Books Never Die: The Life and Legacy of the American Library of Nazi Banned Books

Jennifer M. Meacham

“Where they burn books . . .”

(“Twelve theses against the un-German spirit”)

Marx

Freud London

Wells

Hemingway

Keller

Sandburg

Sanger

Remarque

Kafka

Brecht

Brooklyn Jewish Center667 Eastern Parkway

c. 1920

Source: http://www.crownheights.info/index.php?itemid=29474

“Books cannot be killed by fire.”

Sinclair

Dreiser

Durant

Einstein

American Library of Nazi Banned Books inaugural ceremony Brooklyn Jewish Center

December 22, 1934

Source: http://burningbookspalgrave.blogspot.com/2008/05/brooklyn-nazi-banned-library-opened-by.html

“Books are weapons in the war of ideas.”

“People die, but books never die.”

Plaque commemorating the Nazi BookfiresFrankfurt City HallHesse, Germany

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Bibliography

Bosmajian, H. (2006). Burning books. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc. Fishburn, M. (2007). Books are weapons: Wartime responses to the Nazi bookfires of 1933. Book

History, 10, 223-251. Retrieved from Wilson OmniFile.Fishburn, M. (2008). Burning books. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Hill, L. E. (2001). The Nazi attack on “un-German” literature, 1933-1945. In J. Rose (Ed.), The Holocaust

and the book (pp. 9-46). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Hillerbrand, H. J. (2006). On book burnings and book burners: Reflections on the power (and

powerlessness) of ideas. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 74 (3), 593-614. Retrieved from http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/content/74/3/593

Kantorowicz. A. (1934). Why a library of the burned books? London: Mackay. Kantorowicz. A. (1944, May 7). The burned books still live. New York Times Magazine, 17, 43.Knuth, R. (2006.) Burning books and leveling libraries: Extremist violence and cultural destruction.

Westport, CT: Praeger.Prof. Einstein dedicates Nazi-banned libraries. (1946) In Jubilee book of the Brooklyn Jewish Center:

published in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of its founding (pp. 25-27). Brooklyn: Brooklyn Jewish Center. Retrieved from http://burningbookspalgrave.blogspot.com/

Stern, G. (1985). The burning of books in Nazi Germany, 1933: The American response. Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, 2. Retrieved from http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/ pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=395007

Stern, G. (1987). The book burning, the exiles, the American public. In P.E.N. International. Symposium Exile U.S.A., March 20-21, 1985 (pp. 25-32). Schriesheim, Germany: Frank Albrecht. Retrieved from http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/ bookburning/stern1.php

von Merveldt, N. (2007). Books cannot be killed by fire: The German Freedom Library and the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books as agents of cultural memory. Library Trends, 55 (3), 523-535. Retrieved from Academic OneFile.