One of this city's most haunting #monuments isn't even particular monumental: An unsuspicious window in the middle of #Berlin’s Bebelplatz (former #Opernplatz) - bookshelves in the ground.
Empty bookshelves.
Commemorating the #BookBurning which took place right here #OnThisDay, May 10th in 1933.
The Roman Inquisition in the 1500s was constantly complaining about its desperate lack of personnel (not enough Inquisitors, not enough censors to read books, not enough police) as it tried to keep up with the exponentially-growing flood of books enabled by the newfangled #PrintingPress. Why would such an organization waste hundreds of man-hours per copy on crossing out pages when they could have trivially burned the book and moved on?
Today in Labor History January 30, 1933: German President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor. Almost immediately, Hitler began his attacks on labor, with his Sturmabteilung (paramilitary) raiding and burning union offices and assassinating labor leaders, while the police looked on. In May, 1933, he created the German Labor Front, a fascist labor organization to replace the gutted unions. They sent many of the labor leaders to concentration camps and abolished collective bargaining and union elections. Also in May, 1933, the Nazis also attacked and destroyed the Institute for Sexual Sciences, home to the world’s first trans medical clinic, which performed the world’s first sexual reassignment surgeries, for Karl Meir Baer, in 1906, and Lili Elbe, in 1930-1931.
Wow, Frisco ISD is just swingin that ban hammer like a drunken monkey, and they appear to hate fantasy with a special kind of hate. Gotta admire young Cameron Samuels. This is what courage looks like. #books#BookBurning#texas#censorship
More Than 430 Books Banned in Texas Schools. | Dallas Observer
> Texas led the nation, followed by Florida, in banned titles in a list created by PEN America, a literary nonprofit. Many surprising titles are included in this list.
Showing Eighth Graders an Award-Winning Adaptation of Anne Frank’s Diary Now a Fireable Offense in Texas
Add this to the long list of things you’re not allowed to do in Texas
In Abbott’s #Texas, there are a lot of things people can’t do. They can’t get an #abortion after six weeks, And, according to recent events, they can’t teach middle school students about the #Holocaust using an illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary—or, they can, but they’ll be fired for it
@GW OMG, in Abbott's Texas it's all about pre-pubertal despotic assholism.
Anne Frank started writing her diary shortly after she turned 13 & it finished with her death at 15.
Eighth graders are usually 13/14. No reason to hide the writings of a girl their age from them — except for the despotic idiocy of the insurrectionary Abbott-regime.
When the manager of a #SanDiego library learned protestors had deliberately checked out every single LGBTQ book, with the intention of holding them forever hostage, she took her story to the media. (...)
After the San Diego Union-Tribune ran an article about the books being hijacked, Peterson — who oversees the Rancho Peñasquitos branch of the San Diego Public Library — was inundated with brand-new replacements.
(...)
Amazon boxes by the dozens started arriving at the library after the initial article, containing copies of the books that had been taken by the anti-LGBTQ protestors.
In addition, roughly 180 people — mostly San Diegans — donated more than $15,000 to the library system. The city agreed to match that amount, meaning there's more than $30,000 earmarked for more LGBTQ-themed materials and programming."
Today in Writing History July 12, 1562: Fray Diego de Landa, Bishop of Yucatán, burned the sacred idols and books of the Maya. There were many Mayan books in print at the time of the conquest. They were produced as codices, or folding books, printed on bark paper by professional scribes and were the main written record of Maya civilization. De Landa wrote: “We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.” There are four known Mayan codices still in existence.
Today in Writing History May 10, 1933: The Nazis staged massive public book burnings, beginning in Berlin, with students from Humboldt University, destroying thousands of titles. German poet, Heinrich Heine, said back in the early 1800s, "Where one burns books, one will soon burn people."
Beginning on 10th May 1933, Nazi-dominated student groups carried out public burnings of books they claimed were “un-German.” The book burnings took place in 34 university towns and cities. Works of prominent Jewish, liberal, and leftist writers ended up in the bonfires.
The first large burning came on 6 May 1933. The German Student Union made an organised attack on Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (roughly: Institute of Sex Research). Its library and archives of around 20,000 books and journals were publicly hauled out and burned in the street. 1/2
Its collection included unique works on intersexuality, homosexuality, and transgender topics. It's believed that Dora Richter, the first transgender woman known to have undergone sex reassignment surgery (by doctors at the institute), may have been killed during the attack.
How far are we from seeing a repeat in Florida and other red states? 2/2