LGBT Book & Video Blog

By Stan Persky

Some things I take personally. This is one of them. That's because I write books. So, whenever people burn books -- whether it's the ancient library of Alexandria, Egypt going up in flames nearly two millennia in the past, or the 2003 torching of the National Library in Baghdad just five years ago, at the beginning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- I take offence. And it's personal. When the temperature reaches Fahrenheit 451, the degree at which paper burns, books like mine were and are reduced to ashes.

That flame-scorched history is why I was in Berlin's August Bebel Platz on Sat., May 10. It's the site where, 75 years ago on that date in 1933, the most notorious book burning of the 20th century was ignited by the then recently-installed Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. Less than four months after Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Nazi students throughout the country were egged on by Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels to purge the nation's libraries of all thought of which the government didn't approve.

The biggest of the nationwide bonfires took place in Berlin. Thousands of mostly young Nazis made their way up east Berlin's famous showcase boulevard, Unter den Linden, on an evening in early May and assembled in the cobblestone plaza across the street from what is today's Humboldt University and next door to the 17th century state opera house. A huge bonfire was lit and as many as 20,000 volumes were hurled into the flames.

More of The Urge to Burn Books
TheTyee.ca, Canada