The empty bookshelves in Bebelplatz square remind us that not everyone thinks that books are our best friends. So, in May 1933, Nazi students burned more than 20,000 books, which included the books of Ilf and Petrov, Maksim Gorkiy, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Heinrich Mann, and Erich Maria Remarque among them. Right next to it, there is a plaque with Heinrich Heine’s quote “That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people.”