“Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned.” - Heinrich Heine, 1821. Just over a century later, on May 10th 1933, German university students organized a series of book burnings in 34 locations across Nazi Germany with the assistance of their college professors and German police. The books had been confiscated from libraries, bookshops, and personal collections. As books by Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Helen Keller, and Erich Maria Remarque lit up the night, thousands of people took “fire oaths” swearing to destroy subversive literature. 80,000 to 90,000 books were burned, with an estimated 25,000 burning in Berlin’s Opera Square as Joseph Goebbels delivered a speech entitled “No to decadence and moral corruption!” Less than ten years later, Hitler would authorize what Herman Goering called a “complete solution to the Jewish question.” The Nazis were not the first to burn books on this scale as a form of controlling the populace and, if history is any indication, they will not be the last. #History #Remember #NeverForget #BookBurning #Freedom