Book Burning

‘Our daughters will be burned at the stake!

According to the medieval model.

The flame will consume our innocent Jewish sisters.’

Else Lasker-Shuler 1932.

They threw the books into a pile, to fill the streets with ashes,

And watch the Nazi student’s smile, bullets in tongue lashes.

Smoke rises high releasing text, can’t learn, lost books can’t read,

To be destroyed on paper, burnt words, defined new creed. 

Did their minds recall instruction, or tale, or fact or fable?

Gripped tightly as if prisoners, accept defeat on master’s table.

The words they weren’t allowed to speak, nor study, or to learn,

To be so far from human, those fallen can’t return.

Free thinkers, writers, actors, poets, despised by imposed system,

As they turned upon each other, blinded, to become another victim.

They torched the books with dissent, in angry demonstration,

Many burned in flames of hate; to eradicate one nation.