dOCUMENTA(13): Bibliophilia and Libricide

Libricide remembered in the work of Michael Rakowitz.

What Dust Will Rise? (2012)

"Special Pride" in the destruction of a Jewish Library in Poland

"For us it is a matter of special pride to destroy the Talmudic Library which has been known as the greatest in Poland...we threw out of the building the great Talmudic Library and carted it to market. There we set fire to the books. The fire lasted for twenty hours. The Jews of Lublin were assembled around and cried bitterly. The cries almost silenced us. Then we summoned a military band, and joyful shouts of the soldiers silenced the sounds of Jewish cries."
           - Frankfurter Zeitung, March 28 1941

Libricide and other less violent forms of "library loss" further explored in this UNESCO published treatise:
'Lost Memory -  Libraries And Archives Destroyed In The Twentieth Century' 

dOCUMENTA(13): Bibliophilia and Libricide

More Archive/Library/Book works at dOCUMENTA (13):

Michael Rakowitz What dust will rise? (2012)

Commissioned and produced for dOCUMENTA(13)

From the exhibit info:

What Dust Will Rise? recreates selections from the library of the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel that were destroyed in a fire in the Fridericianum during a bombing by the British Royal Airforce on September 9 1941.With the help of stone carvers from Afganistan, Michael Rakowitz remade these lost volumes out of travertine quarried in the hills of Bamiyan, where two monumental sixth-century sandstone Buddhas were dynamited by the Taliban. The undertaking conjures tombstones and recalls the tradition of stone books serving as surrogates for the illiterate. One sculpture has been donated to the National Museum of Kabul, which was also severely damaged under the Taliban.

dOCUMENTA(13): Bibliophilia and Libricide

Archive/Library/Book works at dOCUMENTA (13)

Michael Rakowitz What Dust will Rise? (2012)

Also on display in the Michael Rakowitz room are monographs burnt during the bombings and subsequent fires in the library, deemed "too unimportant to restore".

These burnt books not only speak of the cultural loss caused by the Allied attacks of this period, but also of the infamous and widespread libricide committed by the Nazis during their reign.