Books are being burned! What do I do?

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learning resources

Protecting our Freedom to Write and Read English PEN believes in the freedom to write and the freedom to read. When anyone’s freedom is being challenged, we can help them – and so can you.

PEN believes that free speech isn’t a passive right, but an active responsibility: anyone can participate, just by reading a book or having a conversation! In these helpsheets, we explore further actions you can take to experience your freedom of expression and help extend it for yourself and others. We hope they encourage you to listen as well as speak: a crucial part of ensuring freedom of expression for everyone.

The helpsheets are divided up to reflect the kinds of cases we deal with. Each helpsheet tells you a little bit about the history of a form of censorship and some of the writers who have experienced it, so you can imagine what it might be like to be in their shoes.

The helpsheets also offer information about the current situation of writers around the world facing that form of censorship, some questions you can discuss in class, and some ideas and suggestions for how you can change the story.

Books are being burned! What do I do?

Lost Books FoundJoe Shuster and Jerry Siegel created a comic character in 1933, when they had just graduated from high school in Cleveland. They published their first story – about a bald, telepathic villain – in a self-published fanzine, but no-one was interested. In 1934, Siegel had a Eureka! moment: what if The Superman (as they called their character) was good, not evil? They pitched their idea to the publishers of Detective Dan comics, who were interested – but stopped publishing comics. Shuster was so depressed he burned all the pages of their first Superman story. It would have been completely lost if Siegel hadn’t rescued the cover from the fire… In 1938, the first Superman comic was published. And now Superman is one of the best-known superheroes in the world!

Ask students to think of their favourite character – from a book or comic – and to imagine they could find the creator’s ‘burned’ first draft: what would it be like? For example: JK Rowling might first have thought of making Harry Potter a girl, or given him a pet dragon, or set the story in the nineteenth century. Ask them to write a list of what they ‘find’/imagine, and/or to draw the character if they like. What if Spiderman had been bitten by a radioactive snake instead of a spider? What if Tracy Beaker were called Lucy Sneaker, and ran away from her first foster home?

Discussion points:

Many writers burn or destroy their first drafts or early stories: why do you think? Have you ever scribbled over, torn up or burned a first try at something? Did you try again?

Some writers burn their whole books. Franz Kafka asked his friend Max Brod to burn all of his writing after his death: but Brod didn’t. Instead, he published it and gave the world a writer of dark genius. Was Brod right to do so?

This helpsheet looks at one of the most violent manifestations of censorship, its history and effects. It has a particular focus on religious and anti-religious censorship as rationales for censorship.

A History of Book-BurningsFor as long as there have been books, there have been book burnings:

The oldest writing that we have, Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets from Ebla, survived because the library they were in was burnt down (by political opponents of the government, it’s thought), baking the clay hard. The tablets that contain Linear B, the earliest European alphabet, survived at the Palace of Knossos, in Crete, for the same reason!

The most famous library in history, the Library of Alexandria, was burnt down, but no-one can agree on when or by whom. Byzantine Greek writers accuse the Romans; Christians accuse Muslims; Muslims accuse Christians. Moreover, no-one knows where it was and no evidence of it has ever been found…

The “Fires of Qin,” 213-210 BCE, are said to have taken place under the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi, and his chancellor Li Si: even classic textbooks (and their authors) were burned, in an attempt to wipe out the pre-Qin history of China. But some historians now say this charge is propaganda against Shi and the Qin dynasty.

The Spanish Inquisition burned heretical books: books by non-Christians, including several centuries of Islamic and Jewish religious and secular literature from the Muslim occupation of Spain. As part of the conquest of the Americas, they burned Mayan codices, unique and complete hand-drawn records of centuries of indigenous history in Mexico: an unprecedented destruction of cultural heritage.

But most people associate the idea of book burning with the Nazi regime in 1930s Germany: the Nazis looted Jewish synagogues and yeshivas (colleges), burning sacred books (all hand-produced), as well as secular writing by Jews, in public bonfires. Sacred Jewish books that contain the name of God are never thrown away: they are buried with a special ceremony, so burning them was a deliberate and cruel insult, and it continues to be a powerful and shocking act to burn a book. It can also be a holy act: Sikhs burn worn-out copies of their sacred texts, and bury the ashes.

Many people also see this act in light of a line from an 1821 play by German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”

A History of Book-Burnings Continued

In the contemporary world – as well as historically – books are usually burned for religious reasons. While they may usually be mass-produced (unlike the Mayan codices), the sight of book-burning is still very disturbing:

The Harry Potter series and The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie have both been burned in large numbers – the former by fundamentalist churches in the US for encouraging Satanism, the latter by Islamists in Bolton and Bradford for blasphemy.

In 2006, the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, which angered many Muslims; riots followed in many cities in Europe, where people burned copies of the magazine.

In 2010, an American pastor, Terry Jones, threatened to burn 200 copies of the Qu’ran on September 11. He burned one copy the following March. On Sept 11, Fred Phelps at the notorious Westboro Baptist Church did burn a Qu’ran.

Ask students to find out more about one of the episodes described briefly above (or other famous book burnings). This could be linked to addressing a particular period in history, or particular area of the world, or particular religion that’s relevant to your curriculum.

Bombs vs. BooksBut the most complete destruction of libraries in the modern world has been during conflicts in Baghdad, Iraq; Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina; and in Timbuktu, Mali.

On August 25, 1992, the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo was firebombed by Serbian nationalists. More than 1.5 million books, including 4,000 rare books, 700 manuscripts, and 100 years of Bosnian newspapers and journals, were destroyed: by the numbers, this is the largest single destruction of written matter in recorded history.

In 2003, the Iraqi National Library and national Islamic Library were burned by ground fires shortly after the US invasion. Much of their stock was burned, and many surviving books were removed by looters. One of the oldest surviving copies of the Qu’ran was lost. It was announced in 2013 that a new National Library will be built.

In January 2013, al-Qaida-allied fighters burned historic and religious manuscripts from the library of the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu, Mali, where (ironically) they had recently been taken for safekeeping. Many manuscripts were saved by the Institute’s librarian, but they remain at risk of loss and disintegration.

The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter tells the true story of Alia Muhammad Baker, who saved 70% of the books in Basra’s Central Library (about 30,000 books), by smuggling them out of the library and storing them in her home and her friends’ homes. You can hear and see the book being read here.

Ask students to imagine their bookshelves at home, or at a local or school library. (Alternatively, from a list of books that have historically been burned.) Which book or books would they save first? It could be books that they like or think are important. Ask them to write (individually or in groups) a short speech explaining why they would choose that book or books (you could impose a constraint, eg: you can only fill one backpack, ie: about five books). Share these speeches/pleas with the class.

You could make this exercise more advanced for older students by asking them to compose a letter to a local newspaper or MP about one of the recent cases of book-burning or library destruction. Ask them to explain why book burning is a particularly violent and upsetting act, and to make at least one recommendation about what could be done to rectify or prevent it happening.

Surviving the Flames homework

Helen Keller, the author and activist, wrote an open letter when she heard her books had been burned in Germany by the Nazis, saying:

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 in 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.

How can we make sure ideas survive, even if books are burned? Nadezdha Mandelstam, wife of the poet Osip Mandelstam, learnt his poems by heart when he was unable to publish, or even keep copies of them.

In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 all books have to be burned, by order of the government. Firemen are not people who stop fires, but who start them: hunting down people who have hidden books. But one fireman, Montag, learns that there is a secret resistance: brave individuals who learn whole books by heart, becoming living books. (Ironically, this novel is often challenged in schools!).

Challenge students to learn a poem or the first few paragraphs of a favourite novel by heart and recite them in the next class. Discuss what it feels like to have a book be part of you in this way.

CreditsThis learning resource is part of the series ‘Help!’, which focuses on core free speech issues for young people within a school or other learning setting. They were written by Dr. Sophie Mayer and funded by English PEN.

Design and photography: Brett Evans Biedscheidwww.statetostate.co.uk