December 29, 2000
CONTENTS:
- Holocaust Museum Online
- Jewish museum attacked in Bucharest
- US may renew bid to seize Schiele painting
- DNA signature against theft and forgery
Holocaust Museum Online
By Wendy Woods, Newsbytes
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, U.S.A.,
Washington DC's United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Learning Center has created an online resource for visitors and teachers. The site divides the Holocaust and World War II into topics ranging from German mobile killing units to the Jewish resistance. Online are video clips, photographs, articles and chronologies as well as a keyword- searchable archive. World Wide Web: http://wlc.ushmm.org
Jewish museum attacked in Bucharest
Exhibits were smashed by two men searching for "human soap"
Two men have vandalised the Jewish History Museum in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, attacking a guard and smashing windows. The men entered the musuem, which is housed in a former synagogue, early on Thursday morning, asking "Where is the soap made of human fat? Is there any Auschwitz soap?" They punched a 63-year-old guard in the face and choked him, smashing windows and scattering exhibits on the floor, before leaving. Sorin Iulian, the secretary-general of the federation of Jewish communities called the attack "an unprecedented act of hooliganism, with anti-Semitic overtones". Investigators are trying to identify the attackers. "Until last summer, we did exhibit a case of soap made of human grease in the Nazi concentration camps," Mr Iulian said, but he added that it was withdrawn amid doubts about its authenticity. About 800,000 Jews lived in Romania before World War II, but half of them perished under the regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu, which was allied with Nazi Germany. Others died after being deported to the former Soviet Union. Only 12,000 Jews, most of them elderly, now live in Romania.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
US may renew bid to seize Schiele painting
By Gail Appleson, Law Correspondent
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge ruled Thursday that the U.S. government can renew its efforts to force an Austrian museum to forfeit an Egon Schiele painting stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish family during World War II. U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey, who dismissed the government's original case in July, said federal prosecutors could file an amended lawsuit containing new arguments. The government is seeking the surrender of the painting, ''Portrait of Wally,'' which had been loaned to New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) by Austria's Leopold Museum- Privatsiftung. Mukasey found in July that the Leopold could not be considered the holder of stolen property because the painting had been recovered by U.S. forces before the museum bought it. In the earlier decision, Mukasey cited a federal doctrine that holds an individual or entity cannot be convicted of receiving stolen goods if the property had been recovered by the owners or their agent, including the police. Police in this case was interpreted to apply to U.S. forces. However, in Thursday's decision, the judge said the government now wanted to argue that paintings seized during and after the war were not held by U.S. forces with an eye to returning them to their true owners. Final Judgments The judge said that while there was a need to protect the finality of judgments in ordinary cases, ``this is not the ordinary case.'' ``This case involves substantial issues of public policy relating to property stolen during World War Two as part of a program implemented by the German government,'' Mukasey said. Although the Leopold accused prosecutors of withholding the arguments from the original case for strategic reasons, the judge said there was no evidence that the government was pursuing some tactical goal. Federal prosecutors filed the suit last year alleging the painting was stolen property under Austrian law and thus illegally imported into the United States. A federal magistrate issued a warrant that allowed the government to seize the painting from the MoMA. Although Mukasey dismissed the suit during the summer, he stayed the dissolution of the seizure warrant until prosecutors could appeal. Mukasey said Thursday the stay would remain in effect pending further rulings. Court papers said the work by the Expressionist painter had been owned by Lea Bondi Jaray, a Viennese Jew. It was confiscated in 1939 by Friedrich Welz, a Nazi party member. After the war, Welz was interned on suspicion of committing war crimes. His possessions were seized and placed under the authority of U.S. forces in Austria, which erroneously listed the painting as belonging to a Heinrich Rieger and placed it in his collection. Rieger's heirs sold the ``Portrait of Wally,'' which was eventually purchased by the Leopold. The Leopold argued that even if the painting was stolen by Welz, it ``ceased being stolen when it was recovered by the United States forces.'' The painting's value was not immediately known.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/
Pro Hart puts faith in God and DNA
By DAVID NASON
Hart and his son John are not leaving matters to chance. They have developed a plan to brand his works with a unique DNA fingerprint that will make forging impossible. "You can get blokes to make up a container of DNA and you just put a dob of it on the painting," Hart said. "No one knows where it (the DNA) is - it could be on the paint, in the undercoat or on the surface - so there won't be any chance of forging in the future." Hart's gentle, kindly manner suggests this is a man who may have found some kind of inner peace. But evidence of the emotional turmoil engulfing this 72-year- old artistic icon, a man whose hugely popular paintings have been persistently denied acclaim by the art establishment, is not far from the surface. Hart agreed to be interviewed yesterday only on the condition he would not be questioned about the possible involvement of extended family members in the theft of his work. He has decided this issue must stay within the confines of his tight- knit family. As his manager, Rory Ryan, puts it: "If people in and around the family were got at by slick operators, then those slick operators no longer have anything to do with the family." But forgeries are a different matter and today Hart's lawyer, Tony Freestone, will travel to Sydney to receive a report from a team of art experts and forensic scientists that has spent several months investigating to what extent forgery has occurred. After seeing the contents of the report, Hart will decide whether to pass the information on to the NSW police and lay charges. Hart, who clearly does not like to be confronted by such challenges, says he doesn't know what he will do. Unlike his management team, he says the forging of his paintings is something he does not consider a "great problem", and certainly a lesser problem than the many art galleries he claims effectively steal from him by not returning his unsold works. Instead, Hart says he wants to focus on the coming year, when his vast private collection of paintings - the list includes works by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Picasso, Monet, Glover and every conceivable Australian master including Nolan and Dobell - will be available for corporate lease for the first time. "There's about 1000 paintings - I've got 200 Dobells alone - and we won't be holding anything back," Hart said. "Anything of value will be available for leasing because it will be a new revenue stream and because I like to see Australian art spread around the place so people can see it."
http://news.com.au/