“Book burning” often refers to the tradition of destroying books or other written materials opposed by a culture, religion, or political view to create an element of
restriction. Book burning, has been performed widely throughout history but has been
most famously done in Germany, during the Nazi regime. Some cases dating back to
1817 and continuing onto 1933 include many student university organizations burning
books, which were considered “un-German.” On April 6th 1933, a student association's
main office decided to go on a nationwide act to eliminate any un- German authors that
composed literary work. During a religious act on May 10th 1933, university students
burned up to 25,000 volumes of Jewish books. On the night of that same day, the school
population proclaimed to march with torchlight’s at parades to represent the hatred
against Jews. Amongst this group there were university professors, rectors and student
leaders who had seemed to enjoy this ritual. Students threw the unwanted books related
to Jews into the bonfires, while fire oaths and bands played with celebration. The people
who were targeted were mainly famous Jewish authors such as Franz Werfel, Max Brod,
and Stefan Zweig. The Nazis claimed that their reason for burning books was to promote
the Aryan culture by “cleansing” the nation.
The Nazi’s once burned the written materials of German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine who coincidentally had written in his 1821 play that “"Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.”
The following are some examples of other book burnings recently and through history:
• The earliest act of book burning was in china during 213 B.C.E when Emperor Shi Huang ordered his followers to burn Confucian literature and other written materials that challenged his authority. H also demanded that the Confucian scholars be buried alive.
• Numerous Harry Potter books were burned in the U.S. during 2001. For instance, the Harvest Assembly of God Church in Pennsylvania was amongst these people.
• On July 11, 2010, Florida pastor Terry Jones declared that “Islam is of the devil” and planned to burn copies of the Quran on the following September 11. However, this got the attention of U.S. and world leaders who demanded that he do not proceed. This had leaded him to finally cancel the book burning. • In the Netherlands, during 2011 Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes was burned due to numerous people finding the word “negro” in the title to be offensive.
• In Bosnia, during 1992, Serbian nationalist forces burned over 1.5 million book s by creating a fire from bombing the national library of Bosnia, in Sarajevo. It has been said, that the goal was wipe the presence of Muslims throughout the country.
• After the overthrow of chilies’ government in 1973, the military burned written materials that were considered rebellious.on.
Here is video of a family who shockingly has the same ideology as the Nazis.
To see the entire article click here
Schwartz, Daniel. "The books have been burning." CBC News/World. CBC ,
22/06/2011. Web. 1 May 2012.
<http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2010/09/10/f-book-burning-timeline.html>.
Cagle, Anne. "Book Burning Facts." eHow. Demand Media, 2012. Web. 1
May 2012. <http://www.ehow.com/about_6732024_book-burning.html>.
