By: Bikal Dhungel
" Wenn man Bücher verbrennt, man wird, am Ende, auch Menschen verbrennen " translated to english, When ones burns books, one will, in the end, burn people was once told by Heinrich Heine, a literary figure who was born in 1797 in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Adolf Hitler, during his Nazi rule in Germany burned books that were un-German. The first book burning culture began in Berlin and soon after moved to other cities where mostly Jewish literature were burnt. The Nazis eventually killed 6 million Jews and a total of around 80 million civilians or military personnel died as a result of World War II.
A book is a symbol of knowledge, education and enlightenment. If one does not hesitate to burn it, it might well be that the person also care less about human values. Book burning campaigns did not only took place in Nazi Germany but also in many other places from the hands of dictators who tend to see everybody who disagrees with them as a threat. Hence, burning books to install autocratic rule was a common culture.
Nazis burned books and libraries in other countries as well.
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet let books burn, Brazilian dictator Justino Alves let books burn that were subversive and the list goes on. Incidents of books burning for pure political reason happens often, for example the burning of Bible by Islamic fundamentalists or Quran by right wing extremists but burning in a mass scale as it was done in Nazi time and others, there is a strong correlation between books burning and mass murder.
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