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What is the worst that could happen? she’d asked herself. You could die, the fear whispered back. What is the best? You could live.
There was power in claiming—deliberately and with joy—a part of you that others wanted you to hate yourself for.
Hannah knew better. Under the Third Reich, hope only existed as a weapon.
The way to judge people wasn’t to look at how they acted toward people they wanted to impress; it was to look at the way they treated those who could do nothing for them.
“Burning books about things you do not like or understand does not mean those things no longer exist.”
“So much of this is because of fear, isn’t it? All Hitler had to do was make people afraid: There is a monster out there who will attack you if you don’t let me protect you.”
“And if that requires sacrificing a few freedoms, then that’s the price for law and order, isn’t it?” Hannah finished the thought.
Viv shook her head. “No, they wouldn’t. Goebbels would say ‘successful’ or ‘patriotic.’ A Resistance fighter might say ‘tragic.’ A German student would say ‘rousing.’ It matters who is talking, who is telling the story.”
that it was people like that who had let Hitler rise to power. The terrible men Hitler had surrounded himself with were absolutely complicit in what was happening, but so were the otherwise decent people who thought that Hitler’s success could ultimately benefit them if they simply held their noses over the parts of him they didn’t like.
None of that mattered, though. At the end of the day, Otto had chosen what was easy over what was right. And
The cracks creep in, insidious as anything I’ve ever seen. It can start with rumblings about an unreliable press and rumors about political enemies that will threaten your family, your children. It can deepen with each disdainful remark about science and art and literature in a pub on a Friday night. It comes cloaked in patriotism and love of country, and uses that as armor against any criticism.
The moment the most educated country in the world willingly, joyously, wholeheartedly turned away from knowledge.”
“I can tell you that banning books, burning books, blocking books is often used as a way to erase a people, a belief system, a culture,”
when those writers represent the very best of a country. “I can tell you many things about how men who crave power use fear and panic that’s incited by certain ideas to get what they want,”
convinced a country that setting fire to words that you don’t like or don’t agree ...
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history is built on moments that feel insignificant.
an attack on books, on rationality, on knowledge isn’t a tempest in a teacup, but rather a canary dead in a coal mine.
“There are moments in life when you have to put what is right over what party you vote for. And if you can’t recognize those moments when the stakes are low—let me assure you, you won’t recognize them when the stakes are high.
