Burning Books, Hoboken Style

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"Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too."

-Henirich Heine
German-Jewish poet
1797-1856

This post is dedicated to the political operatives from Jersey City and Weehawken, their friends and employers in Hoboken, who have banned the speech of critics at nj.com and attacked the free speech of a political opponent on her blog, attacked her art work, trying to silence her under threat of retaliation.

That's me, and I got a 'warning' yesterday. For using 'fascist imagery'.

Was asked to take something down.

So, in honor of those who attack the speech they can't control, make war on images they don't like, I dedicate this poem:

THE BURNING Of THE BOOKS

When the Regime commanded that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burned and on all sides
Oxen were forced to drag cartloads of books
To the bonfires, a banished
Writer, one of the best, scanning the list of the
Burned, was shocked to find that his
Books had been passed over.
He rushed to his desk
On wings of wrath, and wrote a letter to those in power ,
Burn me! he wrote with flying pen, burn me!
Haven’t my books
Always reported the truth ?
And here you are
Treating me like a liar! I command you!
Burn me!

-Bertoldt Brecht
1898-1956

Of course this brings back that hideous period in 20th Century world history, one which ended 6 million Jewish lives and another 6 million more- gays, physically and mentally challenged, other 'undesirable races', and political enemies.

Hear this.

I am a Jew, whose family was murdered by Nazis in the ghettos of Warsaw and Lodz, Poland.

Burning books, burning words and images on a blog, burning bloggers. All the same.

Watch where YOU tread.

Silencing Speech, Nazi Germany 1933