Denkmal zur Erinnerung an die Bücherverbrennung

In another case of absence and presence, I visited the memorial to the book burning that took place during the Third Reich. The one most well known happened on May 10, 1933 in the Opernplatz —where this memorial is sited—four short months after Hitler became chancellor. A meter square window of plexiglass placed level with the cobbles looks down into a room of white, empty bookshelves, large enough to fit the 20,000 books that were burned on that day. The statement is blunt and unforgiving, coming along with a lack of information similar to many of the other Denkmäler I have seen in Berlin. One of the horrors of these remembered events is their perpetration by the students attending Humboldt University, which stands right across the street.