‘You can see librarians’ failure to try even that as the start of German society’s treachery towards itself. Yes, it’s meaningful that books were piled on bonfires, and what books they were, and who had written them. But that librarians collaborated, and why they did, is more than a fact that bears remembering; it’s a question we should keep asking. Why do we sometimes decide that the things our ancestors have made, and kept, and cared for are suddenly too many mouths to feed, or of bad character and a menace to society? Why, for instance, is it unremarkable that we have warehouses full of
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