[MSN] DUBLIN, Ireland-An Irish museum was formally cleared Friday of claims that its founders were Nazi spies who bought art works from dealers trafficking in items stolen from Jews. U.S. expert condemns Simon Wiesenthal Center's Nazi loot claims.

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U.S. expert condemns Simon Wiesenthal Center's Nazi loot claims
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK Associated Press Writer
Article Launched: 09/28/2007 04:06:19 AM PDT


DUBLIN, Ireland-An Irish museum was formally cleared Friday of claims that
its founders were Nazi spies who bought art works from dealers trafficking
in items stolen from Jews. 

The report from U.S. expert Lynn Nicholas, published by the Royal Irish
Academy following two investigations over three years, called the Simon
Wiesenthal Center's allegations "unprofessional in the extreme." 

Nicholas found no evidence that the late John and Gertrude Hunt-founders of
one of Ireland's best-loved museums, the Hunt Museum in Limerick-did
anything wrong. She did call for further research of the museum's pieces,
most of which are undocumented. 

Nicholas, Washington-based author of "The Rape of Europa" and other works
examining the World War II art world, harshly criticized the Wiesenthal
Center, the world's major Nazi-hunting pressure group, headquartered in Los
Angeles, for making personally abusive claims based on threadbare evidence. 

A call to a spokesman at the center before business hours Friday was not
immediately returned. 

Nicholas said she could find "no proof whatsoever that the Hunts were Nazis,
that they were involved in any kind of espionage, or that they were
traffickers in looted art." 

"It is, of course, important to recover and return items unlawfully taken
during World War II, but it is equally obligatory, in the pursuit of
justice, to protect people and institutions from unproven allegations," she
wrote. 

Nicholas said the Wiesenthal Center's primary documentary basis for its
allegation was an Irish army intelligence file on Gertrude Hunt, who was
German. Such files-kept on more than 500 German nationals during the war-are
open to the public in a Dublin archive. 
She said the center's Paris-based director of international liaison, Shimon
Samuels, was irresponsible not to have admitted from the start this was his
source. 

Samuels in 2004 claimed-in a public letter to Irish President Mary McAleese
and a string of Irish media interviews-that the Hunts were suspected Nazi
spies and buyers of Holocaust victims' art. He declined to reveal his
source. 

Nicholas said the file does include three letters from April 1944 to
November 1946 to the Hunts from Alexander von Frey, a Swiss-based dealer who
did purchase Nazi loot. These letters concerned von Frey's help in getting
food parcels and messages to Gertrude Hunt's mother in Germany and von
Frey's interest in moving to New York, which he did in 1948. 

But the file contains no evidence that the Hunts purchased a single art work
from anybody, much less one with links to the Holocaust, she said. 

"It is impossible to understand why the Wiesenthal Center did not reveal its
documentation immediately, as the discovery of a 'red flag' dealer's name
associated with an art collection is certainly a valid reason for an
inquiry. The decision to challenge the Irish authorities in a sort of
blackmail game was unprofessional in the extreme," the report said. 

"The fact that dealers once knew and dealt with each other is not sufficient
basis for assuming that they shared political ideas or participated in
looting. Von Frey certainly did trade with the Nazis, but that fact alone
does not prove that the Hunts did," it said. 

"It is regrettable that Dr. Samuels chose to pursue the inquiry in such a
confrontational and often personally offensive manner, and that he has at
times misstated what was in the military file and made unverified
allegations," it said. 

Nicholas said the Wiesenthal Center also had misidentified another name in
the letters. 

"The name used, four times in one letter, is Buhl, not Buhrle, and the
individual described, an unreliable dealer who sells forgeries, certainly
bears no resemblance to the extremely rich collector and armaments
manufacturer Emil Buhrle," the report said. 

The findings came too late for the Hunts' son and major museum booster, John
Jr., who struggled to clear his parents' name but died less than a year
after the allegations, aged 47. 

"This is one of the most tragic elements to this story," said the museum
director, Virginia Teehan. She said the Wiesenthal Center's allegations
"caused great pain to John. ... It's very regrettable that he didn't live to
see this report today." 

Teehan led an effort in 2005 to display all of the museum's pieces on a Web
site and inviting viewers to report any suspicions that they could have been
stolen from Jewish families during the war. 

She said the site has had more than a quarter-million visitors "and there's
been no query about any item contained in the collection." 

Teehan said the Wiesenthal Center should apologize. "They have insulted the
memory of John and Gertrude Hunt very deeply. One would expect they would be
honorable in this regard," she said. 

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On the Net: 

Report, http://www.ria.ie/pdfs/huntreport.pdf 

Hunt Museum photo archive of pieces, http://test.huntmuseum.com/intro.html