A Message to Those Destroying Knowledge

“ It was only a prelude; where they burn books, they eventually also burn men.”

Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1821

I was born into books; my father had opened a bookstore three years before I was born.

I chose books as my profession during my studies in America and Europe.

My library has just been burned. I want to understand.

For more than forty years, day after day, I have walked through the libraries of my country. And under other skies, I was asked to compile inv