I just finished reading People of the Book by Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks.
It starts with the quote by Heinrich Heine: "When one burns books, one will in the end burn people"
It has ever been thus.
The novel is a masterpiece of historical fiction that traces the survival of the Sarajevo Hagganah, a Jewish sacred book of extraordinary beauty that survives the fires of the Inquisition, the diaspora of the Jewish population from Spain in 1492 by the Catholic monarchs and their Inquisitors, the unremitting torture, targeting and murder of the Jews throughout history, the Holocaust and the battle for Sarajevo in the Bosnian and Herzegovina Wars. It rests now in Sarajevo. It remains unscathed, a shining testament to all attempts to eradicate the Jews and their literature from history.
It shines as a beacon to the written word.
What struck me about this story was the fact that nothing can ultimately destroy Truth. It survives all darkness and will not be withheld, or silenced. Tyrants come and go and we read their dreary history. The utter banality of their evil. We read about contemporary tyrants who seek to silence Truth with false news, but they will never succeed, especially now that the tide of history has turned against them.
They fight against Truth in vain, for it will always prevail. And grow stronger as we unite globally.
It starts with the quote by Heinrich Heine: "When one burns books, one will in the end burn people"
It has ever been thus.
The novel is a masterpiece of historical fiction that traces the survival of the Sarajevo Hagganah, a Jewish sacred book of extraordinary beauty that survives the fires of the Inquisition, the diaspora of the Jewish population from Spain in 1492 by the Catholic monarchs and their Inquisitors, the unremitting torture, targeting and murder of the Jews throughout history, the Holocaust and the battle for Sarajevo in the Bosnian and Herzegovina Wars. It rests now in Sarajevo. It remains unscathed, a shining testament to all attempts to eradicate the Jews and their literature from history.
It shines as a beacon to the written word.
What struck me about this story was the fact that nothing can ultimately destroy Truth. It survives all darkness and will not be withheld, or silenced. Tyrants come and go and we read their dreary history. The utter banality of their evil. We read about contemporary tyrants who seek to silence Truth with false news, but they will never succeed, especially now that the tide of history has turned against them.
They fight against Truth in vain, for it will always prevail. And grow stronger as we unite globally.