Helen Keller Writes a Letter to Nazi College students Earlier than They Burn Her Guide: “Historical past Has Taught You Nothing If You Suppose You Can Kill Concepts” (1933)

Helen Keller achieved notoriety not solely as a person success story, but additionally as a prolific essayist, activist, and fierce advocate for poor and marginalized folks. She “was a lifelong radical,” writes Peter Dreier at Sure! journal, whose “investigation into the causes of blindness” finally led her to “embrace socialism, feminism, and pacifism.” Keller supported the NAACP and ACLU, and protested strongly towards patronizing requires her to “confine my actions to social service and the blind.” Her critics, she wrote, mischaracterized her concepts as “a Utopian dream, and one who significantly contemplates its realization certainly should be deaf, dumb, and blind.”

Twenty years later she discovered a special set of readers treating her concepts with contempt. This time, nonetheless, the critics have been in Nazi Germany, and as an alternative of merely disagreeing along with her, they added her assortment of essays, How I Turned a Socialist, to a record of “degenerate” books to be burned on Might 10, 1933. Such was the date chosen by Hitler for “a nationwide ‘Motion Towards the Un-German Spirit,’” writes Rafael Medoff, to happen at German Universities—“a collection of public burnings of the banned books” that “differed from the Nazis’ perspective on political, social, or cultural issues, in addition to all books by Jewish authors.”

Books burned included works by Einstein and Freud, H.G. Wells, Hemingway, and Jack London, College students hauled books out of the libraries as a part of the spectacle. “The most important of the 34 book-burning rallies, held in Berlin,” Medoff notes, “was attended by an estimated 40,000 folks.”

Not solely have been these demonstrations of anti-Semitism, however their contempt for concepts appealed broadly to the Nazi philosophy of “Blood and Soil,” a nationalist caricature of rural values over a supposedly “degenerate,” polyglot urbanism. “The soul of the German folks can once more specific itself,” declared Joseph Goebbels ominously on the Berlin rally. “These flames not solely illuminate the ultimate finish of an outdated period; in addition they mild up the brand new.”

“Some American editorial responses” earlier than and after the burnings, “made mild of the occasion,” remarks the United States Holocaust Museum, calling it “foolish” and “childish.”  Others foresaw a lot worse to come back. In a single very specific expression of the horrible prospects, artist and political cartoonist Jacob Burck drew the picture above, evoking the commentary of nineteenth century German author Heinrich Heine: “The place one burns books, one will quickly burn folks.” Newsweek described the occasions as “’a holocaust of books’… one of many first cases by which the time period ‘holocaust’ (an historical Greek phrase which means a burnt providing to a deity) was utilized in reference to the Nazis.”

The day earlier than the burnings, Keller additionally displayed a eager sense for the gravity of ebook burnings, in addition to a “notable… early concern,” notes Rebecca Onion at Slate—exterior the Jewish neighborhood, that’s—for what she known as the “barbarities to the Jews.” On Might 9, 1933, Keller revealed a brief however pointed open letter to the Nazi college students in The New York Instances and elsewhere, abjuring them to cease the proposed burnings. She wrote in a spiritual idiom, invoking the “judgment” of God and paraphrasing the Bible. (Not a standard Christian, she belonged to a mystical sect known as Swedenborgianism.) On the prime of the publish, you’ll be able to see the typescript of her letter, with corrections and annotations by Polly Thompson, one in all her major aides. Learn the total transcript under:

Keller added the penultimate paragraph of the revealed textual content later. (See the handwritten addition on the backside of the typed draft.) Her concern for the “grievous issues” of the German folks was definitely real. The expression additionally looks as if a focused rhetorical transfer for a scholar viewers, conceding the scenario as “complicated,” and interesting in additional philosophical language to “justice” and “knowledge.” The Nazis ignored her protest, as they did the “huge avenue demonstrations” that came about on the tenth “in dozens of American cities,” the Holocaust Museum writes, “skillfully organized by the American Jewish Congress” and sparking “the most important demonstration in New York Metropolis historical past as much as that date.”

5 years later, nonetheless, one other deliberate ebook burning—this time in Austria earlier than its annexation—was prevented by college students at Williams School, Yale, and different universities within the U.S., the place pro- and anti-Nazi partisans fought one another on a number of American campuses. U.S. college students have been capable of push the Austrian Nationwide Library to lock the books away moderately than burn them. Keller “will not be identified to have commented particularly” on these scholar protests, writes Medoff, “however one might assume she was deeply proud that at a time when too many Individuals didn’t need to be bothered with Europe’s issues, these younger women and men understood the message of her 1933 letter—that the rules underneath assault by the Nazis have been one thing that ought to matter to all mankind.”

Observe: This publish initially appeared on our website in 2017.

If you need to enroll in Open Tradition’s free e-mail publication, please discover it right here.

If you need to assist the mission of Open Tradition, contemplate making a donation to our website. It’s laborious to rely 100% on adverts, and your contributions will assist us proceed offering the perfect free cultural and academic supplies to learners in all places. You possibly can contribute by PayPal, Patreon, Venmo (@openculture) and Crypto. Thanks!