Stolen Music tells the chilling stories of Jewish musicians Wanda Landowska, Arthur Rubinstein, Shony Braun, Alma Rosé, and Władysław Szpilman from the interwar period’s vibrant musical scene to the Nazis’ persecution. Parallel to these musicians’ fates is the story about music’s role in the Third Reich, and the wide-spread and systematic looting of tens of thousands of instruments, manuscripts, and books. Many of these are still lost to the world.

The special command Sonderstab Musik led the hunt for Europe’s foremost musical treasures, invaluable instruments and manuscripts from masters such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Headed by Herbert Gerigk, the aim of this musical looting was to obliterate Jewish influence over European music once and for all.

Stolen Music is not only a tale of the Nazis’ attempt to silence their opponents, but one about music as an act of resistance.

The Book Thieves by Anders Rydell was just announced as the winner of Hislibris Historical Literature Award in the category Best Historical Non-Fiction work of 2022.

Hislibris is Spain’s most prominent community of history bloggers, who each year vote for their favorite books.

The award ceremony will take place in September.

Anders Rydell’s The Book Thieves has been nominated for the much distinguished Hislibris Historical Literature Awards in the category Best Historical Non-fiction.

Hislibris is the largest community of history bloggers in Spain, and each year, its members vote for their favorite books. The winner of each category will then be chosen by a jury consisting of members of the Hispanic community.

Anders Rydell has received Region Uppsala’s Culture Scholarship for his novels The Looters and The Book Thieves.

Region Uppsala’s Culture Scholarships are annually handed out to eight people active in different art fields, and Rydell is the recipient of the scholarship for literature. With their choice, Region Uppsala hopes to support further studies of the history of Nazism.

The scholarship ceremony will be held on March 26, in Uppsala, Sweden.

Anders Rydell has received a scholarship for his work in helping to spread knowledge about the Holocaust. The scholarship, which is handed out by Micael Bindefeld’s Foundation in Memory of the Holocaust, aims to support those who communicate, provide information, illustrate or otherwise convey knowledge about the Holocaust to a wider audience in Sweden.

During his research, Anders has found stories by survivors of the Holocaust that never been published in Swedish before and in collaboration with the Swedish publisher Novellix, they have chosen four of these stories and published them in a collection of short stories. Each scholar receives SEK 200 000 to enable the distribution of these short stories to schoolchildren.

This marks the first time that the Foundation’s scholarship is handed out to a literary project. The board’s motivation is the following:

2019’s scholarship is awarded to author Anders Rydell and publisher Novellix for their efforts to spread previously untranslated stories by surviving authors of the Holocaust. The texts are given life in an innovative way, offering snapshots of an otherwise almost immeasurable historical event. For the new generation of youths, these short stories will become a shortcut to knowledge, empathy, and a continued living history.

The scholarship was handed out yesterday on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day by Archbishop Antje Jackelén at a ceremony at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. Among the attendees were the Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Löfven, and other ministers.

Anders Rydell has received the Wallquist Prize with the motivation: “With impressive knowledge and great commitment, Anders highlights how the Nazis not only physically eradicated Europe’s Jews but also brutally plundered a whole cultural tradition.”

The prize awards authorships and research with a church affiliation, and it’s handed out by the Småland Academy on November 10 in Kalmar, Sweden.

Anders Rydell (The Book Thieves, The Looters) has been invited to speak at the Library of Congress in Washington next week, on October 18th. The focus of the lecture will be Rydell’s research into the Nazi’s systematic pillaging of Europe’s libraries – public and private – and the book which Rydell wrote on the subject, The Book Thieves.

The Library of Congress, founded in 1800 by John Addams and Thomas Jeffersson, is the largest library in the world, housing millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress.

The lecture will be held in the Thomas Jeffersson Building, on October 18th, 3 p.m.

Anders Rydell’s The Book Thieves has been shortlisted for the 2017 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. The work earned a Starred Review by the American magazine, signifying that it is a “Book of Exceptional Merit.” In their review, Kirkus praises The Book Thieves as “An engrossing, haunting journey for bibliophiles and World War II historians.”

Anders Rydell’s The Book Thieves is the gripping examination of how the Nazis plundered thousands of private libraries on their march across Europe, effectively erasing the emotional and cultural heritage of an entire people. It is also the chilling story of how these books were turned on their former owners, and used by the Nazis to justify the planned genocide of Europe’s Jewish population.

The night of 10 May 1933, the squares and streets of Germany are illuminated by the flames of innumerable bonfires. At Berlin’s Opernplatz 40,000 people have gathered to listen to the Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. In front of his audience he declares the end of the Weimar Republic’s decadent cultural lifestyle. Books by Marx, Mann, Brecht and Hemingway all fall victim to the flames.

In the shadows of the book burnings lies another, less known story – the story of how the Nazis plundered thousands of libraries on their march across Europe. The Book Thieves is Anders Rydell’s gripping examination of this methodical looting and its tragic consequence: the erasure of an entire people’s emotional and cultural heritage.