"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 compose 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 students 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. He 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 books by
creating a fire from bombing the national library of Bosnia, in Sarajevo. It
has been said, that the goals was wipe the presence of Muslims through the country.
·
After the
overthrow of Chilies' government in 1973, the military burned written materials
that were considered rebellious on.
Here is a 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>.
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