The Nazi’s used to organize a huge book burning program on the month of May during the days of the war. This program used to take place every year; the books written by the Jews were burned in to ashes. On the May 10th to 11th 1933, 40,000 people gathered around the Bebelplatz in the Mitte, in the city of Berlin. That crowd was consisted of many different types of people, from different occupations. A huge percentage of the crowd was from the 30 top Universities in Germany of that time, there were students from Hitler youth, the Nazi party supporters, and some people came so that they don’t have to face problems regarding helping Jews. Hitler really believed in the power of literature. He himself wrote a book “Mein Kampf” to express the feeling, share facts about his life with the people of that time. He thought that books were the best way to get into people minds. When it came to Jews, he respected the power of literature so much that he ordered to burn down all the books written by Jews, so that no one could really know about the real struggle that the Jews were facing every day, know about their life. In a way he destroyed the communication channel with the public and the subfreezing Jews of that time.
"The book-burning campaign"
On April 6th, 1933, the German Students Association took an important decision. The main office of printing press (BOOKS) and Propaganda printing were controlled by the German Student Association; they decided to start "Action against the Un-German Spirit". That action was the climax point in a literary purge or "cleansing" by fire. "Un-German" books at the Wartburg festival on the 300th anniversary of the posting of Luther's Theses. The thesis was known as a "pure" national language and culture. The thesis was written for a good purpose, but it was used in a negative way to peruse people to the wrong way of hatred. "Jewish Literature", was represented in a way that it needed to get "purified” German literature, and ordered those selected universities to be the centers of German nationalism of literature. The students said that the action was a response to a worldwide Jewish "smear campaign" against Germany and threat to traditions of German and the German culture as well.
On the 10th of May 1933, the students burned around 25,000 volumes of books written by Jew writers. 10th May is the date when most universities in towns started a parade consisted of the national students; they marched in torchlight parades against the “un-German spirit." The parade was consisted of important people; there were high Nazi officials, professors, rectors, and student leaders. In the meeting, the participants really enjoyed by throwing books in the fire, enjoying their time, there was music playing too; they burned the books with the rhythm of the song “Fire Oaths."
More details on the preparation of the "Book Burn"...
Reference to “Book Thief”
In the book “Book thief”, the importance of literature was perfectly presented. The main character “Liesel” steals books in some occasions, and she considers that as her achievement. The importance of books in her life really represents the power that literature really contains. When she feels bad about life, or has nightmares, she requests her dad to read a book to her. In the Book there is a quote “We stopped our enemies once again. We stopped them reaching our minds.” This shows that the leaders of Nazi also though that literature was an important factor and can really be used as a weapon to peruse people. In the book thief, we see that there is a portion where it talks about Hitler’s book “Mein kampf”. Hitler wrote the book to spread the story about his life, his struggles caused by Jews, in one way, he used the book to persue people to believe him and support him. In a portion of the book, it is stated that “Burning books of Jews were like burning the feelings of Jew writers in a way”. After that, the book was personified, described in the same way a human being is described. In a way, that was a also a technique used by the author to show that doing some thing to the book was more likely the same as doing it the writers.\
Book Burning Video...(REAL)
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