The Book Thieves

By Anders Rydell, Henning Koch (translator),

Book cover of The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe's Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance

Book description

"A most valuable book." —Christian Science Monitor

For readers of The Monuments Men and The Hare with Amber Eyes, the story of the Nazis' systematic pillaging of Europe's libraries, and the small team of heroic librarians now working to return the stolen books to their rightful owners.

While the Nazi…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Book Thieves as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

John R. Cammidge

Author

The plundering of books by the Nazis, especially literature belonging to the Jewish community, is the topic of this novel. Many books are untraceable today and their legitimate owners are long since dead. Nazis confiscated literature for various reasons, some involving original manuscripts, others used to seek out the enemies of the Reich, and quantities were gathered as status indicators. Once the war was over, there were book collections taken for a second time and justified as “liberated” rather than “plundered!”

I enjoyed the novel because it covers an aspect of the Holocaust that is rarely addressed and offers insights…

From John's list on describing restitution experiences after WW2.