Why Book Burning Destroys the Most Vital Tool Of Humanity
If you want to break someone’s spirit, take away their books
On the night of May 10th, 1933, the smell of smoke was in the air in Germany. 40,000 people gathered in the town square of Opernplatz to watch the blaze of thousands of books deemed ‘un-German’, symbolically cleansing Germany by fire. Throughout the country, students held huge bonfires, throwing book after book into the flames, lighting up the night.
Through setting fire to books, the Nazis were setting fire to freedom of thought. Literature was devoured by the fire of hatred, building the perfect foundation for The Third Reich and the crimes against humanity that went along with it.
In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, the story centres around an obsession with books by the main character Liesel. It is no coincidence that a book about Nazi Germany would centre around the love of books. Liesel is stealing fragments of humanity, pieces of her life before everything changed. She protects them as the precious gifts that books are.
Illiteracy as a Form of Control
Throughout history, keeping people from reading was a way to suppress them. In the antebellum South, only about 10% of enslaved people could read.
