|
Paintings Can’t Talk……
January 6, 2008
NAZI-LOOTED works of art still held in museums and private collections around the world are “the last prisoners of war”, declared Ronald Lauder, head of the art-recovery commission of the World Jewish Congress in New York. Many of the claims by Holocaust survivors or their heirs for compensation for frozen bank accounts, unpaid insurance policies or forced labour are now being settled. But, looted art is the biggest unresolved Holocaust-era matter, and the trickiest.The violent whirlwind of Nazi fanaticism, greed, and warfare threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. However, young art professionals as well as ordinary everyday heroes, , fought back with an extraordinary effort to safeguard, rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures. At least 100,000 works of art—some say hundreds of thousands—stolen by the Nazis have never been returned to their pre-war owners or to their descendants. Russia still holds more than 200,000 pieces. Efforts to find and identify these works have been intensified in recent years, ever since the end of the cold war opened up Eastern Europe’s archives. So far only a fraction of the missing pieces have been returned.
I have recently seen the documentary film The Rape of Europa and read Dan Silva’s bestseller, The English Assassin which each in its own way educates the public on the enormity of Hitler’s ERR – An intelligence service for hunting down works of art, a strike force for raids and seizures, and a staff of art historians and appraisers which even had its own carpenters for crating looted works for shipment to Germany. Two days after Hitler’s victory tour of Paris, he ordered all works of art owned by Jews to be transferred to German hands for safe-keeping. In reality, the plundering began. The Rothschild collections and residences were seized. The collections of banking magnate David David-Weill and Jacues Stern were seized. Hundreds of thousands of paintings, sculptures, and objets d’art quickly vanished.
It is the Swiss connection that is so unique and troubling. Neutrality left the dealers and collectors in a unique position to capitalize on “the rape of Europa.” During WW II, the Swiss were permitted to travel throughout much of Europe and the Swiss franc was the world’s only universally accepted currency. Paris was the place to buy looted art, but Zurich, Lucerne and Geneva were the places to unload it or stash it. Under Swiss law, if a person takes possession of an object in good faith, and that object happens to be stolen, it’s rightfully his after five years! If an art dealer finds himself in possession of stolen artwork, it’s the responsibility of the true owner to reimburse the dealer in order to reclaim his painting. The Swiss made it very time-consuming and expensive for any foreigner to reclaim property from a Swiss citizen. The Swiss usually took shelter behind a claim of good faith and most plaintiffs walked away empty- handed. Even with Switzerland’s acknowledgement of being a trading center of art in its 2001 report to the Independent Commission of Experts which was formed in 1996 unanswered questions remain. How many works of art remain hidden in the vaults of Switzerland’s banks and in the homes of Swiss citizens is still an unsolved mystery in 2008..
Greta Brewer
Vice President of Education,
NEXT GENERATIONS
NEXT GENERATIONS is under the auspices of LEAH, League for Educational Awareness of the Holocaust.
|
