Recently we passed the 75 anniversary of Nazi book burning and on the occasion, a ‎ceremony was held in Berlin, among other German cities. Last week I saw a poster in ‎Berlin on the occasion that invited the public to the event. What caught my attention was ‎the poem by a German poet on top of the poster, which read: Wherever they burn books, ‎one day they will also burn humans.‎

At the very least, the Nazis showed that this was not just a slogan but also the reality.‎

A few days ago a film on book burning in Hitler’s Germany was shown to the public. ‎What is frightening about the film is that the individuals who are shown to be tossing ‎books into the flames are decent-appearing people, and not outcasts or drifters. Goebels ‎says something in the film that is striking: “If perished milk is given to children is ‎schools, the government is accountable; if expired medicine is given to patients, the ‎government is accountable; corrupt books are worse that perished food. We will not ‎allow injurious food to be given to German children.”‎
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Goebels words sound similar to those who these days defend censorship and condemn ‎people for their views. What is even more frightening is that the public book burnings in ‎the film were only part of the bigger picture and events that took place outside the public ‎view. And sometimes this issue does not even need books, censors or flames. By simply ‎telling people not to read a book or that it should not be in a library simply because I do ‎not like it or its views is in practice doing what Goebel was prescribing and preaching.‎

Governments that create conditions for book publishing and designate pre-viewers to ‎read books before making them available to the public, in fact view themselves as self-‎appointed guardians of the public. They do the same thing with newspapers. ‎Governments that have money and power but deny the Internet and bandwidths to the ‎public too are doing what the book burners were doing. While people around the world ‎read Sovaschi’s book, those in Burma are not allowed to, or Chinese language books ‎abound all over the world except in China. These events and practices are no less than the ‎book burnings that have taken place.‎

So as the 75 anniversary of book burning passes and the event is condemned worldwide, ‎other forms of book-burning flourish. These events and views need to be condemned as ‎well. Anyone who bans a reading material because he or she does not like its contents ‎needs to be rebuked. Stalin did the latter without actually burning any books.‎

Robert Mugabe did this in yet another way. With seventy percent illiteracy, a 10,000 ‎percent inflation rate, there is no money or desire to buy books for anyone. There are also ‎some countries that do not have a Mugabe but their illiteracy policies and rates amount to ‎a form of book burning.‎

But regardless of how the goals are accomplished, whether through Nazi book burning or ‎Stalin’s methods, Mugabe’s practices, the colonels polices in Burma, etc one thing is ‎clear: Book burning indicates a fear, the fear of free thought and ideas. Book burners ‎know that they have nothing to say and his fear drives him to book burning. Samuel ‎Beckett was right when he said that one day people would read all the burned books and ‎hatred for the book burners would abound. If human progress and advance could be ‎contained and checked, then the Church with its threats, Nazism with its zeal, Stalinism ‎with its arrogance would have succeeded. But none of them did.‎