They burned our books May 10, 1933.

On May 10th 1933 Nazis and university students in 33 towns across Germany burned books that they considered to be “un-German” In Berlin over 40,000 people gathered to hear Joseph Goebbels the German Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda as thousands of books burned in Opera Square. This event was titled, “Action Against the un-German Spirit.”

On May 6, 1933 trucks pulled up to the doors of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin . Hundreds of students and Nazis smashed open the doors of the institute and marched into the building to the strains of a brass band. They ransacked the premises and removed books from the library. Later truckloads of storm trooper arrived to finish carting away books and on May 10 these books along with a bust of Hirschfeld, books by Jewish authors and others considered degenerate were burned.

Reference: Out of the Past, Neil Miller, Vintage Books, The Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, Chapter 15.

             For other information see posting on the Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

A real interesting site is this one. Check it out.