I recently watched The Librarians, the documentary directed by Kim A. Snyder about the ongoing book-banning fiasco.

Around the same time, I attended a zoom session on the topic, hosted by the Hadassah Educators Council where several librarians provided an accounting of their own harrowing experiences in school and public libraries. I’m not talking years ago either. I’m talking about the current day and age.

I’ll be honest. Parts of this documentary and the testimony of the librarians made me sick to my stomach. (But so many things these days do.)

The documentary links book banning efforts to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare and to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’ burning books by Jewish authors. Goebbels, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, was “an unconditional follower of Hitler and a radical antisemite.” He held many positions in the Nazi party, including Reich Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. It wasn’t difficult to get the point that history is repeating itself and that many people aren’t learning lessons from the past.

I also attribute the efforts of banning books to our current political climate. Today we seem to be more divisive than ever, and book banning is just another issue to argue over. I’m........

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