On May 10, 1933, just a few months after Adolf Hitler came to power in Nazi Germany and six years before World War II, a group of German university students orchestrated book burnings across Germany, targeting authors ranging from Helen Keller to Albert Einstein to Ernest Hemingway.

Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings is now on display at the Castle Museum. It will run through October 4th, 2010.

The exhibition provides a vivid look at the first steps the Nazis took to suppress freedom of expression and the strong response that occurred in the United States.

It also demonstrates how the book burnings became a potent symbol during World War II in America’s battle against Nazism, and concludes by examining their continued impact on our public discourse.

Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings is produced by the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

PHOTO: German students and S.A. members with books and manuscripts to be burned in a public book burning. Berlin, May 10, 1933.
Credit: Courtesy U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum/NARA