Burning Books

By David Bidussa*

Changing around the order of events doesn’t change the result. With just under two centuries of hindsight, it can be argued that the biting words of German poet Heinrich Heine that “wherever they burn books, in the end they will also burn people” are not always accurate. Sometimes they burn people first, and afterwards set fire to the books.

*David Bidussa is an historian of social ideas. The article was translated by Sahar Zivan.