Library

The Hatikvah Holocaust  Education Center Library has over 3500 volumes as well as more than 350 video tapes.  Reference shelves include Holocaust encyclopedias, documentary materials and rare volumes. Holocaust books are in the majority; related subjects include: interfaith relations, Jewish history, European history, racism, genocide, rescuers and more. Oral histories of survivors, rescuers and liberators are available for viewing in the video collection.  Written testimonies of survivors and their families are also included in our collection.

Our library is open to the public and books and videos may be borrowed at no charge. Staff members are available to assist visitors.

Library hours are:  : Mon-Thurs 9a.m. to 3p.m. and Fri 9a.m. to 2p.m.

Online library - search for books and videos by keyword, author, title, or subject.

Want help locating a book? Please call Hatikvah at (413)734-7700

Katz Family Library, located a half mile from Hatikvah at Temple Beth El, maintains a collection of books relating to Jewish life and culture.

Of Special Interest

Dr. Seuss Goes to War:  The world War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel   by Richard H. Minear

Dr. Seuss (born Theodor Seuss Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1904) began his career in the late 1920s, doing cartoons for the humor magazines Judge and Life. He established a reputation as an advertising artist, best known for his illustrations promoting Flit bug spray.

After graduating Dartmouth College, Seuss was hired to draw political cartoons for the New York newspaper PM in 1941 and remained through 1943. Seuss had already published his first children's book, “To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” in 1937 but his other children's works were not created until after WWII.

His first cartoon for PM lampooned Virginio Gayda, editor of the fascist publication Il Giornale d'ltalia. But, Minear writes, “Hitler is the prime subject of all of Dr. Seuss's World War II cartoons. Without him, Dr. Seuss might well have remained a successful commercial artist with a sideline in children's literature."

Two hundred of those roughly four hundred cartoons have found their way into “Dr. Seuss Goes to War”. Because these cartoons were drawn on a daily basis and reflected contemporary events, they provide the reader with a fascinating window to view life in America and the World during the war years.
Fans of Cat in the Hat or Green Eggs and Ham or the many other Seuss works will delight in seeing historical figures drawn similarly to later Seuss creations.

The cartoons are divided into sections by topic, (the Home Front, Hitler & Nazi Germany, the Rest of the Word, etc.). Each section contains a preface by the author. These explanatory sections are quite helpful in putting the cartoons into the context of that time and providing critical information about some of the then well known figures of the day (Father Coughlin, Pierre Laval and others) that may be unfamiliar to contemporary readers.

Seuss and PM were strongly opposed to the isolationist movement in the U.S. in the months before America's entry into the war. As such Seuss pulled no punches when Charles Lindbergh and other isolationists were the subjects of his cartoons. He also mocked Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and Stalin (until the German attack on the USSR) and the Vichy French government.

Other cartoons attacked anti-Semitism, and racist, segregationist policies on the home front.  But it is surprising that the artist who denounced anti-black racism and anti-Semitism so eloquently, was like many other political cartoonists of his day in painting Japan and Japanese-Americans  in overly racist ways.
In spite of that, Dr. Seuss’ work continues to inspire people of all backgrounds and ages to think and care about the fate of humanity.