Frankfurt Book Burning Memorial

Römerberg Square, in the center of Frankfurt’s Altstadt, is home to a haunting monument that many visitors miss on first glance. Tear your eyes away from the historic buildings and look down at the pavement, where a memorial plaque reads: “At this place on May 10, 1933 National Socialist students burnt books by authors, scientists and publicists.”

Records show that these Nazi sympathizers burned more than 25,000 books deemed “un-German.” Gedenkplatte Bücherverbrennung, or book burning memorial, includes a quote by German-Jewish writer Heinrich Heine, stating, “That was just the beginning. Where one burns books, in the end, people are burnt as well.”