10 Quotes by Anders Rydell

[...] if there was something that gave more power than merely destroying the word, it was owning and controlling it. There was a power in books. Words could act as weapons, resounding long after the rumbling of artillery had stopped. They are weapons not only as propaganda, but also in the form of memories. Whoever owns the word has the power not only to interpret it, but also to write history.

But even the Nazis realized that if there was something that gave more power than merely destroying the word, it was owning and controlling it.

The strong relationship between humans and books relates to the role of the written word in the dissemination of knowledge, feeling, and experience over thousands of years [...] Our simultaneously emotional and spiritual relationship to the book is about how the book "speaks to us." It is a medium connecting us to other people both living and dead.

I realized that these memories are central, they were the very reason for the book plundering. Robbing people of words and narrative is a way of imprisoning them.

The book was an instrument of both repression and liberation

What is more frightening, a totalitarian regime’s destruction of knowledge or its hankering for it?

The extermination of Poland’s literary heritage was frighteningly efficient. Researchers have estimated that 70 percent of all books in Poland were destroyed or lost through plunder. Over 90 percent of collections belonging to public libraries or schools were lost or destroyed.

The book was an instrument of both repression and liberation.

Works of art were trophies that glorified leaders and the nation. Art would also reflect and legitimize the National Socialist ideals and the new human being. But the actual ideology would be underpinned by books and archives. The future would be built by a control of memory and history, on the basis of the written word. The.