The Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Even in the museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau, controversy reigns over the rightful ownership of artwork top Nazis once claimed as their own. Since 1973, Polish museum authorities have refused to return several portraits in the Auschwitz Museum's collection to Dinah Babbitt, the woman who painted them while she was interned at the concentration camp.

Last week, Babbitt passed away at the age of 86, in Felton, California. A recent article in Australia's Sydney Morning Herald documented her story. Over the course of her long life, Babbitt was an animator for Warner Brothers, and worked on characters including Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and Tweety Bird. But before she made her living illustrating beloved cartoon characters, she was forced literally to paint for her very life. When she was a prisoner in Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi physician Josef Mengele noticed her artistic talent. He deemed it better in quality, in fact, than that of color photography, and forced her to illustrate his experiments on Jewish and Gypsy prisoners.

When in 1973 Babbitt learned of the existence of her paintings in the museum, she traveled by train to Auschwitz. She was determined to liberate at least the visual embodiment of the memory of the people she had once painted. Yet the Polish museum authorities refused to return the paintings to her, claiming that if the portraits belonged to anyone, it was Mengele's descendants.

Such a position suggests that Mengele paid Babbitt for her work. In fact, it vindicates Mengele's granting Babbitt her life as proper compensation. A 35 year battle for the paintings ensued. But Babbitt did not live to see the paintings returned.

Babbitt's story raises many issues relevant to the larger controversy of Nazi looted art today. It demonstrates that even in the midst of committing the greatest horrors of the Holocaust, the Nazis placed tremendous value on art. And it was this value that led them to commit such widespread looting. Babbitt's story illustrates, too, the lengths some museums will go to in order to hold on to their art--even when the terrible truth of an object's past has fully come to light, even when an object is found in the place where the losses of the Holocaust's victims should carry the most weight of all.

In California's Norton Simon Museum hang a pair of rare masterpieces. The long, thin vertical panels depict the biblical moment of the fall of man--a nude Adam clutches an apple, while a sinuous Eve reaches up to grasp a branch of the Tree of Knowledge. The paintings, by German master Lucas Cranach the Elder, have a past that span from the Reformation to the Russian Revolution, through to the Nazi takeover of Holland. Today, they are at the heart of a debate raging in California over how long claims can be made for the restitution of Nazi looted art.

The story of the paintings raises two important issues pertaining to Nazi looted art: the critical challenge of establishing provenance for artwork, and whether a statute of limitations should exist for Holocaust-era claims.

Over the past week, the LA Times has run several articles on the paintings and the debate. The most recent, published on August 22nd, explains the mysterious past of the paintings' most clearly. The Cranachs belonged to the collection of an eminent Dutch art dealer named Jacques Goudstikker. In 1940, Goudstikker, a Jew, fled Amsterdam as the Nazis invaded Holland, forced to leave his collection behind. Hermann Goering, second in command to Hitler, "purchased" the Cranachs and most of Goustikker's collection. After the war, the Cranachs were recovered by the Allies and returned to the Dutch government, with the hope that they could then be retituted to their rightful private owner, as according to Allied policy. In fact, in 1966, the Cranachs were resituted--but not to the Goudstikker family. Instead, the paintings were claimed by a Russian-American man named Stroganoff Scherbatoff.

Goudstikker had purchased the paintings in 1931 at an auction billed as coming from the "Stroganoff Collection Leningrad." The auction was actually held by the Russian state, to raise funds for its impoverished government. The Russian state had apparently siezed the artwork in the sale from the wealthy Stroganoff family in 1917, when the family fled during the Bolshevik Revolution. But though included in the sale, in fact there is no evidence that the Cranachs actually ever belonged to the Stroganoffs. Evidence suggests that they may have come from another source, and been added to the sale to lend it legitimacy.

Whether the paintings ever belonged to the Stroganoffs is central to the Norton Simon's claim for rightful ownership to the paintings. Because after recovering the paintings in 1966, Stroganoff Scherbatoff sold the paintings to Norton Simon, founder of the Norton Simon Museum. If he was the rightful owner, then the sale to Norton Simon was legal.

But Goudstikker's heir, Marei Von Saher of Connecticut, believes the Goudstikker family is the rightful owner, having legally purchased the paintings in 1931, and then having them confiscated by Goering. In 2006, the Dutch government openly acknowledged Goudstikker's "involuntary loss of possession" of his collection, and returned 202 objects the Dutch government had long held to Von Saher. Von Saher sued for rightful ownership of the Cranach paintings in 2007.

While the artworks' uncertain provenance complicates the restitution, whether the Goudstikker family will ever receive compensation for artwork they once owned may come down ultimately to legal technicalities. The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that a California law extending the Statute of Limitations for claims on Holocaust-era looted artwork was in fact unconstitutional. The judges' reasoning was that the California law impinged on federal powers.

Von Saher, however, will be allowed to possibly pursue the suit under a different California law that does not pertain to Holocaust-era assets.

Art Theft, Then and Now

Yesterday, The New York Times City Room described the quiet theft of two small paintings in New York City. On the Upper West Side, a brownstone houses the Nicholas Roerich Museum. Its rooms are filled solely with the work of the obscure Russian artist Roerich, including his images of India, Tibet and Mongolia, where he traveled. In broad daylight, during the museum's brief visiting hours, someone removed a small painting from a wall, and walked out of the museum with it. A day or so later, the thief returned and walked out with another.

Together, the paintings are worth about $30,000. A motive for the theft remains unclear. But according to Daniel Entin, the museum's director, sale of the stolen art on the open market is unlikely. City Room quotes him as saying, “It’s hard for paintings to show up on the market because they’re registered and illustrated everywhere. I was told that nobody who wants to collect art buys it without checking first.”

The truth of such a statement is due in no small part to the issue of Nazi looted art. The art market has traditionally been one of the most secretive in the world, with dealers and auction houses guarding fiercely the identity of both buyers and sellers. But in 1998, the Washington Principles were endorsed by 44 countries. The Principles urge art institutions to fully investigate the provenances of any artworks in their possession, in addition to any artwork they might acquire. Today, museums all over, as well as major auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's, now conduct serious provenance research into their art objects. The Washington Principles have contributed to a more transparent art market than has ever existed before.

The Terezin Declaration, just endorsed by 46 countries this past June, further emphasizes the importance of identifying an artwork's past. It stresses "the importance for all stakeholders to continue and support intensified systematic provenance research... and where relevant to make the results of this research, including ongoing updates, available via the internet."

Today, databases can be found that report not just Nazi looted art, but all stolen art. These databases, including Interpol and the Art Loss Register, are critical not only for victims, but for potential buyers, so that they can better ensure they are not purchasing stolen property. The problem remains, however, that there are those who are willing to buy art regardless of its past. And so, paintings will continue to disapear from gallery walls, whether from small museums on the Upper West Side or major institutions like the Van Gogh Museum. Which is why it is essential to recognize the significance of the lootings during World War II. Acknowledging the Nazis' art thefts contirubutes to change, not just for the consequences of the past, but for the future as well.

Historical Background

Nazi Germany undertook the greatest art conspiracy in history from 1933 to 1945. As part of a top secret plan to build the world’s ultimate museum, Hitler and his minions looted at least a million art objects, mostly from their Jewish victims. The widespread and organized confiscations were conducted so efficiently that it was not until the end of the war that the Allies had any idea of the real scope of the looting. In 1945, the then Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Francis H. Taylor, reported that the Nazis had stolen European art treasures worth a total of $2 billion to $2.5 billion, between $24 billion and $30 billion today. The sum was more than the total value of all the artwork in the United States at the time.

After the war came to an end, Allied troops uncovered stashes of Nazi looted art, hidden high in mountain castles and deep underground in salt mines. A small section of the U.S. Army known as the Monuments Men was assigned the hugely overwhelming task of recovering and returning as many of the looted art objects as possible. Recruited from America’s top museums, galleries, universities and studios, the Monuments Men achieved incredible success against nearly impossible odds, with the help of representatives from nations across Europe. Of the 600,000 paintings estimated to have been looted by the Nazis, approximately 500,000 were located and returned to owners or heirs. Most of the restitutions were accomplished within five years of the end of the war.

But today, nearly sixty-five years later, many looted art objects remain missing, and have yet to be returned to a proper owner. An estimated 100,000 paintings alone have never been restituted. Restitution efforts, however, are still continuing. Museums scour their collections for objects with suspicious ownerships. Heirs carry on the search for an art object that belonged to a lost relative. Each year, looted drawings, prints, sculptures and paintings are still being identified and returned to a proper owner. Many more, however, are still waiting to be found.

Welcome

Last month, on June 26^th, 2009, Elie Wiesel spoke at the opening ceremony of the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague. “What we so poorly call the Holocaust," the author and survivor said, "deals not only with political dictatorship, racist ideology and military conquest; but also with…financial gain, State-organized robbery, or just money.” A significant aspect of that robbery was the Nazis’ looting of art from Jewish people across Europe.

From 1933 to 1945, the Nazis looted over a million art objects. In the process of plundering the collections of Jews, the Nazis gained immense wealth. But the looting encompassed more than monetary gain. Art has always represented for mankind the highest reflection of the human condition. The Nazis’ act of stripping Jews of their art became a concrete means, too, of stripping from them the beauty of their humanity.

Much of the looted artwork was returned to proper owners or heirs in the years following the war. However, even today, many looted objects are yet to be restituted. As the Holocaust Era Assets Conference convened, Stuart Eizenstat, head of the U.S. delegation, told The Washington Post, "This is one of our last chances to inject a new sense of justice into this issue before it's too late for Holocaust victims."

A goal of the conference was “to discuss new, innovative approaches in education, social programs and cultural initiatives related to the Holocaust and other National Socialist wrongs.” In such a spirit of innovation, I decided to start this blog. My hope is that it can become a forum for a current, on-going conversation on Nazi looted art, when time perhaps may be running out for this important issue. Please feel free to send me your comments and questions, or share your own experiences related to the Nazis’ art confiscations.

In the act of looting art, the Nazis placed more value on objects than on the lives of people. Today, continued debate of their terrible skewing of priorities helps bring more fully to light the extent of the wrongs of the past.
Such discussion may lead, in fact, to increased restitution-- not just of priceless paintings, but of a tangible beauty to the memory of a people.