Interesting People mailing list archives
Flames of Nazi Oblivion
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 21:09:41 -0400
------ Forwarded Message From: Shannon McElyea <Shannon () DeepNines com> Reply-To: Shannon () DeepNines com Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 17:56:30 -0700 To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: Flames of Nazi Oblivion http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/10/opinion/10SAT3.html?th Flames of Nazi Oblivion eventy years ago today, a series of conflagrations lit up the night in a number of German cities. By the standard of the Reichstag fire earlier that year or the firestorms to come in the years ahead, these fires were unimpressive. But each was surrounded by a sizable crowd many people there students and most of them giddy with ideological fervor that fed the flames with piles of books. The aim was to cleanse Germany of un-German literature, "Jewish intellectualism" and works by Nazi enemies. Students had cleared their own shelves and the shelves of libraries of books by a list of authors that would make a respectable library in itself. The events of that day and the American response to it are the subject of a new exhibition called "Fighting the Fires of Hate" at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The fires of May 10, 1933, were a cultural atrocity that presaged the human atrocities that soon followed. The voice of Joseph Goebbels, speaking at the Berlin book-burning, rattles through the exhibition space. The voice, the fires, the sight of books being flung through the night, their pages torn away as they streak toward the flames all of this catches our eye and our imagination, and strikes our conscience, too, since we pride ourselves on our response to the Nazis. To get to the last, most violent stage of censorship, when works of Heinrich Heine, Bertolt Brecht, Sigmund Freud and Erich Maria Remarque go up in flames alongside those of Marc Chagall, H. G. Wells and Ernest Hemingway, you have to begin with the simple listing of tainted books. Like other parts of the Holocaust museum now marking its 10th anniversary "Fighting the Fires of Hate" puts a face on those lists of victims by introducing viewers to the authors, one by one, whose books were burned. It is a grim tally. For some writers, especially the English and Americans, the fires made little practical difference. But for others it meant the beginning of an exile that too often ended in suicide or murder. The first enemies of a totalitarian regime are always its most articulate enemies. The sight of those fires of 70 years ago and those faces livid with conviction should remind us that censorship, even when no books are being torched, is in its very nature a violence against the essential freedoms of thought and expression. ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Current thread:
- Flames of Nazi Oblivion Dave Farber (May 10)