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Book banning is one step away from book burning | Editorial – Sun Sentinel

By Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Apr 14, 2022 at 3:52 pm

On May 10 in Berlin’s Opera Square, students burned any books deemed “un-German” to align the arts and culture of Germany with Nazi ideals. Over 25,000 books were burned in bonfires throughout Germany, including author Helen Keller’s work on the rights of people with disabilities and Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild.”
(Keystone // Getty Images)

The book-burning began only 100 days after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933.

Torchlight parades in 34 university towns led to bonfires where more than 25,000 volumes went up in flames for being “un-German.”

Among them were the works of Germans Thomas Mann, a Nobel-prize winner and anti-Nazi; Erich Maria Remarque, the anti-war author of All Quiet on the Western Front; and the 19th century Jewish-born poet Heinrich Heine, who had written prophetically, “Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people.”

American writers Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway and even Helen Keller were among the verboten.

Source: Book banning is one step away from book burning | Editorial – Sun Sentinel