Memorial for the Nazi book burnings

A glass window set into the pavement of Bebelplatz that looks down into an empty white room of empty bookshelves - the Sunken Library. Created by the Israeli sculptor Micha Ullman and inaugurated in 1995. It commemorates the Nazi book burning of 10 May 1933, when around 20,000 books by Jewish, socialist, and critical authors were thrown into the flames here, including works by Heinrich Mann, Erich Kaestner, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx. The underground chamber holds room for exactly this lost library. A bronze plaque carries Heinrich Heine's prophetic line from Almansor: Where they burn books, in the end they will also burn people. Tourists often spot the unobtrusive pavement square late, then lean over and discover the chamber below.