Biblioclasm now equated with iconoclasm

When books are burned in the end people will be burned too -- Heinrich Heine.



Nazis burning books at Bebelplatz, Berlin, April 1933

Every visit to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem has been a revelation for me. The sprawling Holocaust memorial, perched between two hills, brings alive like no book or film can the soul-searing horrors of what the Nazis did to the Jews. But it’s impossible to absorb it all in one go; the vile deeds were far too many. On each visit I have discovered something that I missed the last time I walked through, with leaden feet, the zig-zag maze of the Holocaust relived.

And so it is that on my last visit to Yad Vashem I stumbled upon, quite literally, a pile of books on the stone flagged floor of the memorial. The display marks an important milestone in the transmogrification of the Nazis into beasts: The burning of books that were considered 'Un-German' and the cleansing of libraries with fire.

That was in April 1933 and Hitler was yet to start implementing his 'final solution'. But that act was a precursor to what was to follow. Heinrich Heine, the celebrated German critic and poet, had written in early-19th century that "When books are burned in the end people will be burned too." His words proved to be eerily prophetic some 100 years later.

Last October, on a wind-swept grey afternoon, I stood at Bebelplatz in Berlin, in front of St Hedwig's Cathedral, trying to recreate in my mind the April evening in 1933 when students, enamoured of Hitler's demagoguery, had gathered there and made a bonfire of books after ransacking one of the largest libraries. The building still stands, magnificent yet melancholic, at the edge of the square. The spot where the bonfire blazed now has a plaque recording the shameful event.

Joseph Goebbels, spitting fire and brimstone, had egged on the vandals: "No to decadence and moral corruption! Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaser, Erich Kastner... The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path..."

As we all know, that path led to history's most hideous mass murder. Even suckling infants were not spared. Heinrich Heine foresaw the crematoriums at Dachau and other concentration camps. We also know that that the path ultimately led to the destruction of the Nazis and all that was glorified by Goebbels. Not very far from Bebelplatz lies the bunker in which Hitler committed suicide.

To be fair, the Nazis weren't the first to seek to reduce to ashes, albeit in vain, ideas and opinions that militated against their ideology. Human history is replete with tales of books being burned by rulers, conquerors, dictators and men of faith in robes.

The Qing dynasty would routinely burn books; modern day rulers of China continue with the practice. The Bishop of Alexandria ordered monks to burn everything that remotely questioned doctrinaire faith; a mammoth library stands there now. Bakhtiyar Khalji sacked Nalanda and set fire to its library which is believed to have burned for three months; the ancient university will soon rise from the ruins that remain.

In more recent times, on January 14, 1989, copies of Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, were consigned to the flames at a protest in Bradford. That act of biblioclasm drew attention to a book that few had read till then, triggering a fatwa (issued by none less than Ayatollah Khomeini) demanding the author's head for which a reward of $1 million was offered. India notoriously became the first country to ban the book.

The abiding shame of that act still hangs heavy on us, partially redeemed by the NDA Government's decision to issue Rushdie a PIO card which allows him to visit the country of his origin without any let or hindrance. But shame is alien to those who live in the joyless world of fatwas and decrees; it means nothing to those who wear intolerance on their sleeves.

Hence the demand by Deobandi muftis that Rushdie shouldn't be allowed to enter India. Strangely, the demand continues to find a resonance among those who pose as 'liberals' and preach tolerance. In the land of Charvak, biblioclasm is now equated with iconoclasm.

Which takes me back to where I began: Yad Vashem. As name after name is read out of 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust in the unlit Hall of Remembrance where a single flickering flame is reflected 1.5 million times, I once again ask myself: How could they do this?

Stepping out and walking down the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations, shaded by cypress trees, each honouring a non-Jew who, like Oscar Schindler, defied the Nazis, my spirits lift. All is not lost in this wondrous world of ours.

Books burned by Nazis, a display at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

(MidDay, January 14, 2011.)

Israel Diary-II

India can learn from Israel

Kanchan Gupta

Hidden in the mountains, the stark, grey concrete structure of Yad Vashem looms before you as you approach the Avenue of the Nations dedicated to brave individuals who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Sycamore trees line the avenue, and crowd the rugged space around Yad Vashem, each planted in the memory of men and women who defied Adolph Hitler's 'Final Solution' programme. A gnarled tree recalls memories of Oscar Schindler's valiant efforts to save Jewish men, women and children, using every possible skill, including bribery and lies, often escaping detection by the skin of his teeth. Those who have seen or read Schindler's List would connect easily to the bravery of the few who stood up to the murderous majority in Hitler's Germany and the Third Reich.
It is only fitting that Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, should look like the innards of a soulless concrete jail. Life in ghettoes and concentration camps could not be captured in a different setting. It is equally fitting that a visit to the memorial, which can be at once intensely personal and educative, should begin with an encounter with the first two dark deeds of the Nazis that paved the way for their subsequent brutality. The first was the burning of books which were perceived to be contrary to Hitler's supremacist theory that denied space to intellectual dissent and discounted the non-Aryan's right to flourish (later it would be the right to exist). The burning of books was to result in the burning of bodies -- the pathetic, decrepit remains of millions of Jews gassed to death. The second was the organised attack on Jewish property, business and synagogues on the night of November 9, 1938. The mass vandalism by Hitler's hoodlums was to be later known as Kristal Nacht: By dawn the next day, the streets were littered with shattered glass, charred shops and the burnt remains of any hopes that may have survived Hitler's coming to power.
The story of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews perished, the 'Final Solution' which nearly wiped out Europe's Jewry, is brought alive in the most telling, touching manner in the stone cold chambers of Yad Vashem. The evidence, painstakingly put together, largely stems from the Nazi obsession with documentation. The Nazis would photograph the horrific medical experiments, the wretched degradation, the mass executions, the cattle train rides to concentration camps, the stripping of Jews, the final journey to the gas chambers and the burning of bodies. Each detail would be documented and logged. Children's rag dolls, their shoes and the little things that symbolise life only serve to heighten the scale of the brutality that was perpetrated as the rest of the world slept. Till now, Yad Vashem has documented details, on the basis of testimonies that are bound and filed in alphabetical order, of three million Jews who perished during the Holocaust. These are stored in the last chamber where the only other display is a well which symbolises the dark void of life after the mass murder conducted by Hitler.
The numbing horror is further magnified in the memorial hall dedicated to children who perished in the Holocaust. Inside, in the pitch black darkness, a candle flickers, its image reflected and refracted a million times while a voice chants the names of those whose lives were snuffed out by a mad man and his criminal regime. Shades of that madness are visible in the rant of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his ilk who deny that the Holocaust ever occurred. I am told that a very senior member of the CPI(M), a comrade we often see on prime time television, refused to visit Yad Vashem when he was in Jerusalem this summer to attend a conference of the Israeli Communist Party. He is believed to have told his local guide that he had no intentions of "legitimising Israeli propaganda about the Holocaust" by visiting Yad Vashem. Such concerns did not bother him when, accompanied by his wife, he visited Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock.
The most amazing thing about Israel is the country's sense of history. Apart from investing huge amounts of resources to restore and preserve antiquities that connect the modern state of Israel with its Biblical past, the Government also ensures that people do not forget their cultural and civilisational identity. At every historical site you can find soldiers and school children: They are taught about their past and encouraged to treasure it. The slogan 'Never Again', which is as much to do with the massacre at Massada as with the mass extermination at Auschwitz, gains significance with the inculcation of a sense of history. Children grow up proud of their heritage; soldiers defend not just Israel's territory but the very idea of a Jewish state. Across the political spectrum, people are resolute about doing whatever it takes to ensure the Jewish nation is not endangered again. No sacrifice is big enough, no contribution too small.
On Thursday night I visited the magnificent home of Frida and Arek Steinberger at a moshev. Frida is a ceramic artist, Arek a gentleman farmer. Their 21-year-old son Itay was killed in last year's war with Lebanon: He was hit by a missile on the battlefield while trying to rescue a fallen fellow soldier. He was among the 119 Israelis who did not return home from a battle that has caused tremendous political upheaval in Israel. What was his first reaction on hearing the news of his son's death, I asked Arek in the sprawling patio of their ranch. "I was stunned, I could not think. Later, I was consumed by anger. Now I have reconciled myself to this fact," he told me. There's a huge poster of Itay in uniform, the last photograph of him with his comrades-in-arms. But tragedy has not deterred either Frida or Arek, nor lessened their passion for Israel. Their daughter has just finished her stint with the Israeli Defence Forces. Their second son is in the Army. Their youngest son, a 16-year-old boy, will follow in the footsteps of his elder siblings.
A nation can be forged by tapping emotion. But for the nation to survive, you need determination and commitment to the national cause. There is more than a lesson here for us Indians.