The looting of art by the Nazis always attracts a great deal of interest. Restitution applications, too, usually concern the visual arts. But the Nazis looted much more, such as books, archives, and ritual objects. This publication describes for the first time how, when and by whom the literary landscape in the Netherlands was razed to the ground. All kinds of branches of the civilian Nazi government preyed on the books. The focus in this book is on the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, which initially limited itself to the theft of books and archives, but from March 1942 also gained control over the so-called ‘Möbel-Aktion’: the plunder of all household goods of deported Jews and other ‘subversive’ groups. In the Netherlands, millions of books have been robbed, stolen, auctioned, dragged, squandered, destroyed and transported to Germany. The Nazis were helped by a range of Dutch people with varying degrees of collaboration. Mapping the paths of the plunder may ultimately make it possible to find out where the books went, ultimately making restitution possible.
This book is in Dutch.