Spellow Library, a literary phoenix

The recent re-opening of a library torched during summer rioting is a tragic story's happy ending. Sadly, the burning of books has an even darker historic precedent.

Spellow Library, Liverpool, gutted by an arson attack.

History repeating itself

On the night of 9-10 November 1938, like a witch’s cauldron stirred by twisted, malevolent fingers, a hysterical spell was cast over swathes of Germany and Austria. Street protests intensified into an orgy of destruction, targeting Jewish businesses and synagogues. Crowds laid siege to properties, committing arson, as well as looting premises. These riots were referred to as Kristallnacht, referencing the shattered glass littering the streets of Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig, and scores of other cities and towns. This civil unrest was encouraged in populist speeches by, amongst others, the far-right politician, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Party Propaganda Minister. ​

On the weekend of 3-4 August 2024, like a witch’s cauldron stirred by twisted, malevolent fingers, a hysterical spell was cast over swathes of England and Northern Ireland. ​Street protests intensified into an orgy of destruction, targeting Muslim businesses and mosques. Crowds laid siege to properties, committing arson, as well as looting premises. These riots caused widespread damage, with shattered glass littering the streets of Manchester, Hartlepool, London, Belfast, and scores of other cities and towns. This civil unrest was encouraged in populist Tweets by, amongst others, the far-right politician, Tommy Robinson, former English Defence League leader.

 Riots provoked by murder

Context is everything. Ninety years ago, Kristallnacht was a response to the assassination of a German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-years-old, Hanover-born Polish Jew. Antisemitism was rife in mid-20th century Europe, but in Germany, vom Rath’s murder became the catalyst for a sinister spiralling of horrors perpetrated by Hitler's regime. All political opposition was supressed. Racial hatred became enshrined in the constitution, with legislation excluding Jews from society. The T-4 program orchestrated the euthanasia of people with physical or mental disabilities, which became a prelude to the Holocaust.

​The 2020s British riots were a response to the senseless murders of three children, Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, and the attempted murders of Leanne Lucas, a yoga instructor, John Hayes, a businessman, and eight other children at a Southport dance studio. Fake news stating the alleged perpetrator, Axel Rudakubana, was a Muslim asylum-seeker, spread like wildfire across social media. An ugly coalition of anti-immigration and far-right protesters were spurred into attacking mosques and hotels housing asylum-seekers. Fact check: Rudakubana was neither Muslim nor an asylum-seeker. He came from a family of Rwandan Christians who had settled in Lancashire. Neighbours mentioned they were involved with the local church, and would hear Axel singing in the family home, while he had also appeared in a West End musical with his school drama group.

After Kristallnacht, upwards of 30,000 Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Britain’s riotous summer may have been a storm in a teacup in comparison but one common feature of both events was the destruction of books. The motives may have differed. The Third Reich wished to purify their new Germany by eradicating non-Aryan culture. The razing of a Liverpool library, its flames captured by scores of mobile phones, seemed more a case of brainless destruction for its own sake. But, as American writer, Ray Bradbury underscored in his dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451 (the temperature at which books will catch fire), literary incineration is a classic symptom of the breakdown of democracy.

Books considered 'un-German' are selected for burning.

Suppression of literature

One litmus test of any free society lapsing into totalitarianism is when state security forces clamp down on a country's free press, and by extension, the freedom to read. As well as the wanton destruction of Jewish homes, hospitals, and places of worship, before and after Kristallnacht, the Nazi regime ordered mass book burnings of titles by authors who were Jewish, communists, liberals, and pacifists. The blacklist of what was described by Goebbels as 'intellectual filth'  extended to foreign writers, from D H Lawrence to Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley to James Joyce, Sigmund Freud to H G Wells, and many others.

Among the prime candidates for incineration was All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. Upon publication in January 1929, this first-hand account of the horrors of the trenches had become Germany’s most resounding literary success, selling half a million copies within months, and was translated into 26 languages. But the Third Reich revisionists equated its anti-war sentiments with anti-German nationalism; banned in 1933, it was earmarked for kindling. 

Fast-forward to 1996 and the initial Taleban takeover of Afghanistan. Amongst the many targets for their rocket launcher-propelled ire were schools where women could be educated and public libraries. The regime clamped down on reading culture in general. Since the Taleban's resurgence and subsequent seizure of power again in 2021, the Afghan book market has ground to a halt.

Nazi book burning event in Berlin.

Modern literary pyromania

​During England’s summer riots, Spellow Library in Walton, Liverpool, was set on fire. The image of onlookers, perhaps cloaked in St George’s Cross or Union flags, well-versed with football chants about having won “Two World Wars and one World Cup,” is off-the-scale irony; especially if copies of All Quiet on the Western Front or War of the Worlds happened to be reduced to ashes. The good news. This arson attack was universally condemned. A local manicurist, Alex McCormick, was so outraged, she launched a ‘Go Fund Me’ page to raise £500 towards refurbishing the library. Donations soared to £250,148.

Quote from Alex McCormick's 'Go Fund Me' page.

Alex reacted to the overwhelming response; with so many books donated, the surplus could be passed on to community centres and hospitals. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would go as far as it did. More people will feel the joy of that because we’ll be able to spread the books far and wide.” Books were donated by local celebrities and Queen Camilla, while the official re-opening ceremony included readings from Liverpool poet, Levi Tafari, and children's laureate, Frank Cottrell-Boyce.

Helen Keller.

Helen Keller's open letter to Nazi students

A last word on book burning belongs to Helen Keller, whose own book, How I Became a Socialist, along with 25,000 others, became longlisted for the literary pyres in 1933. Rendered blind and deaf by a childhood illness, she learned to read and write, sign and speak, becoming the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in the USA. A committed socialist and suffragette, when she learned her books were being thrown into the bonfires, she penned an open letter in the New York Times to Nazi students. Its sentiments resonate.

Draft of Helen Keller's open letter to German students, eventually published in the New York Times.

"History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have steeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the royalties of my books for all time to the soldiers who were blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love and compassion."