“Books are weapons in the war of ideas”

[“Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons. Franklin Roosevelt.” Poster by S[teve] Broder. 1942. From the Library of Congress. Click for a larger view.]

I found this poster via a report on “Letters Rising in the Air,” an exhibit at the National Library of Israel marking the ninetieth anniversary of Nazi bookburning in Berlin (May 10, 1933). Follow the link to see a letter (May 9) from Stefan Zweig to Max Brod urging a response by German-Jewish writers to the imminent burning. Also at the link: two partially burned pages from the work of Magnus Hirschfeld, psychologist and sexologist.