage of self-discovery at a key time. Rachel first entered The Wiener in the hope of discovering the truth as to her German grandfather’s activities during the Second World War, in which he served as part of the Waffen SS. That visit - as a somewhat ‘lost’ 20-something - would change her life. For Rachel found not only acceptance of that existential need to excavate her family’s past but also a pathway toward becoming a writer. The debut novel that emerged from her family research, The Dark Room, would be shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Rachel has since been shortlisted multiple times for the Women’s Prize, won the prestigious EM Forster Award, and been selected as one of Granta’s ‘Best Young British Novelists’. She here charts that journey, as well as her own research and writing processes, with tremendous verve, speaking very movingly of her own family history. With the help of Howard Falksohn, the Library’s Senior Archivist, Ben and Rachel explore The Wiener's fascinating past and crucial ongoing legacy. The expansive conversation takes in the parallels between our own age and that Nazi era of the 1930s, as well as an exploration of how history doesn’t so much repeat itself as send the present warnings. Biblioclasm - the burning of books and historic destruction of libraries - is discussed too, as well as the positive lessons of restitution and reconciliation that institutions such as The Wiener can provide to us. Plus Howard Falksohn explains the fascinating, exacting processes of how his team go about sourcing - even sometimes from rubbish skips! - the personal documents that preserve ‘the lives of others’. Howard elucidates how he sets about archiving for posterity the genocidal crimes of yesteryear. Lest we, or future generations, should ever forget. ... A full transcript follows below of this episode of Ex Libris, featuring Rachel Seiffert: Welcome to Ex Libris, the podcast that, with the help of the greatest writers around, champions libraries and bookshops. These are our society’s safe spaces, particularly libraries - they are palaces for the people, free of charge, where everyone is welcome and nobody judged, yet they are in peril. My name is Ben Holden, writer and producer, and, more to the point, fed up with this state of affairs, so in each episode of Ex Libris, I will be meeting a great author in a library or bookshop of their choice, somewhere that has become resonant for them, and I hope that after you have listened to this episode, it will feel special to you too. Introduction Ben Holden: Here I am in Russell Square, Bloomsbury, among the University College London and SOAS students walking by. I'm about to enter one of the stately old town houses here, for quietly behind the elegant, but unassuming, facade is a very special library. I say library, but this place is also a shrine, a memorial, a beacon. It's a really sobering and serious institution, yet also a truly inspirational and humbling place to visit. I'm thrilled that Rachel Seiffert, the greatly acclaimed novelist who’s been up for Booker and women's prizes for her fiction multiple times, as well as being one of Granta’s best young British novelists and the recipient of the prestigious E.M Forster award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters is speaking with us today, alongside the library’s head archivist, Howard Falksohn, and they're ready to talk with us inside, so in we go. Interview: Ben Holden: Rachel, Howard, thank you both so much for joining us today here in the Wiener Holocaust Library. Rachel, this is a very special place. What does it mean to you, personally? I know you have a strong attachment and history here. Rachel Seiffert: Well, actually, I first came to the Wiener in its old location on Devonshire Road which was a townhouse; there it was a dark, cosy, a bit dilapidated, I say that very fondly, place full of books and full of fascinating people who could guide you through the labyrinth that is the Holocaust. I researched my first novel there while I was very young, I was in my twenties and a bit lost and a bit in need of guidance, and so the Wiener, despite the fact ...
