Fans pick 100 books like The Book Thieves

A true account of how the Nazis confiscated a Berlin business property belonging to a Jewish family and the actions taken to secure restitution. The story has a twist in that the claim for restitution could not be made until after 1989 because the building is located in the Soviet sector of the city.

The property was the business headquarters for a fur company and parts of it were leased. In 1937, the Victoria Insurance Company forecloses on the mortgage and transferred ownership of the building to Hitler’s railway system. The granddaughter investigates her ancestry and the way the building was lost, and then takes up the fight to obtain restitution. After several disappointments, she is successful.

I enjoyed the storyline because it is remarkably similar to what happens in my book. It provides another perspective of how the Nazis confiscated Jewish property, and only by reading books like this… show more.

Here is a story of persistence and justice that inspired the movie Woman in Gold. By taking on the Austrian government, the portrait painted by Gustav Klint is eventually returned to its rightful owner. Once more we witness the reluctance of authorities to acknowledge what was perpetrated during Nazi times.

Taking place in Vienna, the events coincide with the experiences of the protagonist in my own book. The mother fled Germany in late 1937 and lived in Vienna until early 1941. She met her husband there, married him while he was in prison, heard that the Jewish children in her orphanage were killed, and witnessed her mother’s death. “It was the worst experience in my life,” she says.

I wish that the perseverance and outcome shown in this story could be mirrored in my own book, but rules introduced by West Germany in the 1950s make this impossible.… show more.

This is a story of retrieving fine art from Prague and returning it to its rightful owners in Canada. Four paintings were left in the care of a friend when the Reeser family fled Czechoslovakia as Hitler’s army arrived on March 15, 1939. For 50 years, the family was denied access to their property. Here is an account of determination and love that combines accurate descriptions of history with fictional speculation on how the paintings were retrieved. The Reeser family was fortunate to know what they had and where it was.

I enjoyed the plot in this book and the persistence of the protagonists. It is gratifying to read a story where a family who lost everything at the start of the War, persevered to become reunited with the family treasures once Communism fell in Eastern Europe. The story blends accurate history with imaginative fiction, making it a delight to… show more.

This is a story about the best-selling Viennese cookbook that was stolen by the Nazis and republished under someone else’s name during the War. The text and color photographs are identical, but the names of the authors are different. The original author, Alice Urbach, who was Jewish, had her book “Aryanized” for over 80 years, even though her hands are still featured in the illustrations. It shows how respectable businesses and individuals can continue to profit from the persecution of Jews long after the Holocaust ended. 

I found this a quite remarkable story that has only recently been published in English. It demonstrates the extremes to which the Nazis went to stamp out anything that was Jewish. Only in 2021 were the rights returned to the original author posthumously.

This very well-researched and gripping book taught me the meaning of the term “laundering” in the art market and revealed the duplicity of the late art dealer, Larry Fleischman, who both collected and sold stolen antiquities and marketed undocumented works taken from Edward Hopper’s estate.

He didn’t care about provenance or history of ownership and is quoted in this book as saying: “Everything comes from somewhere.”

Although I knew and dealt with Fleishman, I trusted him and was tricked by him.

This book took me to places I was not expecting. I love memoirs like this that are stranger than fiction. Kaiser’s memoir starts simply enough with his father’s request that he check out a building his grandfather owned before World War II. But then it twists and twists again. Come for the history, stay for the adventure.

The long history of pillage as an act of colonial conquest – Napoleon looting Egypt, Britain looting Greece, among many others – is well-told in this solid, historically grounded account. Why are so many of the world’s great museums filled with treasures from ancient civilizations? This book tells you how it happened, while also showing why countries stripped of their heritage are demanding it back. There are a few books out there entitled Loot: this is the one to read. 

The Whole Picture is a very recent book, that needs little introduction: that’s always the sign of a great book.

It does something very well: it explains what all those talks about looted art and artefacts and colonialism, and repatriation, are all about, without patronizing anyone, but without letting museums get away with their narratives either.

I remember reading it and thinking that it was about time I picked up my little idea and write my own book: I stand on the shoulders of fierce writers and thinkers and game-changers.

This book will make you ask questions, and it will make you avoid one Parisian museum in particular; and I very much concur this. You’ll have to read the book to find out which one.

Kochavi’s book gave me a more complete and nuanced understanding of how the Nuremberg war crimes court came to be, how defendants were selected, and what law to apply. Based on copious research, Kochavi uncovers the inside story of how the Allies ultimately agreed to establish an international court to hold Nazi officials accountable for mass atrocities instead of summarily executing them, which Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin favored. Initial U.S. and British resistance to including crimes against German nationals (extermination of the Jews among them) was overcome by strong public, especially Jewish, opposition.

The greatest challenge to the Allies in the aftermath of the war in Europe was how to repatriate the millions of people from all countries who had been displaced by the violence. This included prisoners of war, Holocaust survivors, and eastern European slave laborers, many of whom no longer had homes or even countries to return to. For several years after 1945, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration ran the greatest humanitarian operation Europe has ever seen. They not only fed, clothed, and housed millions of refugees but gave them hope for a better future. Ben Shephard’s history of how they achieved this is truly inspiring. The history of World War II is one of violence and killing, and my bookshelves are heaving with stories of atrocities – but beautifully-written, compassionate books like this one are enough to restore anyone’s faith in human nature.