UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH
Laurel Corona, Author

The Jewish Street, Vilna, 1920-1930.
The Strashun Library was on the left, second floor.

A MESSAGE TO READERS OF UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH FROM LAUREL CORONA

The Strashun Library

Wyman Brent in the Old Jewish Quarter of Vilna

THE BOOK KEEPER: A LOVE STORY

A non-Jew from San Diego came one step closer to realizing his dream of establishing a Jewish library in Vilna, Lithuania, when he moved to the erstwhile capital of East European Yiddish life last December. For the past three years, Wyman Brent, 45, has been collecting books in the hopes of creating what he calls the Vilnius Jewish Library.
With no ties to Jewish organizations and scarce personal funds, Brent, who sells books and records on the Internet, has been amassing books in his tiny Southern California apartment. The library, as he envisions it, will contain 100,000 English-language books either penned by Jewish authors or on Jewish topics. For advice in his endeavor, Brent met with Sir Martin Gilbert, a preeminent writer and historian of the Holocaust, in England.
Brent, whose inspiration comes from his fascination with Eastern Europe and the region’s Jews, and his roommate, Carla Remondini, an Italian-born non-Jew, have collected 2,700 books to date, acquired from thrift shops, swap meets and the Internet.
“I want to be the shammes of the library, the person taking care of it out of love,” Brent said.

—By Rebecca Spence, reprinted from Hadassah Magazine, February 2008

Unpacking crates of books rescued from YIVO and the Strashun Library, 1947

FOR MORE INFORMATION, SEE THE WEBLINKS TO THE LEFT