News Article

The exhibition “Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings,” organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will be on display at Gonzaga University’s Foley Center library from March 10 through May 5 (2007).

The exhibition is sponsored by the Foley Center library, Gonzaga University and the Gonzaga University Institute for Action Against Hate. More information about the exhibition can be found at the following Web site:.

The traveling exhibition focuses on a symbol of the Nazi Party that is less well-known than the swastika or jackboot — fire. Flames and fire accompanied the Third Reich from its beginning to its very end; on Jan. 30, 1933, torchlight parades led the way at the beginning of the Nazi Revolution, and within months flames had destroyed the Weimar Constitution.

On May 10, the same year, hoards of German university students sympathetic to the Nazis launched the “Action Against the Un-German Spirit,” turning works by Sinclair Lewis, Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway, and scores of others into ashes. The nationwide book burning, called a “holocaust of books” and “bibliocaust” by Newsweek and TIME magazines, respectively, was taken as a gross offense by Americans as it violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As World War II progressed, President Franklin D. Roosevelt continuously evoked the memory of the fires fueled by books to remind Americans of the differences between democratic America and Nazi Germany.

The exhibition, developed by Stephen Goodell and co-curator Guy Stern, Ph.D., features reproductions of artifacts and photographs, as well as video. It also examines the post-World-War-II years, exploring how the Nazi book burnings have affected American life, politics, literature, and popular culture.

For more information, contact Eileen Bell-Garrison, Gonzaga’s dean of library services, at (509) 323-6532; visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Web site or contact the Gonzaga University Institute for Action Against Hate at (509) 323-3665.