[MSN] Compelling and horrifying story of Nazi ransacking and ruin. The Nazis left a trail of cultural destruction across Europe.

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‘Compelling and horrifying story of Nazi ransacking and ruin' 
By Marilyn Henry
 

The Nazis left a trail of cultural destruction across Europe.

They stole hundreds of thousands of paintings, sculptures, tapestries,
furniture, and household goods, as well as Judaica and church artifacts.
Objects that were not sold to raise money for the German military were
hidden in castles, bunkers, trains, and mines. When World War II ended and
the Allies found the treasure troves, it appeared as if some of the world’s
most important museums were buried underground.


U.S. chaplain Samuel Blinder sorts stolen Torah scrolls at the Offenbach
Archive Collecting Point. Courtesy of Lynn Nicholas 
The compelling and horrifying story of Nazi ransacking and ruin is
brilliantly told in "The Rape of Europa." The documentary, based on the 1994
book by Lynn H. Nicholas, dramatically captures a panoramic sweep of history
and culture. With marvelous interviews and excellent archival film and
photographs, it covers the enormity of cultural casualties in Europe and the
efforts of the Allies, especially the American military’s "Monuments Men,"
to protect, rescue, and restore art and architecture.

(Full disclosure: I have reported on the efforts to locate and recover
Nazi-looted artworks for a decade, and I know many people in the film.)

Nothing was safe in Europe during World War II. Although most stolen
artworks were returned to their countries of origin, it is not certain,
decades later, how much art was destroyed, and how much confiscated art had
survived but remains unclaimed or unrestituted.

As they advanced and as they retreated, the Nazis looted and destroyed. They
were motivated by greed, power, and contempt for those in their path. The
barbarity to which they subjected people was also unleashed on artistic and
religious treasures. To murder people and demolish culture was to destroy
both body and soul. What the Nazis did not steal or damage was imperiled by
combat. Although it devotes much attention to the Monuments Men’s valiant
rescue and restitution of cultural heritage, the film does not shy away from
the Allies’ destruction of treasured sites in combat or the uneasiness of
some soldiers to risk their lives to protect artworks.

For Jewish audiences for whom the war equals the Holocaust, "The Rape of
Europa" may leave them mildly dissatisfied. Although the massive thefts of
Jewish art and artifacts are noted, often in powerful and emotional ways,
the connection of theft to the genocide is not obvious.

The film begins and ends with Maria Altmann, a refugee from Austria who last
year successfully recovered five paintings by Gustav Klimt. One, an iconic
portrait of Altmann’s aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer, was bought by Ronald S. Lauder
for a record $135 million. However, it is not made clear that most Nazi
victims and their heirs are unlikely to succeed in recovering their
artworks, nor are their artworks of such renown or of great financial value.
Nor does the film touch on the nasty side of efforts to reunite Nazi victims
with their family properties. When faced with a claim decades after the war,
many current owners, shocked at the circumstances, slam the figurative door
on the victims and heirs.

Few would be treated as kindly as were the heirs of Paris art dealer André
Seligmann by the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Seligmann had ejected Hermann
Goering from his gallery in 1938. His artworks were seized when the Nazis
occupied France in 1940, and a painting by Francois Boucher (1707-1770),
"Les Amoureux Jeunes" ("The Young Lovers"), was later displayed in the
gallery of Goering’s estate, Carinhall. Some 50 years later, it was donated
to the Utah museum. In a ceremony that appears in the film, the museum
returned the Boucher to the heirs in 2004. "We can’t make amends for the
millions of lives that were taken, but we can do something simple, return
something stolen and confer humanity back on all of us," said David Carroll,
the museum’s director of collections.

Some of the documentary’s most gut-wrenching moments concern stolen Judaica.
The film features German historian Ralf Rossmeisl who diligently searches
for Judaica, and tracks the original owners and heirs through engravings on
the objects. Shown with silver bells from Torah crowns, rimonim, he says, "I
hear the ringing of the Jewish rimonim and it makes me shiver."

The Americans had organized collecting points in their zone of occupied
Germany, where the Monuments Men frantically tried to identify, sort,
catalogue, restore, and return the looted objects that had been found by the
troops. The Wiesbaden collecting point housed Judaica that often went
unclaimed because the individuals, institutions, and communities that had
used it had been decimated. "We had one whole room filled with Torahs, one
on top of another like a mountain. By this time, the full recognition of
what had happened in the camps had come out. We knew it," said Kenneth
Lindsay, then a young art historian. "And you could not pass that room
without shuddering, thinking of all the people that died and the route that
Torah took to get to our place."

To this day, the cultural consequences of World War II are evident. For
instance, the medieval cemetery and gothic galleries of Camposanto, Pisa,
were destroyed in ground fighting. The restoration started by Monuments Man
Deane Keller has not been completed.

In the last few weeks, events have reminded us that the political and
diplomatic consequences have not been resolved. Poland accused Germany of
failing to return artworks that were stolen during the war. In turn, Germany
is angry at Poland for refusing to return artifacts, including Mozart’s
original scores, that had been evacuated from the Prussian National Library
in Berlin to Krakow to protect them from bombings.

And then there are the individual stories — the ones we do not yet know. But
one day, soon, somewhere in the world, a visitor will spot a looted painting
at a museum or an auction house will be unable to verify the provenance for
an object that was in a pre-war Jewish collection in Europe. While their
timing is unknown, claims for Nazi-looted art are as certain as the film’s
focus: that the Nazis were the greatest art thieves in history.

"The Rape of Europa" was written, produced and directed by Richard Berge,
Bonni Cohen, and Nicole Newnham; co-produced by Robert M. Edsel; and
narrated by Joan Allen. The film opens today in New York at the Paris and
Angelika theaters. For more information, see www.rapeofeuropa.com and
www.menemshafilms.com 

http://www.jstandard.com/