Kristallnacht and Charlie Hebdo

When cartoonists are killed for expressing their views, it's 1 step away from burning books. It's like Kristallnacht. http://t.co/cgoC2R1hbP
— Steven Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) January 8, 2015

A respondent wrote:

@greenhousenyt @argaman You've got it backwards. Burning books is the pre- requisite step towards burning, killing people.
— Spinoza's rose (@ContentiousNote) January 8, 2015

I was in Frankfurt this week and visited the site of one of the synagogues destroyed by the Nazis on Kristallnacht. I thought about this comparison also. In fact, the Charlie Hebdo office was firebombed and completely destroyed in 2011. Yesterday the cartoonists were murdered.

My photographs below are of the memorial for the synagogue on Friedberger Anlage, which was built in 1907 and destroyed on November 9, 1938.

This is from the website "Jewish Sites in Frankfurt am Main" - "The Place of Remembrance at Friedberger Anlage 5-6 documents a facet of National Socialist perfidy: In 1942 a civil defense bunker was erected by French prisoners of war on the foundation of the Israelitische Religionsgesellschaft synagogue that was dedicated in 1907 and destroyed during the November pogrom.1 Boasting 1600 seats, the synagogue was Frankfurt’s largest. It belonged to the breakaway Orthodox community founded in 1851 by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. Landscape architect Jeanette Garnhartner won the 1985 competition for redesigning the forecourt, commissioned in commemoration of the former synagogue."

"Here stood the synagogue of the Israelite Religious Community.
It was set on fire and destroyed on the Pogrom Night of 9 November 1938."