Who's up for a book burning

My novel The Book Thief is definitely revolving around books. Books are both significant in this novel and WWII. In the novel Liesel the main character uses her books (most of them stolen) to learn how to read, write, and even how to speak better. Before moving in with her foster parents, when she was living with her mother Liesel rarely went to school, so she really never had the chance to learn what was going on in the world and about religion and culture.

On May 10, 1933 the Nazi party had a book burning in Germany. They believed that burning 25,000 volumes of "un-German" books would start the era of censorship and control of their culture. It was a really public affair, everybody came to watch these books go up in flames because they all believed it represented an element of censorship and that burning books was a literary cleanse.

A book that was of great importance to Liesel, and one that did not actually belong to her but was actually given to her foster father Hans, was Mein Kampf written by Hitler. This book is important because it is Hitler's autobiography, which has his thoughts and feelings about his suffering, his struggles, his political ideology, and his feeling about the Jewish people. In my novel the impact of Mein Kampf will be devastating, because as we all know this book helped cause the Holocaust, and a lot of people's lives are going to be lost, and so many are going to suffer because of this.

This does not emotionally change my opinion of war I think war is devastating and horrible and this book does nothing to change how i feel about war, because they send millions out there to fight and almost half do not make it back. loseing someone close because of the war just makes people resent war more. And this book Mein Kampf does a great job of proving that. Yes this book did not cause WWII but it did help cause the Holocaust and thousands died by the end of it. My emotional response to this book is definatly anger. Towards Hitler and what he helped do in the Holocaust.






book burning . Web. 9 Apr. http://www.lib.fit.edu/pubs/librarydisplays/bannedbooks/burning_book.jpg.


Mein Kampf. Web. 9 Apr. http://www.mymixideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/hitler-mein_kampf_ext.jpg.