There is an "empty bookshelf" in Beblerplatz, Berlin, Germany, with Heine's famous quote: "Where someone sets fire to books, someone will eventually set fire to people."
The empty bookshelf was set up as a reminder of the book burning that took place here on May 10, 1933. At the time, pro-Nazi students burned the works of hundreds of freelance writers, publishers, philosophers, and scientists, totaling more than 20,000 volumes.
Today, the underground empty bookshelf with an area of about 50 square meters and a height of 5 meters can hold more than 20,000 books in 32 bookshelves.
After Hitler came to power in 1933, he set fire to the Reichstag, banned the press, and suppressed opponents.
In May, university students across Germany participated in book burning, organized by the German University Students' Union and directed by Hitler and Goebbels.
A student representative at the Bebel Platz book-burning site said that the students had come to burn "un-German" books and documents that could destroy the national movement, "and that he believed that after that," German literature will be purified."
Later, Heine's famous words came true (his own book was among those burned that night), and the burning of books was followed by the burning of people.
Millions died in Nazi concentration camps, and the fanatical college students, many of them turned into cannon fodder in World War II.
The Nazi book burning was not unique; throughout human history, the wanton destruction of knowledge has often been systematic, an attack by one group on another.
In ancient China, there was the "burning of books"; in England, there was the Reformation's attack on the collection of books in monasteries; in Germany, there was the burning of Jewish books by the Nazis. In contrast, there are countless people of good will who will risk their lives for knowledge and archives that are on the brink of extinction...
Nor is it the only political disaster.
In the long years, the library because of the neglect of management caused by numerous tragedies.
Many authors and their relatives have also caused irreversible damage to human civilization due to their own will, and Kafka's manuscript may be lost to future generations because of his will, but fortunately, Broad betrayed his will and "created a model to follow for disobeying dead friends."
At least 288 pages of Byron's memoir manuscript were burned to avoid damaging his reputation.
Even today, the lack of information preservation and supervision in the digital age, and the data monopoly of technology giants, are still a huge threat to knowledge.
"The repeated attacks on libraries and archives over the centuries is a worrying trend in human history that deserves our study, and the amazing efforts made to preserve the knowledge held by these institutions deserve our praise," writes British scholar Richard Ovenden in "Book Burning: The Suffering History of Knowledge."
