By BRIGID PARKER
Beginning in 2021, the startling growth of book banning has remained a hot topic in censorship discourse. First gaining attention through programming like Banned Books Week and action groups such as Pen America, book banning most often emerges from conservative and Christian advocacy groups, and typically challenges books that address topics like sex, sexual orientation, race, or simply relay U.S. history in a less-than-flattering light. The topic of banning books has become a major cause of concern for many educators, librarians, and parents, and for good reason; the American Library Association estimates that between January and August of 2024, about 1,100 books were targeted for censorship and possible bans.
While book bans have only recently begun to receive considerable media coverage, the censorship of books has endured for as long as books themselves. This censorship used to take place in a much more destructive manner–as you have probably inferred from the title of this article–in the form of mass book burnings, the earliest of which was recorded in China, 213 B.C., when the nation’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, ordered the burning of all history books. In Huang’s view, China’s history began with him, and it was necessary to destroy all past schools of thought in order to enact the level of control he desired.
Also occurring in the ancient world was the burning of Egypt’s Library of Alexandria, possibly the most notorious instance of book burning to this day. Though it is still widely grieved, very little is actually known about the Library of Alexandria and its unfortunate demise; some historians even doubt that the library was destroyed by a fire, proposing instead that it was taken out by a large earthquake. Whatever the case, it is believed that the library housed a grand amalgamation of all the knowledge in the world, including materials that contradicted the Koran, which supposedly brought about its blazing fate in 640 B.C., during the Islamic invasion of Egypt.
With the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century came even more fear of knowledge, now that it was not something reserved only for the elites. Increased access to print and more knowledge for everyone meant books were now burned not just to assert power, but also to deter ideas of challenging power dynamics and creating social change. Both of these motives came together during World War II, when more books were destroyed than any other historical event. The majority of these burnings were carried out by the Nazis, who began their tirade against books as soon as Hitler rose to power as German chancellor, roughly six years before the war even began. Any book written by a Jewish or leftist author was automatically included in a widespread ban, regardless of its subject matter. The actual destruction of books began with Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist of the Nazi party, who initiated the first Feuersprüche (Fire Incantations), a gathering in Berlin’s Opera Square where thousands of books were tossed into a massive, gasoline-drenched pile and “sentenced to death” with a lit match.
For the Nazis, burning books was not only a method of censoring texts that differed from their nationalistic ideology, but also a bloodless attack on the Jewish people, to whom books are sacred. In Judaism, it is believed that books are not just texts but beings with souls, that they have their own humanity and should be treated as such. Thus the mass burning of books, especially sacred Jewish texts and works by Jewish authors, that took place over WWII was made all the more painful. It is estimated that by the end of the war, one third of Germany’s books had been destroyed. Germany was not the only target of Hitler’s regime; libraries across Europe–France and Italy especially–suffered bombings, attacks from specialized book-burning squads, and residual damage from warfare occurring nearby.
The events of WWII established book burning as a convenient way to attack a certain community, and this idea has prevailed into the 21st century, as can be seen in al-Qaeda’s invasion of Timbuktu in 2012, during which many valuable, medieval manuscripts were destroyed. Even now, as we see how book bans suppress stories and voices from minority communities, it becomes clear that while this censorship may not be as flagrant as a full-on Feuersprüche, it is nonetheless clear what it intends to promote, and who it intends to silence.
In her 2018 book, “The Library Book,” author and New York Times staff writer Susan Orlean describes books as “a sort of cultural DNA, the code for who, as a society, we are, and what we know.” Ridding a culture of its books means denying a people their history, erasing a portion of their shared memory. But just as there is power in destroying a book, there is even more to be found in reading. The ability to back up one’s beliefs with logic and true knowledge is something that can never be simply erased.
Featured image: Smithsonian Magazine
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