Books of all kinds burning in a giant bonfire in a square near the State Opera and the famous Unter den Linden boulevard had something in common that Nazi party heads considered to be “un-Aryan spirit”. An execution by fire disgraceful to any educated people was commented by Sigmund Freud in a personal letter as follows: “In the Middle Ages they would burn me, now they are just burning my books.”

The civility of the Nazis was overestimated by Freud, a famous psychologist and a Jew by descent: if he fell into their hands, he would also be burned – in the crematoria of Auschwitz or Dachau. The modern Germany is ashamed of this fire but vows to never forget it. Tourists looking into a glass window cut in the cobblestone of the Bebelplatz Square see empty bookshelves – a monument to burned books.