Banned Books

Banned Books Week was last week, and often it's presented as the enlightened looking back on a more ignorant age. Not so. The totalitarian mindset is alive and well. A California charter school recently banned The Hiding Place, the story of Corrie ten Boom and her family hiding Jews during WWII. The problem? The ten Boom's were Christians, and they were audacious enough to pray and share their faith while in a concentration camp. This has caused a minor dust up in the blogosphere, but what is most appalling is the ignorance, and an unwillingness to read the book in question by someone who is reportedly a librarian. The quote below is from a Library Journal blogger:

I was unfamiliar with Corrie ten Boom or her book The Hiding Place, but if the Wikipedia entries are accurate, it does seem like the book is pretty Christian. Supposedly, the entire time she and her sister were in a German concentration camp, they “used a hidden Bible to teach their fellow prisoners about Jesus,” because not enough people had told the Jewish prisoners that they were wrong to be Jewish.

Really? Never mind that  the ten Boom's are honored with the title "Righteous Gentiles" by Yad Vashem. The same title was given to Oskar Schindler of "Schindler's List" fame. The Holocaust was horrific, and should never be forgotten. Simply stating that the kids should read The Diary of Anne Frank instead is a cop out. Six million people died during that time period; we need more than one first person account.

It's hard to tell exactly what happened at the school, because it appears that the "eye witness" accounts are anonymous at the moment. Details of the case can be found here.

Before I get accused of being a "right wing hater" let me just say that I know conservatives have done similar things. The argument "they do it too!" is flawed. Sure, I haven't written about right wing ridiculousness, but the blog is young.