Issue of the American Newspaper NEWS-WEEK Reporting on the Burning of Jewish Books in Nazi Germany. May 20, 1933. Under the headline “HOLOCAUST” – “German students rejoice as ‘non-German’ books burn.” This issue documents one of the earliest uses of the term “Holocaust” in the context of the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany.
The issue reports:
“GERMANY: Students Exult As “Un-German” Books Burn. HOLOCAUST : Down Unter den Linden one evening last week came a parade of 5,000 men and women stu- dents, singing Nazi songs, carrying banners and torches. In the ranks were trucks piled with “un-German” books, collected from public and private libraries. A blaring Nazi band and a crowd of 40,000, massed around a log pyre five feet high, awaited the paraders EUROPEAN 20,000 Books Were Hitlerized by Fire Communists and Socialists, books by pacifists, books by Jews, books con- sidered erotic by the student censors, all went into the symbolic flames. Among the scores of authors thus condemned were Lenin, Stalin, Karl – Marx, Friedrich Engels, Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Arthur Schnitzler, Upton Sinclair, Ben Lindsey, Jack London, Morris Hillquit, and even Helen Keller, who, both blind and deaf herself, had given her book royal- ties to German soldiers blinded in the World War. In Berlin the proceedings were dig- nified by a speech from Propaganda Minister Goebbels. “Jewish intellec- tualism is dead, ” he declared. “The old goes up in flames. The new shall be fashioned from the flames in our hearts.”
The report also states that on the same day, demonstrations by Jews took place across the United States, and the Jews declared a boycott on German goods: “AMERICAN PROTESTS: On May 10, day of the book-burning in Germany, parades protesting against the Nazis’ anti-Semitism were held in several American cities. In New York the Jewish marchers and Christian sympathizers numbered about 65,000. They were led by Maj. Gen. John F. O’Ryan as grand marshal and were reviewed by Mayor O’Brien. The demonstration ended with a mass meeting addressed by Bainbridge li Colby, former Secretary of State, and Fiorello H. La Guardia, former Con- gressman. On Sunday, 600 representatives of 288 Jewish organizations in the metro- politan area met in New York and declared in favor of a boycott against German goods, German shipping and travel in Germany. The boycott is scheduled to be made nation-wide and to last until anti-Semitism in Germany comes to an end” . It also reports on anti-Nazi activities that took place in England.
On this page appears a photograph of the Prussian Library, described: “Prussian State Library Whose 2,500,000 Books Were Hitlerized by Fire”.
The book burnings in Nazi Germany were a series of events led by the German Student Association called Deutsche Studentenschaft, DSt in the 1930s on the initiative of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The goal was to “purify” German culture of anything not fundamentally German. In early April 1933 the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda of the German Student Association distributed a list of “books that endanger the German spirit”, which they claimed must be destroyed by fire to cleanse German libraries. The list was broadcast on German radio and printed in newspapers. Students described the action as a response to an alleged defamation campaign organized by world Jewry against Germany and traditional German values.
The most famous burning was the one reported in the issue before us. On May 10, 1933, by order of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and in his presence, a public ceremony was held in Berlin’s Opernplatz (today Bebelplatz) square, opposite Humboldt University, burning “harmful Jewish literature”. Prior to the ceremony, tens of thousands of books, works of hundreds of authors, were looted from nearby libraries and private collections. Tens of thousands of spectators attended the book burning event. In the light of spotlights and to the sound of music, that night Nazi party members, SA men, lecturers and students burned more than 20,000 books, most by Jewish authors and others by non-Jews suspected of writing in a “Jewish spirit” or sympathizing with Jews, including communist, socialist, anarchist, liberal, pacifist, Freemason and sexologist authors (such as Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld). Among the authors and researchers whose works were burned were Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Walther Rathenau (German foreign minister during the Weimar Republic), Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Erich Maria Remarque, Hugo Preuss (framer of the Weimar Constitution), Robert Musil, Stefan Zweig and Jakob Wassermann. Arnold Zweig attended the event and saw his own books burned, as did Raymond Aron. Zweig reported seeing behind police barriers “thousands of books in carefully Prussian-folded piles three meters by three”, brought there by trucks. The atmosphere in the crowd was euphoric, and hawkers circulated selling cigarettes, chocolate and sausages. Erich Kästner is the only author whose name was mentioned in the book burning ceremony speeches and who was present at the event.
The event opened with a speech by Nazi student organization leader Fritz Hippler, followed by student representatives stepping up one by one to throw books onto the bonfire accompanied by an “oath of fire”. Each announced the specific books they were discarding while referring to the values of the “old world” they represented versus those of the Nazi revolution. The ceremony concluded with a speech by Goebbels delivered precisely at midnight, broadcast on radio in which he declared:
“I consign to the flames the works of Heinrich Mann, Erich Kästner, Ernst Gläser! The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism now comes to an end… The German of the future will be not only a man of the book but also a man of character, and to this end we wish to educate you. For a young person to have the courage to confront the merciless gaze, to overcome the fear of death and once more feel respect for death – that is the task of this young generation. And you do well in this midnight hour, as you cast into the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed – one that must reflect the future, so that the world may know – here sinks the intellectual foundation of the November Republic [Weimar Republic], but from these ruins the phoenix spirit of the new will arise in triumph…the old goes up in fire, the new will take shape from the fire”.
The Berlin book burning ignited a wave of student-led book burnings across Germany. In Königsplatz in Munich, Schlossplatz in Breslau, Roemerberg in Frankfurt, at the foot of the Bismarck monument, in Dresden and other cities.
The action was declared a success by the German Student Association in 34 universities. Due to rain in some villages, the book burning was postponed to June 21, a traditional holiday. In total there were at least 70 book burning events in Germany in 1933. In some places, especially Berlin, radio broadcasts brought speeches and songs from the bonfires live to German listeners. Book burning events took place primarily in 1933 alone and did not continue afterwards. Restrictions on free expression, expulsion from employment and education, and Nazi campaigns of hatred and violence in these years caused many intellectuals and scientists, Jews and opponents of the Nazis, to emigrate from Germany. Many non-Jewish opponents of the Nazis, adopted what they termed an “internal emigration”: they ceased cultural, artistic and research activities, and kept a low public profile until the end of the Nazi regime. Some stopped criticizing the regime out of safety concerns, and some even managed to continue publishing secretly under pseudonyms through person connections who brought their works to print, musical or cinematic production.
32 [2] pages. Complete issue. Very good condition.
