Welcome to the second day of our 8-day #BeAMiracleworker campaign. We are thrilled to report that our total has risen by $2,212 and we have reached $12,957. Please help us reach our $25,000 goal by September 30th. Every dollar we raise will be matched by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Donate now and be a miracle worker. And don’t forget to follow the campaign’s progress on Facebook.
A Supreme Communicator
Keller considered herself a writer first and foremost, writing 14 books during her lifetime. Her 1902 autobiography,The Story of My Life, has since been translated into over 50 languages. The archive contains over 475 speeches and essays on topics ranging from animals to atomic energy. Her writing spans from 1900-1961. Keller is famous for fighting for those with vision loss, but she was above all a fighter for freedom of speech and the right of every individual to live in dignity, and she successfully used her words to do this. Today, her political speeches on worker’s rights, pacifism, and women’s rights in the early 20th century are frequently requested by researchers and scholars. Keller spoke out on social issues at a time when others did not. In 1914, she demanded the education of pregnant syphilitic women on the benefits of medical treatment to prevent infant blindness; she was an outspoken advocate for women's suffrage, and an early vocal protestor of Anti-Semitism in Germany. In the document shown here, written in 1933, she powerfully admonishes young German students for burning "banned "books in the streets of Germany and for the persecution of Jews.
Creating access to Keller’s archival collection through digitization is key to understanding the breadth, significance and enduring power of her life and legacy. Donate now and donate generously.
Like the Helen Keller: The Official Fan Page on Facebook for more inspirational photos, quotes, and letters, and use the #beamiracleworker hashtag on Twitter to raise awareness of our efforts to save the Helen Keller Archives.
Image: Letter to the student body of Germany, 1933.
Transcription
[Handwritten annotation, in Polly Thomson's handwriting:] To the Student Body of Germany
[Handwritten annotation, unknown handwriting beneath Thomson inscription:] Cablegram to
[Handwritten annotation, right hand side:] May 9, 1933
[Transcriber's note: following text deleted:] Adolf Hitler, Berlin, Germany.
History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them.
You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels, and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the [Transcriber's note: word "rights" deleted here] royalties of my books [Transcriber's note: handwritten insertion] "for all time" to the soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love and compassion. [Transcriber's note: handwritten insertion] "for the German people."
Do not imagine your barbarities to the Jews are unknown here. God sleepeth not, and He will visit His Judgment upon you [Transcriber's note: deletion of] "as surely as upon the wicked kings of Judea who defied His Word." Better were it for you to have a mill-stone hung round your neck and sink into the sea than to be hated and despised of all men.
Helen Keller
[Handwritten annotation:] I acknowledge the grievous [unable to decipher] that have led to your intolerance. all [sic.] the more do I deplore the injustice & unwisdom of passing on to unborn generations the stigma of your deeds.
