Source:
Roth, Joseph.
“The Auto-Da-Fé of the Mind.” Sources of European History Since 1900. Ed.
Marvin Perry, Matthew Berg, and James Krukones. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011. 165-167.
Print.
Summary:
In this piece,
Jewish writer Roth comments on the meaning of the Nazi book burnings. He
says, “The European mind is capitulating.”
The German Jewish writers, like him, have been defeated. “We are proud of our defeat,” he declares,
and is thankful that Jewish writers “are, thank God, safe from any temptation
to take the side of the barbarians in any way.”
Then, interestingly, Roth places those Jewish writers on the side of
Christendom as well as Judaism.
My Opinion:
I found this
piece illuminating. It caused me to
ponder the spiritual significance of book burning to Western culture, and
perhaps humanity. Book burning is
associated with fanaticism in our minds.
I wonder how much of the tragedy of book burning is the loss itself of
the books versus the symbolism behind it—an assault on ideas and the freedom to
express them. To our culture, the books
on the pyre could be ones that we detest, and yet we would still find it
tragic. Surely other copies of the books
themselves exist—the words themselves are not being blotted out of
existence. This leads me to think that
it is the symbolic and spiritual significance of book burning that resonates
rather than something literal.
It is
because of the spiritual nature of book burning—its attack on intellect and
conviction—that Roth could rightly claim that he and the other authors whose
works were burned were part of “the noble ranks of the European army,” and “the
only legitimate German representatives of that culture,” because they stood for
liberty of conscience. Their works were
burned because they did not compromise with Nazi philosophy, preferring
symbolic death over life as a sellout. He proclaims, “God himself—and we are proud of
the fact—will not allow us to betray Europe, Christendom, and Judaism. God is with the vanquished, not with the
victors!”
He also
claims that “[b]y destroying Jews they are persecuting Christ. For the first time the Jews are not being
murdered for crucifying Christ but for having produced him from their midst. If the books of Jewish or supposed Jewish
authors are burned, what is really set fire to is the Book of Books: the Bible.” I’d like to explore this claim a little. What is Roth’s basis for essentially equating
Judaism and Christianity? Certainly in
the eyes of his opponents this is an audacious remark. But it leads me to consider: what is the
spirit of Christianity, Judaism, and European culture? Here a couple of quotes might be
illuminating.
The first is
from Jürgen
Habermas, a modern German philosopher: “Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang
the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life
and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights and
democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian
ethic of love.”
The second
is from Gorman Beauchamp: “Liberals have felt free to advocate elimination of
‘repressive’ external restraints precisely because they still live in a social
sphere created and conditioned by Judeo-Christian moral values, whose
chastening custom and habit they expect
to be internalized … For how many post-Christian generations can it endure?
[…] We are like the heirs to a great fortune, but one that has stopped growing:
we live on the principle of that fortune which with each generation grows
smaller and smaller. At some point
bankruptcy, inevitably, looms.”
According
to these men, the spirit of Christianity and Judaism has nurtured our sense of justice,
equality, and morality. Certainly these
values were burned along with the books without a trial. Without these values, the Western culture
could not continue—it would bankrupt as Beauchamp said. There are many differences between Judaism
and Christianity, but for Joseph Roth, and for me as well, the spiritual tragedy
of book burning makes differing religions into brothers threatened by a common
enemy, fearlessly defending an entire culture.
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