On this day in 1933, the Nazi Party ordered student groups across Germany to burn thousands of Jewish books they had deemed as “morally corrupt” and therefore, fundamentally ‘un-German’. Crowds rejoiced at the pillage of the works of Einstein, Marx, Freud, Mann, and Remarque among many other authors and intellectuals who were primarily Jewish. This burning was celebrated throughout Germany, the most prominent ceremony being held in Berlin with a recorded 40,000 attendees. This book bonfire was led by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, who delivered a speech in which he triumphantly declared that “Jewish intellectualism is dead.” The speech was followed by joyous dancing by the fascist attendees and broadcasted on radio stations throughout Germany for all listening ears.While most of the books were destroyed in these riots, some ancient literature was saved by the Nazis to plan for display in a museum on ‘the extinct race’ after the Final Solution was completed. Many Jewish intellectuals understood that these events were the beginning of the end; as Heinrich Heine, a Jewish poet whose works were burned ironically during these events, famously prophesied: “Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.”The pillaging of books marked the start of the Nazis’ anti-intellectualism movement to increase authoritarian power by eradicating the intellectual spirit of dissent. Following John Milton’s quote, “He who destroys a good book kills reason itself”, reason, logic, and science were traded for unsound propaganda, such as eugenics and other pseudoscientific claims. The May 10 Nazi book burnings sparked outrage overseas from anti-fascist groups, American Jews, and other intellectuals in the United States. The largest protest demonstration was held in New York City, with 10,000 attendees who marched for six hours. American news outlets responded to the burnings in shock, calling it a “book holocaust” or “bibliocaust.” Many authors, such as Thomas Mann, also immediately responded to the burnings, calling the new cultural state of Germany a “national drunkenness enveloped in a stupid ceremony”. American authors provided visas, money, and screenwriting contracts for intellectuals willing to escape Germany. However, as the Nazis radicalized, American immigration policies became increasingly strict, specifically anti-refugee, and antisemitic. This was due to a variety of factors, including fears of German and Soviet spies hiding amongst the refugees. The majority of Americans polled during the 1930s stated that they did not want to allow Jewish refugees into the country. Many Jews and non-Jewish intellectuals were rejected entry into the United States and remained trapped in Germany, where they were massacred in the death camps. It is important to note that book burnings were not exclusively used by the Nazis to persecute Jews. Christians have had a long, troubling history of burning Jewish books and scriptures such as the Talmud. In medieval Europe, Christians routinely burned Hebrew manuscripts to prove that Jesus was the Messiah and that the Talmud was evil and demonic. Jewish converts to Christianity, like Nicholas Donin, are partially to blame for this. In his case, he had told Pope Gregory IX that the Talmud contained texts discouraging Jews from converting to Christianity, leading to the public burning of all available manuscripts of the Talmud.Book burning is not a Jewish persecution of the past, but it is still very much present today. In 2004, The United Talmud Torah children’s school in St. Laurent, Montreal, was firebombed by an 18-year-old who was motivated by the Israel-Palestine conflict. The fire destroyed around 15,000 books. Again, in 2006, at an alt-right white supremacist festival in Germany, 20 men set ablaze a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank.