Freiheitstrunken !

Do NOT burn books anywhere any time. NEVER burn ANY book anywhere. Between the covers of a book are word-thoughts on paper; you can burn the paper and the covers, but to burn the thoughts you soon will go after the people who think, and that leads to the horrors of mental enslavement and physical torture and extermination.

DO NOT BURN BOOKS !

Berlin's Bebelplatz, between the State Opera and the Law School Building of Humbold University and across Unter den Linden from that university's main building, was the site of one of the most horrifying book burnings, on May 10, 1933. Nazi Propaganda Minister of the Third Reich, Joseph Goebbels gave the "ceremonial" speech as a crowd of mostly student (!) followers tossed heaps of books into a bonfire in the middle of the square. At at least 21 other universities (!) there were simultaneous book burnings that evening. The Nazis had plastered cities and towns with posters calling for the burning of books on their "black list": Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, Heinrich Mann, Hegel, Alfred Döblin, Heinrich Heine anything they considered "ungerman". The declared purpose was to rid the country of the "dangers" of "Jewish smut" and other "improper" literature.

A certain pastor in Gainsville, Florida, should receive an all expenses paid trip to the memorial now in place at Bebelplatz, be forced to read ALL the books on the list the Nazis created (see the site Verbrannte Bücher), and reminded of the all-too-true statement on the plaque at the memorial:

"Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." In English: That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they end up burning people.

The quotation is from Heinrich Heine's Almansor. Eine Tragödie, 1821. In his play, these lines are a response to the burning of the Koran by Christian Crusaders during the conquest of Granada;they are later used by Heine himself to refer to the medieval nonsense at work at a book burning at a Wartburg festival in Germany in 1817.

PROTECT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION!

STOP BURNING BOOKS!

STOP BURNING PEOPLE!

THINK AND DISCUSS INSTEAD OF BLINDLY "BELIEVING"!