"Robbing people of their words and narratives is a way of imprisoning them."

Sad, fascinating and gut wrenching story of the books plundered and destroyed by the nazis. At times hard to put down, other times harder still to read...

This is a long book, and it is not an easy one to read as it is about the horrors of the Holocaust, so enter at your own risk. This book focuses on the plundered books that the Nazis looted from libraries and private collections throughout Europe. Each chapter picks a 'focus' destination or library from France to Thessaloniki, Poland to Vilnius. No community was safe from the Nazis. It wasn't enough to murder the Jews and other marginalised communities like Communists and Freemasons; they had to take control of their history and culture too, erasing everything that made them unique and re-writing the narrative to suit them.

If you are interested in nonfiction and want to know more about the sorry fate of Europe's books during WWII, this is a really good deep dive into the topic. But beware – the horrific deeds of the Nazis are discussed, often in detail.

My favourite section was the paper mill of Vilnius (Lithuania), and the heroic deeds of the ghetto prisoners who went to great lengths to save, hide and smuggle as much Jewish literature as they could, complete with a hidden bunker, an outside smuggler, and James Bond-esque escape by airplane with books in tow.

CW: Death, murder, Holocaust, genocide, torture, violence, war, antisemitism, prejudice, cultural destruction.