I can not believe that year after year after year, I come back to a very haunting quote that I first learned when visiting Berlin back in the 2000s.

I am a firm believer that we all should just sit down and learn history. Maybe, just maybe, if we stopped glorifying the atrocities and learned our lessons from the past, we could actually move on and make the world a better place for the whole human kind. This time around, I am talking about book burning.

In January 2023, Sweden allowed a demonstration to go forward in Stockholm, where a visiting far right idiot (pardon my language) burned a Quran. Now that another of these idiotic demonstrations were planned, the police banned it. Thankfully.

Why Get Worked Up About It?

At least in Europe most, if not all, of our modern societies are moulded by Christian background. There are certain tenets of the Christian faith that permeate the society and the laws, even if we realise it or not. But believe me, reading about Quran burnings in Sweden, or the vile words coming out from the mouth of a Finnish veteran lady politician against anything LGBTQ it is clear that “love thy neighbour” is one of the Christ’s forgotten teachings.

10.05.1933 is a date you all should check as it is all about the image up above.

And not even a hundred years later, we are heading down the same road. The road that led me to write the title of this blog text, trying to remind us all again that we can not allow ourselves to accept the hate against any group of humans. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the hate was targeted at Jews, the Roma, the LGBTQ people… now, in the 2020s, the same hate is targeted at Muslims, the LGBTQ people… and who are next?

The Nordic Jewish Communities published a statement just a few days ago concerning the matter, and I decided to paste it here for you all to read:

It is not just the Jews and the Muslims who must stand against this kind of threat the far-right advocates pose. It is us all who must ensure that the horrors of the Nazis will remain where it belongs – in the history books.

Witnessing The Horrors

There are only very few of those left who actually witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust first hand. We, the later generations, can only read about the fate of the likes of Anne Frank because their relatives published the accounts on their behalf.

Or we can pay a touching and eerie visit to the remnants of the concentration camps such as Dachau near Munich or Auschwitz in Poland. If we want a more lively spot, we can make a trip to the old Jewish Quarter in Prague – the same one which Hitler wanted to save as a museum to a race that no longer existed.

Even though these places are a stark reminder of the evils we humans can do, they also should teach us a valuable lesson – never again.

Dies war ein Vorspiel nur, dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.

Heinrich Heine (1797 – 1856)