Wednesday, February 11 at 6 p.m.
Throughout the 1990s, Freeport-based attorney and photographer Jack Montgomery created portraits of 20 Holocaust survivors who settled in Maine.
At the outset of the pandemic, he set out to collect their first person accounts as they had told them in interviews, books they had written and speeches they had given, letters and poems. Published in August, 2025, ‘From the Holocaust to Maine: Testimonies of the Survivors‘ highlights their testimonies.
Most were children during the dark years of fascism in Europe. Some were forced into ghettos and then on to the death factories of Auschwitz and other camps. Some fled to the woods where they survived with partisan bands resisting the Germans and others who hunted for Jews. All of them survived through a combination of great fortitude and good luck.
Jack Montgomery will be at the library to talk about his 30-year journey in telling the stories of these remarkable Mainers. He fervently hopes his book will educate readers about what he calls “closely related viruses embedded in the human body politic”—antisemitism, racial hatred, and authoritarianism.
Wednesday, February 18 at 6 p.m.
The Great Fire of 1947 and the End of Bar Harbor’s Golden Era tells the riveting story of the desperate evacuation of residents through the heart of an uncontrolled forest fire burning all across Mount Desert Island. After an extremely dry summer, all areas of Maine spent the month of October fighting fires, with the island seeing the worst of the damage. Soon after the first flames were spotted, in a last, desperate and deadly escape from the quickly approaching and ever-growing flames, many Bar Harbor residents found themselves fleeing to the water, while others fled in a caravan for the causeway behind a bulldozer that cleared the way, all the while watching the loss of many of the mighty cottage-mansions and historic hotels that once symbolized the island’s heritage as a summer playground for the world’s richest people. Through extensive and meticulous research, Maine author and historian Mac Smith makes this important part of the state’s history come to life.
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Tuesday, February 17 at 1 p.m.
Join Miss Sarah as we celebrate Lunar New Year and ring in the Year of the Horse!
We’ll have games, crafts, music, and more!