On May 10, 1933, in many cities, the Ministry of Propaganda of Nazi Germany staged a demonstrative book burning, organized as part of an action “against the un-German spirit.” During the action, students, professors and local leaders of the Nazi Party burned tens of thousands of books, the authors of which were persecuted by Nazi Germany. However, this story is about something else. This is the story of the systematic looting of European libraries by the Nazis and a small team of librarians working to return the stolen books to their rightful owners. The books that ended up in the hands of Nazi soldiers after the robberies of European libraries and bookstores were not burned. Instead, the Nazis began amassing a library of their own that could be used to wage intellectual warfare on world literature and history. In this secret war, the libraries of Jews, communists, liberal politicians, LGBT activists, Catholics and many other disgraced groups were appropriated for Nazi research and used as intellectual weapons against their own owners. But when the war ended, most of the books were never found. The book you hold in your hands shows the history of the discovery and return of European cultural heritage from the captivity of history and the role of the book for a culture that was in danger of destruction.