"Totalitarian leaders have one trick up their sleeve that intellectuals have struggled to understand; that is, they are deadly serious."--Paul Hollander
While we celebrate the fact that we recognize the horror of the Nazi destruction of books, I think it's important to remember that there are still a great many people who are trying to prevent people (especially young people) from having access to important books. The number of book banning incidents in the U.S. today is really frightening. It is something that librarians, and all of us, have to fight against constantly.
The broad strokes of the book selection should have alerted us to the broad categories of the Holocaust, which took about 12 million lives, including 2 million Roma, about 800K-1M homosexuals, about the same number of communists and the list goes on. The Jews deserve a special place in our memories of the horror; they were not alone.
"Totalitarian leaders have one trick up their sleeve that intellectuals have struggled to understand; that is, they are deadly serious."--Paul Hollander
While we celebrate the fact that we recognize the horror of the Nazi destruction of books, I think it's important to remember that there are still a great many people who are trying to prevent people (especially young people) from having access to important books. The number of book banning incidents in the U.S. today is really frightening. It is something that librarians, and all of us, have to fight against constantly.
The broad strokes of the book selection should have alerted us to the broad categories of the Holocaust, which took about 12 million lives, including 2 million Roma, about 800K-1M homosexuals, about the same number of communists and the list goes on. The Jews deserve a special place in our memories of the horror; they were not alone.
In its solemnity and simplicity, the memorial is a superb reminder.