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Restoring art, dignity to Holocaust survivors
At the same time the Nazis were rounding up Jewish families and putting them in cattle cars destined for concentration camps, they were plundering precious art works that lined the walls of their victims' homes. Other families who were fortunate enough to escape the grasp of the Nazis fled quickly, leaving their valuable and sentimental pieces of art behind only to be systematically stolen by the Germans. Now, more than 50 years after the end of World War II, elderly survivors who have memories of paintings hanging in their parents' homes and children born after the war who have only pictures of family artwork have launched efforts to reclaim the cultural treasures that have ended up in museums and private collections around the world. Despite the return of hundreds of thousands of paintings and other pieces of art after the war, the restitution process is far from complete. Art historians, lawyers and other experts on art looted during the Holocaust era who spoke at a conference last week examining the moral and legal implications of art restitution said there are many difficulties standing in the way of people who are trying to track down their families' possessions. The lack of international law governing the restitution of art, the prohibitive costs of investigating the origins of the works and problems in proving ownership of artwork that was stolen and exchanged hands many times has prevented individuals from recovering art that they claim to be their own. Heirs describe the task of trying to recover looted art in terms of David and Goliath. They are the helpless Davids and the national governments and museums which have the works of art they are claiming are the Goliaths. Lillian Weingast, who is originally from Austria and now lives in New Jersey, has had mixed success in getting her family's works back. While she has received some paintings from Austria after going to court and identifying them, she has been unable to get paintings back from France, where some of her relatives fled. She was told that she lacked the proper evidence to prove her claim. Weingast said her family left everything behind, including any sort of documentation related to the art. "We ran for our lives because we didn't want to be killed," she said. Willi Korte, a German-born lawyer, researcher and investigator specializing in the identification and restitution of art lost during World War II, said unlike the Swiss banking issue, where there can be some kind of financial settlement, there is no way to sit down collectively and cut a deal with the governments, museums and individual collectors that now have possession of disputed pieces of art. Each individual will have to pursue his or her own claims, said Korte, who lives in Silver Spring, Md. He said, however, that there needs to be institutional help to research and catalogue the works that were stolen from Jews during the war. "Once that woman who remembers her father's home in 1936 in Berlin is gone, maybe everything else is gone and the grandson can [search for the art] for the next 30 years and with $70 million dollars, he will still not produce anything," Korte said. The B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, which sponsored the one-day conference last Thursday, announced that it has just established an initiative to "document the Jewish cultural losses in Europe at the hands of the Nazis and their Fascist collaborators," according to the project's mission statement. The Holocaust Art Restitution Project, or HARP, will create a database and research institute to help historians, legal researchers and individuals who are seeking cultural items stolen from their families. In addition to the museum's new project, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) is planning to introduce legislation later this month to make U.S. law more favorable to Holocaust victims as they seek to reclaim their property. The legislation Lowey is currently drafting would enable U.S. citizens to file claims in federal court against foreign nationals and allow the court to prevent disputed art from being exported prior to adjudication of the claim. The bill also would provide some federal funding for HARP. "The Holocaust asserts a unique moral claim," she said at the conference. "The rights of Holocaust victims are paramount. It is they who have suffered the most grievous wrong. It is their claims which should be accorded the greatest weight." "Old injustice should not be compounded by fresh inaction," she added. Lowey also said the United States should encourage European countries to amend their laws that impose a statute of limitations for art purchased in good faith even if it is later found to be stolen. Marc Masurovsky, a historical researcher who wrote a report for the U.S. Treasury Department examining its role in the search for and liquidation of the Axis countries' assets, agreed with Lowey, saying the search for art is one of morality. "When the Nazi regime came to power, the Jews were specifically targeted in a massive undertaking of ... dehumanization leading up to extermination," Masurovsky said. "When art dealers, collectors and other individuals [saw] massive opportunities to benefit from the thefts against Jewish families, they were complicitous to war crimes and assisted and abetted the genocide of the Jewish people." Lynn Nicholas, author of "The Rape of Europa," a book detailing the plundering of art during World War II, cautioned against accusing individuals and museums of knowingly purchasing or accepting stolen art before the history of disputed works have been investigated. "It's very dangerous to start a witch hunt before you know exactly what the facts are," she said. While those who perished at the hands of Nazis cannot be saved, the art that reflected their personality and tastes can be reclaimed and preserved by their families, said Constance Lowenthal, executive director of the International Federation of Art Research. "Art theft from the Holocaust is one of the few things from the Holocaust that we can right because art precious, beautiful art tends to survive many calamities because it is prized and it increases in value," she said. "Art is a very special kind of Holocaust victim." William Honan, the national higher education correspondent for the New York Times who wrote "Treasure Hunt," a book about an American soldier who shipped art treasures from Germany back home to Texas, reminded the several hundred people at the conference not to loose sight of the murder of six million Jews. "Art and gold are important," he said "Nevertheless [they are] a sideshow compared to the enormity of the crimes that took place during that period of this century."
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