RBU_JR_LIS_V23_2021-FULL_TEXT-E-Copy

Biswas & Mukherjee: Books for bullets …
the Germans were planning to carry out. The abovementioned
incidents were not carried out as acts of
censorship, in no way was it destructive of other people's
memory, nor did it harm any particular race or culture,
they were just acts of protest that included symbolic
destruction of 12 items. Referring to this incident in a
misrepresented form, the German students burned down
ten thousand volumes found from a list of approximately
4000 titles and this was being called the ‘Twelve Theses’,
a call for a pure national language and culture.
probably one of the most unfortunate incidents that the
world could have ever witnessed.
This problematic idea of toxic nationalism was being
placed as a “response to a worldwide Jewish smear
campaign against Germany and an affirmation of
traditional German values.” ( Kraus, 2020) . A brutal
example of uncompromising state censorship was set on
May 10th 1933, when students burned down 25,000
volumes of ‘un-German’ books in the square at the State
Opera Berlin. High German officials, supporters, most
unfortunately students participated in this and were
present as spectators of this grotesque incident. Looking
back at this incident causes a shiver to run down the spine.
How constructed destruction of culture and history of man
by other men can be carried out by the youth, the majority
shows a larger picture, and that is scarier than the incident
itself. It is dangerous to know the majority of people were
brainwashed enough to believe that the destruction of
precious books could result in any good. This was a
joyous ceremony where people danced and sang around
the fire and took fire oaths. Joseph Gobbels also delivered
a fiery speech to an audience of 40,000 Germans that said,
"The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an
end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has
again cleared the way on the German path...The future
German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of
character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. As
a young person, to already have the courage to face the
pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain
respect for death - this is the task of this young generation.
And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to
the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great
and symbolic deed - a deed which should document the
following for the world to know - Here the intellectual
foundation of the November Republic is sinking to the
ground, but from this wreckage, the phoenix of a new
spirit will triumphantly rise." (The History Place 1993) A
student organized attack was carried out on the Magnus
Hirschfeld's Institute of Sex Research followed by the
plundering of several priceless archives. When they ran
out of books in the libraries they turned to independent
bookstores, instead, libraries were instructed to stock up
books according to the standards of Hitler. Wolfgang
Herrman (Wolfgang Herrmann) was the librarian who
created the original blacklist of the book and unbelievably
left his major contributions in this grotesque incident.
Students’ carrying out such massacres on books was
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https://lisrbu.wixsite.com/dlis/rbu-journal-of-lis
[Source: http://totallyhistory.com/nazibookburnings/]
Librarian of Auschwitz: Dita Kraus
Keeping this incident in mind, one of the biggest stories of
resistance can be found in the story of the librarian of
Auschwitz. This thirteen-year-old was entrusted with
books that the Auschwitz prisoners had managed to
smuggle into the camp. Dita's powerful memoir The
Delayed Life: The True Story Of The Librarian of
Auschwitz (Kraus, Dita, 2020 ) captures her incredible
journey, through the darkest of times. Born in 1929, this
91-year-old now resides with her large family in Israel and
lives to tell the tale of the victory of humanity in the face
of a well-constructed process of dehumanization. She is
also one of the children whose paintings have been saved
by a miracle in Ghetto Theresienstadt. At the age of 13,
she along with her family was deported to Ghetto
Theresienstadt and later to Auschwitz, where she lost her
father. Along with her mother, she was later sent to a
forced labour camp in Germany followed by the
concentration camp of Bergen Belsen. Dita who still
carries the number that was engraved on her body in
Auschwitz had embraced books as her escape from the
gruesome reality of the Nazi concentration camps. She
probably kept the world's smallest library when she
managed to save some books in the camp, she said, "As
the librarian of Auschwitz, she cared for a small number
of books in the camp. (Holocaust survivor Dita Kraus, 2020)
“It was a row of books, not more than 12 or 14 books and
they were a random collection. They were books that were
found in the luggage of the arriving prisoners,”(Eberle,
Holly 2020) explains Kraus. “In a library, you have books
for certain ages, travelogues and novels, you have
literature for children and youths. Here it was random –
one was an atlas, one was a Russian grammar book,
different things you know. But each of them was used and
each of them helped to entertain the children in some
way.” (Holocaust survivor Dita Kraus, 2020)
Based on her life, author Antonio Iturbe penned down a
book called The Librarian of Auschwitz.( Iturbe, Antonio,
2019 ) Preservation of this random collection of books