Banned Book Give Away

Books by famous German writers such as Bertolt Brecht and Karl Marx were burned because they conveyed political ideas different from those of the Nazi party. Erich Maria Remarque’s book All Quiet on the Western Front was targeted as “a literary betrayal of the soldiers of the World War.”

The books of American authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Jack London were purged, as were the writings of Helen Keller who championed the rights of the disabled, industrial workers, and women.

Texts by Jewish authors were destroyed, including titles by Heinrich Heine who wrote in his 1820-21 play Almansor, “Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.”

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” – Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut was captured by the Germans during WWII and imprisoned 60 feet under Dresden in a former meat locker and slaughterhouse. He and his fellow POWs survived the firebombing of the city but were ordered to gather the remains of the dead after the inferno. This haunting experience served as the inspiration for his novel Slaughterhouse Five.

In 1973, Charles McCarthy, the head of the school board in Drake, North Dakota, ordered that copies of Slaughterhouse Five be burned in the high school’s furnace. McCarthy’s actions sparked a national outcry. Vonnegut responded with a letter to McCarthy in which he stated, “Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.”

People like Charles McCarthy might not burn books today, but they do try to ban books from school and public libraries.

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom documented attempts to remove 2,452 unique titles from school and public libraries in 2024. This represents a decrease compared to 4,240 unique book titles that were challenged in 2023 – a 65% increase compared to 2022.
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Almost 72% of the censorship attempts in 2024 were initiated by special interest groups, elected officials, and administrators. 16% of the challenges came from parents. Generally, the targeted titles were books with themes of race, history, gender identity, sexuality, or reproductive health.

In Kansas in 2024, there were 8 attempts to restrict access to books; 10 titles were challenged in these attempts. In Missouri in 2024, there were 11 attempts to restrict access to books, 146 titles were challenged in those attempts.

MCHE supports the freedom to read.

MCHE’s mission is to teach the history of the Holocaust, applying its lessons to counter indifference, intolerance, and genocide. MCHE is committed to applying the lessons of the Holocaust to the world today, which includes the free exchange of ideas, open access to published materials, and civil discussion of conflicting points-of-view.

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