Book Burning In The Book Thief

Book Burning

”They were erased pages of Mein Kampf,gagging,suffocating,under the paint as they turned.”(Zusak 237). This is an portion from The Book Thief where it is talking about Max taking a German book and turning it into his own ‘Un-German’ book which during the holocaust would have been burned (“Book Burning” 2).On May 10,1933 over 25,000 books similar to the kind of books Max wrote that the Nazis considered ‘Un-German’ were burned (“The History Place” 5).In the book thief books are an very important topic and it connects to the real life situation of book burning that happened during World War Two and the Holocaust.

A little under eighty two years ago on May 10,1933 several college student marched around their college and burned “upwards of 25,000 books” (“Book Burning in History” 9).Even though it says that all of the book burnings were on May 10 some of them took place in the days after the original book burning date because there was bad weather and rain (“United States Holocaust

Max was a Jew that Liesel’s family had to hide because the Nazis were hunting all the Jews down because Germany had blamed them for all of their problems after the first war World War One (“The History Place” 5).Max had a passion for Literature and Reading and love to write books that most of the time would be considered ‘Un-German’ (“Book Burning” 2).Because Max was in hiding and did not have access to a large variety of supplies to make his own books he had to find other ways.To make his books he would rip out pages from german books like Mein Kampf and cover them in white paint so they were “gagging,suffocating,under the paint as they turned.”(Zusak 237). With the pages that he created he would write his own stories that to the Nazis would be thought of as ‘Un-German’. (“Book Burning”