A Pile of Books, A Pile of Rocks & A Pile of Shoes

A pile of books sits in a glass case:  Das Kapital by Karl Marx, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Albert Einstein's works.  These are just some of the thousands of books that were burned on a Berlin street back in 1933, an early sign that Hitler would not tolerate any views but his own.  Some of the greatest thinkers came out of that era, people that would go on to help build the atom bomb and to put the first man on the moon.  But they didn't fit in to Hitler's agenda.  Freedom of thought would not be tolerated. Propaganda would rule for the next twelve years.

Berlin Book Burning circa 1933 courtesy
http://www.dw.com/en/cultural-incineration-80-years-since-nazi-book-burnings/a-16798958

A pile of rocks sits on display, each one perfectly cut in a cube.  Above them hangs a photograph of emaciated humans lugging the rocks up and down a cliff.  Some workers, too weak to move another inch, fall down.  They are punished for their disobedience.  The same scene repeats itself day after day, week after week, month after month.

"Stairs of Death" at Mauthausen courtesy https://www.pinterest.com/pin/325736985526835210/.

A pile of shoes sits in another case, turned green from years of exposure to the elements.  A rubber smell permeates the air.  Despair permeates the soul.  These are the shoes of thousands of Jews who worked at Majdanek, a Nazi concentration camp.  Despite their number, these shoes are just a drop in the bucket.  A map shows us that Majdanek was one of hundreds of Nazi interment camps, work camps and death camps by running by the end of World War II.  Hitler took their ideas, their belongings and their lives.  But he could not take their spirits.

Piles of shoes worn by Jewish victims of Holocaust courtesy www.jewishjournal.com.

We walked past a small wooden boat, one of dozens used to transport Jews across the water from Denmark to Sweden during World War II.  Thanks to this evacuation, nine out of ten Danish Jews survived the war.  But sadly, Poland's 3 million Jews were reduced to 45,000 by the Holocaust.  By war's end, two thirds of Europe's Jews had been murdered.

Later, as we walked down Washington's 12th Avenue to dinner at the Elephant and the Castle, we ran into a women from our tour group.  We mentioned we had just visited the Holocaust Museum.  She said that she would not visit it because she did not want to see "man's inhumanity to man".  I thought to myself that she had hit the nail on the head with that statement.  Although the Holocaust happened decades ago, it could happen again -- with different players.  Let us never forget.

We Will Not Capitulate: Nazi Propaganda Shapes National Opinion

"We will not capitulate -- no never!  We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us -- a world in flames." (Adolf Hitler)

Nazi rally in Nuremburg circa 1935 courtesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_propaganda.

The world knows about the role of Nazi propaganda in pre-war Germany where Hitler would hold mass rallies in giant stadiums, his arm outstretched, his lips spouting rhetoric in a clipped fashion, his audience mesmorized (see http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2013/11/the-nazi-propaganda-machine.html).  We are familiar with the Hitler Youth, the group the Nazis used to indoctrinate the next generation. Most of us have heard of the Berlin Book Burning of 1933 where a stack of literature was destroyed, everything from H. G. Wells to Helen Keller, all because it did not embrace Nazi ideology (see http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2013/07/a-pile-of-books-pile-of-rocks-pile-of.html). Propaganda played a prominent role in 1930's Germany.

Wehrmacht soldiers remove Polish insignia circa 1939 courtesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_propaganda.

When the Second World War started, Nazi propaganda continued to play a major role in Germany and Europe.  The Nazis sent out a daily radio broadcast , the Wehrmachtbericht, to keep civilians apprised of what was happening on the battlefront.  In occupied countries, signs would be posted at the entrances to parks, cafes and cinemas announcing ""Nur fur Deutsche" (Only for Germans).  When the Allies questioned Hitler on the conditions of his concentration camps, he invited the Red Cross to inspect one, controlling every aspect of the visit like a master puppeteer.

The Red Cross visits a "beautified" Theriensenstadt circa 1944 courtesy http://mayraterezinblog.blogspot.ca/.

Yet even at the end of the war, Nazi propaganda played a large role.  The signs were there that Germany was losing the war, that East Prussia would be the first casualty.  The British Air Force dropped over 1000 tonnes of bombs on Koenigsberg in August of 1944.  That was their first clue.  Then the Red Army temporarily broke through the defense line at Nemmersdorf -- their second clue.  In late 1944, German commanders pleaded with Hitler to order an evacuation of East Prussia, but to no avail.  As late as early January of 1945, when the Red Army was at the gates of East Prussia, the official line was:  "Hold tight.  We will not capitulate."   It was said with such confidence that East Prussians believed it.  Rob's Oma was even told by her brother, an officer in the Kriegsmarine, that Germany would not lose the war.

In the end, while Hitler furrowed into his foxhole, the East Prussians -- the women, the children, the elderly -- faced the wrath of the Red Army.

William Lyon Phelps The Pleasure of Books

"If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including things that other people are certain are impossible." (William Lyon Phelps)

Yale University's William Lyon Phelps taught the first course about the modern novel.  He penned many books including the Advance of the English Novel.  Professor Phelps was also blessed with the gift of oratory.  In April of 1933, a month before the famous Berlin Book Burnings, he delivered this address, titled "The Pleasure of Books".  

Here is an excerpt from his speech:

"Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are not afraid to mark up, or are afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down.  A good reason for marking favourite passages in books is that this practice enables you to remember more easily the significant sayings, to refer to them quickly, and then in later years, it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed a trail.

Everyone should begin collecting a private library in youth; the instinct of private property, which is fundamental in human beings, can here be cultivated with every advantage and no evils.  One should have one's own bookshelves...The knowledge that they are all there in plain view is both stimulating and refreshing.  You do not have to read them all.  Most of my indoor life is spent in a room containing six thousand books.  And I have a stock answer to the invariable question that comes from strangers:  'Have you read all of these books?'  'Some of them twice.'  This reply is both true and unexpected.

Books are of the people, for the people, by the people.  Literature is the immortal part of history; it is the best and most enduring part of personality.  In a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy.  And therre is no doubt in these books you see these men at their best.  They laid themselves out; they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favourable impression.  You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor, only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart." (http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/phelps.htm)

http://www.phelpsfamilyhistory.com/bios/william_lyon_phelps.asp

When Helen Keller Confronted the Nazis

"History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas.  Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up to their might and destroyed them." (Helen Keller)

In May of 1933, students gathered in Berlin and held a giant bonfire with some of the most influential books of the 20th century as tinder.  Authors like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Victor Hugo, Ernest Hemingway and Leo Tolstoy were all in the pile, as well as a book by Helen Keller.  

The latter, rendered deaf and blind by a childhood disease, attended the Perkins Institute and learned how to speak, read and write.  After graduating from Radcliffe College, Keller started to write books and take on political causes.  She joined the socialist Party in 1909.  During the Great War, she penned a book called How I Became a Socialist, donating the royalties from her book to soldiers rendered blind on the battlefield.

Mark Twain described Helen Keller as "one of the two most interesting characters of the nineteenth century" (https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-91659890/how-i-became-a-socialist).  It is appropriate that the other interesting character was Napoleon, a dictator.  It was another dictator, Hitler, whom Keller took exception to when she found out that her book was burned in Berlin in 1933.

The authoress took out her typewriter and pounded out a letter addressed to Adolf Hitler, Berlin, Germany (http://www.afb.org/blog/afb-blog/helen-kellers-words-80-years-later…-still-as-powerful/1)

"History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas.  Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up to their might and destroyed them.  

You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels, and will continue to quicken other minds.  I gave all the rights to my books to the soldiers blinded in the world war with no thought in my heart but love and compassion.  

Do not imagine that your barbarities to the Jews are unknown.  God sleepeth not and He will visit his judgment upon you as surely as upon the wicked kings of Judea who defied His Word.  Better would it if you have a millstone hung around your neck and sink into the sea than to be hated and despised by all men." 

Helen Keller

It would take a little girl from Alabama, deafened and blinded by Scarlet Fever, to stand up to Adolf Hitler.  If only we all had such inner strength.

Helen Keller at Radcliffe College courtesy www.kellerfoundation.org.