May 10, 2025 and nine-two years ago on this day in 1933, university students in 34 university towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books. The works of Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud went up in flames alongside American authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Helen Keller, while students gave the Nazi salute.
Burroughs had fallen into disfavor in Germany. He was accused of anti-German sentiments, mostly because of his novel, “Tarzan the Untamed.” The issues abouts “About Tarzan the German Devourer,” are detailed at: https://www.erbzine.com/mag32/3296.html
The 100-drabble for today, “Burn, Baby, Burn,” is an excerpt from the article, “Book Burnings in Germany, 1933”published at:
Helen Keller confronted German students in an open letter: "History’s taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that before, and the ideas have risen up and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds." Novelist Sherwood Anderson, author Faith Baldwin, scriptwriter Erwin Cobb, and Sinclair Lewis publicly protested the book burnings, referencing German writer Heinrich Heine’s observation, "Where one burns books, one will soon burn people."
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