Opening: Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings May 22, 2009

Las Cruces, NM –“Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings,” a traveling exhibit from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will open at the Branigan Cultural Center on Friday May 22, 2009 with a reception from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. The exhibit remains on display through July 15th.

In 1933, just a few months after Adolf Hitler came to power in Nazi Germany and a full six years before World War II, German university students launched an “Action Against the Un-German Spirit” targeting authors ranging from Helen Keller and Ernest Hemingway to Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. The exhibit provides a vivid look at the first steps the Nazis took to suppress freedom of expression, and the strong response that occurred in the United States. The book burnings became a potent symbol during World War II in America’s battle against Nazism. The slogan “Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas,” which appeared in posters, proclamations, radio broadcasts, and scores of other outlets signaled the importance of books and free thought.

The exhibition concludes with the postwar years, exploring how the Nazi book burnings have continued to resonate in American politics, literature, and popular culture. It features post-war evocations of book burnings, including a McCarthy-era speech in which President Eisenhower urged Dartmouth graduates, “Don’t join the book burners”; films such as Pleasantville and Field of Dreams; and the public burning of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books.

In conjunction with “Fighting the Fires of Hate” several special programs are planned. The Las Cruces Friends of Chamber Music will perform during the opening reception and then present a concert on June 6th featuring compositions that were banned for political reasons across several centuries.

The Thomas Branigan Memorial Library will have a display of banned books, will feature banned books in the reading clubs, and screen two films that deal with Nazi Germany propaganda. The Counterfeiters will be shown on June 15, 2009 and The Architecture of Doom will show on June 16, 2009. Start time is 12:30 p.m. both days.

The Branigan Cultural Center, 501 N. Main Street, is located at the north end of the Downtown Mall in Las Cruces. The exhibit and reception is free and open to the public. Galleries are open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information about exhibits, contact the Branigan Cultural Center at (575) 541-2154 or visit the Center’s web site at www.las-cruces.org/museums