Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Memorial to the Books


Nazi Book Burning Memorial

"Heine said: if you burn books today, you burn people tomorrow. But we never imagined what was to come," says 93-year-old Elfrieda Bruenning.

Reality hits strong when you realize that the quote above from Heine was stated over a hundred years before this awful event took place on May 10, 1933.

In Berlin, on the location of the horrible fire, is a glass window. When you are approaching the memorial, there are no tall columns, no huge statues, no warning signs at all. Walking through the square, you suddenly realize there is a window in the pavement. Glancing down, you see a clean, white library. This library is rectangular, well lit, but completely empty and unaccessible. It could potentially hold all the books that were burned by Nazis on the dreadful night in 1933. You can not experience the room except through this little portal. Micha Ullman designed it this way in 1995 because he realized that the past is untouchable and unchangeable. Although this memorial is not as somber as many, it is a very powerful reminder of what happened.

BBC News
More Pictures and Info

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Really and as I have not thought about it earlier