A survey highlights the lack of safeguards for Hong Kong's heritage sites as the government is called upon to act
STELLA LEE
The South China Morning Post report cited by legislator Lau Ping- cheung.
More than 400 pre-war buildings which deserve preservation for their historical value remain unprotected, it was revealed last night. Legislator Lau Ping-chung disclosed the figures - contained in a survey by the Antiquities and Monuments Office - to the Legislative Council as his motion urging the government to devise quickly a comprehensive policy to preserve such heritage sites was endorsed.
Mr Lau said that while only 77 buildings were listed as protected monuments, the survey showed that there were 502 pre-World War II buildings which had historical value and should be protected. Among these 502 buildings, 117 were listed as having "important" historical value. Mr Lau said the discrepancy suggested that the present system of preservation was not working. Mr Lau cited a case in which the Water Supplies Department built a concrete platform over an historic anti-aircraft position in Wong Nai Chung Gap without the knowledge of the Antiquities and Monuments Office. The office stepped in after the South China Morning Post reported the case this week. Mr Lau said that current antiquities laws only granted automatic protection to relics dating from before 1800. However, he said many more-recent heritage sites needed protection too. His non-binding motion last night called for incentives to encourage the private sector to preserve historic sites. He said the government should also devise a mechanism promoting the preservation and restoration of historical buildings so that they could be put to use again.
Legislator Howard Young of the Liberal Party said the Antiquities and Monuments Office was too weak, as it needed Executive Council approval before listing a building as a protected monument. Court action could be needed if the owners of such a building insisted on demolishing it. "It is worse than a toothless tiger," Mr Young said. Democrat legislator Andrew Cheng Kar-foo agreed. "We hope the government can upgrade the office while reviewing its function." Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho Chi-ping admitted that the level of protection for heritage sites was unsatisfactory. He agreed that attempts at preservation were often only made when historical buildings faced demolition. He promised to complete a review of heritage preservation policy for public consultation within a year. However, he said that protection works relied not only on the government, but on society's recognition that heritage was an asset and that public money needed to be spent on its preservation. He added that heritage sites could only be part of sustainable development if their functions were integrated into modern life.
http://hongkong.scmp.com/
From: IntlArtCop@aol.com Date sent: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 17:10:59 EST
Subject: Re: responses to query Guard coverage per sq. ft.
To: securma@xs4all.nl
Ann Mayo asks about the number of guards per square foot in a museum. There have been numbers thrown around for years and every one is irresponsible. There is no such formula and there should not be such a formula because museum directors in need of dollar savings have repeatedly selected the most favorable one to support their position to cut guards and used it irregardless of how inappropriate it is for their situation. PLEASE, people. Stop trying to quantify this and walk around your galleries and think about what a real guard can handle and make decisions based on common sense, the sight lines, the value and importance and nature of the items being protected, and the display methods. The number is effected by the number and placement of nearby doors and windows, crossover points to non-public space, quality and quantiy of electronics such as alarms and cameras, and response time from the nearest response point, etc. Change or re-evaluate the coverage every time the gallery configuration changes. I have served 400 mnuseum clients over 25 years and this has been an issue in at least 40 percent of them. I remember the late Bob Burke, Director of Security at Smithsonian standing up at one of their conferences and pleading with everyone to stop trying to quantify this because of the way the number is misused by museums. I agree. Repeat after me, "In the real world, there can be no formula". A formula can't even be applied to an empty gallery full of worthless objects. How many guards per square foot do you need to protect that space? To stop vandalism of the walls. To keep the homeless from moving in. To protect the visitors from themselves? To direct visitors. That number would be required just to protect the place from honest people with nothing to steal. (Ann, I know that you agree with me and are asking because you were told to ask. I'm not being critical of you for asking.)
Steve Keller
La directora de ARCO asegura que el robo de una cerámica de Picasso pudo ser "un despiste"
EUROPA PRESS
Photo of the stolen ceramic: http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2003/02/14/cultura/1045218831.html
NOTICIAS RELACIONADAS MADRID.- La directora de ARCO, Rosina Gómez- Baeza, ha señalado que cree que puede no tratarse de un robo la desaparición ayer de una cerámica de Picasso expuesta en la galería alemana Pudelko.
Asimismo, ha explicado que este hecho se produjo sin violencia alguna y ha añadido que "la seguridad absoluta no existe" y que "la Feria ha puesto todos los medios a su alcance para evitar este tipo de cosas". La obra desaparecida, fechada en 1952 y titulada 'Quatre visages', está valorada en 11.500 euros. Se trata de un plato con colores en azul y verde que forma parte de una exquisita colección que posee la citada galería.
Painting Stolen From Local Art Gallery
(Feb. 14) -- A one-of-a-kind painting is missing from a local art gallery. Somebody walked out of Centaur Gallery in the fashion show mall with the $39,000 painting.
The stolen painting was very small in size. According to workers at the art gallery the thief made a quick entrance and quick exit taking off with one valuable piece of work. Centaur Sculpture Gallery invites you to come in and browse. Wednesday, someone refused that offer and took something else. A $49,000 Mark McGuire painting and a $125,000 Corvette painting are the works of Leroy Neiman's Art kept near the Gallery's entrance. "Leroy Neiman is probably one of the worlds most popular living artists," says Robert Hawks, and Art Salesman. Wednesday, Neiman's $39,500 painting was spotted by a thief. The Neiman painting was on display in the art gallery's window. According to the surveillance video, someone walked in grabbed the painting, put into some shopping bags and walked out the store. Centaur is offering a reward to anyone with information about the thief or the whereabouts of Neiman's original painting. "It would have to be a very naive crook who'd think that they can sell something as recognizable and as important as that expensive painting," says Hawk. Millions of dollars in art is for sale at Centaur. But never in a million years, would anyone here have thought that someone would have the guts to take their art and run.
The suspect is described as white male, black hair, between 45 and 50 years old, 150 pounds and around 5' - 8".
He was last seen wearing jeans, a dark coat and tennis shoes. Anyone with information is asked to call Metro's Crimestoppers at 385- 5555.
The gallery is offering a $5,000 reward.
http://www.klas-tv.com/
Treasure hunter
(Filed: 15/02/2003)
Lili Gutmann had not seen her family's works of art since 1938 when the Nazis stripped their house bare. Thanks to Anne Webber and her Commission for Looted Art, 64 years later the possessions have been returned to their rightful owners. By David Gritten
Last September a minor government official ushered an 83-year-old woman named Lili Gutmann, together with half a dozen members of her family, into a large storage unit in Rijswijk, a small Dutch town near the Hague. Inside were 233 items belonging to the family, ranging in size from a small saucer to a large tapestry, and including glasses, photographs, mirrors, chairs, doorknockers and cushions. Lili Gutmann had not seen them since 1938, the year she left her family home in Heemstede, Holland, to get married in Italy. She never saw her parents again; they perished in Nazi concentration camps. After the Second World War, Lili and her older brother Bernard returned to the house, only to find it stripped bare; the Nazis had seized their possessions and art treasures. These items had been appropriated 60 years ago by the Dutch Government, which keeps all its art collections that are not on show in galleries inside a huge Rijswijk office block under tight security. For the Gutmanns, the climactic day on which they reclaimed their property was a curious blend of quiet satisfaction and banal, bureaucratic routine. Also in the family group that day were Lili's nephews, Nick and Simon Goodman, who now live in Los Angeles but were born and raised in England, where their parents anglicised their surname. 'Inside, it was like a mini-warehouse with bare walls,' recalls Simon. 'But they'd done a nice job,' adds Nick. 'They'd laid our possessions out a little bit. Everything was tagged.' Although it was 64 years since she had seen them, Lili recognised every object. 'She walked in and said, "This chair was in my mother's bedroom. This was her desk. This was her chair",' says Simon. 'It's amazing how much she remembered. There was a sweet moment with the family silver. She didn't dare touch it because as a kid she'd been told she couldn't go near it; it was too precious.'
It was an emotional day. Lili had almost given up hope of ever seeing these family heirlooms again, while for Nick and Simon it was the culmination of a decade-long quest. But reactions in the room varied wildly: the brothers, especially Simon, found tears welling up in their eyes; Lili remained impassive. 'She's a tough lady,' says Simon. 'And she's had to be. People who survived the war don't get in touch with their emotions like those of us who came through the Sixties. They have that British-style stiff upper lip.' 'At one point I put my arm round Lili,' adds Nick, 'and asked how she was doing. "Oh," she said, "I'm OK." She wasn't totally ignoring it, but for her it's been years of cauterising her emotions.' The Gutmanns' possessions might be missing still but for the determination and tenacity of Anne Webber. She runs the Commission for Looted Art in Europe from a handsome 18th-century townhouse near Baker Street in London, heading a small, under-funded team comprising a co-chairman, an art historian, researchers, translators and a handful of part-time volunteers. And it was she who persuaded the Dutch Government to return the family's items that had been appropriated. The commission was founded in 1999, and its workload has grown rapidly; elderly people inundate Webber with distressing stories of family art treasures looted or forcibly purchased by the Nazis during the war. 'It's traumatic for many of them to talk about,' she says. 'Some have such personal memories of these art works, and all of them are connected to this terrible experience.' Funded wholly by donations from individuals and foundations, the commission offers its services free. 'We're currently working on over 100 cases,' says Webber. 'That involves probably 4,000 different objects.' They include paintings, tapestries, silver and jewels that were seized from Jews and other families, or became the subject of 'forcible sales' - that is, traded for a fraction of their true value. It is believed the Nazis stripped Europe of a fifth of its art treasures; they preferred Old Masters to the 'degenerate' Impressionists or Surrealists. One estimate suggests art treasures worth an astonishing £20 billion are still missing. Art looting by the Nazis had its roots in one of Hitler's more bizarre ambitions: to turn Linz, the provincial Austrian market town where he spent his teens, into the cultural capital of the Third Reich. He envisaged theatres, an opera house and concert halls; but a Fuehrermuseum, boasting the greatest art collection ever assembled, would be Linz's crowning glory. Hitler knew all about the art treasures in the collections of Europe's prominent Jewish families, and soon after Germany annexed Austria, he put his plans into action. Thus began the most appalling act of cultural barbarism in European history. There was no question of acquiring these art works legitimately. The Nazis amassed them the quick, easy way: by confiscating them, often on the day their Jewish owners were herded off to death camps.
The Gutmanns were no exception. In 1943 Lili's parents, heirs to the wealthy German family who founded the Dresden Bank, realised their position in Nazi-occupied Holland was vulnerable, even though their family had converted from Judaism to Christianity a generation before. They negotiated a safe passage to Florence, where they were to be reunited with Lili. But before they could leave, two SS men knocked at the door, and they were dispatched to separate camps, where they died. Lili, knowing nothing of this, waited in vain for them at the railway station in Florence for two days. For 50 years after the war, such outrages were barely discussed. Only now is the topic of looted art on an international public agenda. Why the delay? 'It's a misunderstanding to think people weren't looking all that time to recover their family's works of art,' says Webber. 'But for a long time there was no one to help them.' Their search was daunting. Some governments, such as Germany's and Austria's, imposed post-war restitution deadlines (1948 and 1969 respectively); when they expired, progress in returning art works to rightful owners halted. It was also long assumed that much looted art ended up behind the Iron Curtain; many works of art in Nazi hands were confiscated by small units of the Red Army known as 'trophy brigades'. But until the Iron Curtain was lifted, the art was hard to trace. Lastly, many Holocaust survivors understandably wanted to put the horrific episode behind them, and were reluctant to hunt for their art treasures; in some cases, their children and grandchildren have taken up the challenge. Their task has been made easier with the emergence of the internet, which speeds the flow of information across national boundaries. Whatever the reasons for delay, the restitution of looted art works is finally gathering momentum. But for the Goodman brothers, both in their 50s, it has been a longer journey than they first thought. After their father Bernard, Lili's brother, died almost penniless in 1994, they learnt of his doomed, obsessive 50- year quest to find his parents' lost possessions and reclaim his family's heritage. He was a travel agent, and each time his work took him abroad, whether to Germany, France, Holland or Switzerland, he would take a detour to try to track down family heirlooms. Despite all his research, he was able to unearth only a handful of paintings and antiques - and they all had to be resold immediately to repay family debts and legal fees. But the vast majority eluded him, and though he kept searching, he stopped talking about them. Only when Nick and Simon talked to Lili did they realise how many family treasures were still missing, and the extent of their father's detective work.
The brothers resumed the search, setting out to find a missing Degas pastel, Landscape with Smokestacks, that had once belonged to their grandparents. During the war they had sent it to France for safekeeping, but it disappeared mysteriously. In 1996, ploughing through art books in a Los Angeles library, Simon finally came upon a photograph of the lost painting, and its listed owner: Daniel Searle, a pharmaceuticals tycoon from Chicago who had paid $850,000 for it a decade before, and seemed genuinely innocent of its dubious origins. When the Goodmans contacted him in 1996 to say the painting had been stolen, Searle hired a lawyer whose initial reaction was to scorn their claim. At this time, Webber, a tall, striking woman with an imposing mane of dark hair, was a documentarian who had worked for the BBC and ITV. 'I had made films about subjects ranging from debutantes to women in prison,' she says. She grew up in a middle- class Jewish family in Manchester, and read anthropology at London University. But despite her interest in the arts, there was little in her background to suggest her eventual vocation. She decided to follow the legal dispute between Searle and the Gutmanns, directing and producing a documentary about their case: Making a Killing, which was later broadcast on Channel 4. In the documentary, she interviewed Searle and took Lili Gutmann back to her old family house, where Lili plaintively told the cameras, 'We have so little of what was our life', adding that the return of the Degas would be 'something to remind us of the life of our parents'. On completing the film, Webber sent Searle a copy. He was so moved by it that he phoned her and said, 'I think I ought to settle.' The ownership was split, with the Art Institute of Chicago buying the family's share. A plaque now beside the painting on display at the institute confirms it belongs to the Gutmanns. 'I helped resolve that dispute because I was the only person speaking to both sides,' recalls Webber. 'Things were getting polarised, and $1 million was spent on legal fees even before the case reached court. The film took some time to get commissioned, because in 1996 and 1997 looted art wasn't something anyone knew much about. But inevitably, during filming I did a huge amount of research and found it fascinating.' It just so happened that the Gutmann family's fight to reclaim their possessions has become the most important case concerning Nazi art-looting in post-war history. But if Webber's involvement was largely circumstantial, her newly acquired expertise proved timely.
After decades of silence in the art world about the subject, in 1998 the US State Department organised a conference in Washington DC about looted art, calling together 44 nations to discuss restitution issues. From that conference emerged a set of principles for dealing with this area of cultural property. The Commission for Looted Art in Europe was established three months later: 'We were set up because no one in Europe was dealing with all these issues,' says Webber. Families now approach the commission from all over the world; likewise, their looted works might be anywhere. 'These people may have started off living in Vienna, fled to Shanghai, then Australia,' says Webber. 'They may have had three paintings, each of which have gone in completely different directions, and through any number of owners. So to give you clues you need to call on people in various countries, experts on particular painters or archives. 'The work we do is unique. Some people don't have photographs of the object. They may not know who it was by or, if it's a book, when it was published. Many people have a description; they know roughly who the artist was, but they don't have a title, and they may just have a reproduction. We start by identifying the object, then see if we can document it - where it's been, where it was acquired from, and where it is now. And if we can learn where it is now, we see whether we can recover it. So we do all the stages.' Webber has recently established the Central Registry (www.lootedart.com), a website linked to the commission and housed in the same building. It lists details from 40 countries of 20,000 objects looted by the Nazis. 'It's a single database,' says Webber, 'and people can search for items by cities, countries, dealers and types of objects. It's charting a history that hasn't been told before.' The Gutmanns kept in touch with Webber after her film was completed, and towards the end of the commission's first year, she was helping them again, starting long negotiations with the Dutch Government when it became clear that it was holding Gutmann family items in its museums. In 2001 she proposed that the Dutch Government set up an independent commission to deal with such cases. They agreed, and within six months she received a fax from the minister of culture stating that 233 items would be returned to the Gutmanns. 'Until then, we had no idea they held so many,' she says. All this begs a huge question: given the knowledge that the Nazis looted vast quantities of art, how can thousands of items still be missing? The answer reflects badly on the entire art world. Willi Korte, who tracks down stolen art from his suburban house in Washington DC, says bluntly, 'Curators, auction houses, art dealers, collectors had all kinds of knowledge. No part of that community has any interest in helping victims reclaim their paintings.' Especially, one imagines, considering that the value of art has shot up astronomically in the past 50 years. Clearly, many people looked the other way as the provenance of paintings (their origin or history of ownership) was falsified or glossed over; why rock the boat when everyone on board is getting rich?
But Webber prefers to look to the future, establishing codes of conduct under which governments and the art world can agree to operate, rather than dwelling on past sins. A good example was a pair of 18th-century landscapes by the Bohemian artist Norbert Grund, looted by the Nazis in Holland in 1941 from a private family collection, and sent to Berlin. In 2001 both appeared at the Dorotheum, Vienna's state-owned auction house, where a German vendor had sent them. Despite a lack of catalogue information, they were identical to images of missing works, which the commission held. Webber and her team learnt of the auction only three days before it took place, and after long negotiations, persuaded the Dorotheum to withdraw the paintings from sale with just two hours to go. When it became clear that the auction house planned to ship them back to the vendor, the commission successfully urged the Dorotheum to keep them in safe custody. Webber is now finalising an agreement to return the paintings to their rightful owners. 'It was the first time this had happened in Austria,' she says. 'It set a precedent of good practice for auction houses everywhere.' But it should not be assumed that only foreign museums, governments and auction houses have reason to feel embarrassed. Around the time the commission was established, the British Government asked museums to check their collections for looted works of art, and set up a committee to supervise this task. (Webber sits on this committee.) Last October the British Museum announced that it was accepting a claim by the commission in respect of four Old Master drawings 'wrongfully seized by the Gestapo from a private collection' in 1939. The museum and commission are now working out a mutually agreed resolution. Recently Webber also negotiated the return to the same private collection of 135 Old Master drawings that were in the Czech Republic. It took two years to negotiate, but that haul brought her tally of restitution for 2002 to 400 objects. 'We'll never do it again,' she sighs. 'Usually, the returns come in fours and fives.' Then there is the case of the Glanville family. Two siblings, Marietta and Ernest, now in their 70s, approached the commission in 1999 to help it recover an enormous 1898 triptych, The Three Stages of Life by Count Leopold von Kalckreuth. It had been looted by the Nazis when the family fled their Vienna home in 1938. 'The picture was an icon for me,' Marietta tells me in her north London home. 'It hung in our dining-room, which was quite posh. One peeped inside, almost as if one was approaching an altar. I was eight years old when we had to leave Vienna.' The Kalckreuth had been a gift from Marietta's grandfather to her mother Elizabeth on her wedding day. Like Bernard Goodman, Elizabeth Glanville tried for years to hunt down the picture. 'Mother was forever writing letters,' recalls Marietta. 'It became almost a family joke - Kalckreuth again! But she was a sentimental lady, and it meant a great deal to her.' After 23 years, Elizabeth discovered the triptych in the Bavarian State Paintings Collection, and had been acquired in 1942 from a private collector (this turned out to be a mysterious countess, who has never been traced). But Elizabeth was told that such claims for restitution had expired in 1948. 'She was offered a derisory ex gratia payment, which she did not accept,' says her daughter. Elizabeth died in 1983, her wishes thwarted. But by the time the Glanvilles contacted Webber, attitudes towards looted art had changed considerably. Webber's team established that the triptych was in the possession of the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, and lobbied the federal German Government to have it returned. No sooner did the Germans agree than an ironic discovery was made: the Kalckreuth had been loaned to the Royal Academy as part of its millennial exhibition, Art at the Crossroads. So at a ceremony at the Royal Academy, the director of the Bavarian State Paintings Collection formally handed back the triptych - the first looted artwork to be returned in Britain. Now the Kalckreuth is in storage, and the Glanvilles are debating what to do with it. 'It's not a little piece you could hang over the mantelpiece,' says Marietta. (The work measures 162 by 294cm.) 'He's a relatively minor artist. He isn't a Degas.' Yet they have been reluctant to sell it, out of respect for the commission's work in securing it for them. 'Anne played this extremely well,' says Marietta. 'She has helped create a climate where it has become possible to get stolen possessions returned.' The Goodmans echo this accolade: 'She's a smart woman with an enormous number of contacts,' says Nick. 'Would we have got all our stuff back without her? Possibly. But it would have been hard. She's been very helpful, and when it came down to it, she did all the negotiating. She was involved day to day. She was even prepared a few times to fly over to Holland for the day.' Most of the commission's clients do not want their cases made public, so increasingly the work of Webber and her team, operating on a shoestring and dependent on donations, looks like a good deed in a morally compromised world. 'There are a lot of cases out there,' she says. 'But there are many ways to settle a case: restitution, financial settlements, a range of options both parties find acceptable. You can't undo the harm that's been done. But you find a compromise.'
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/
The Absence of Justice
A Pair of Flawed but Valuable Books Describe the Imperfect State of Holocaust Restitution
Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America's Courts
By Michael J. Bazyler New York University, 396 pages, $34.95 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
By MARILYN HENRY
In the last moments of the Clinton administration, Stuart Eizenstat was breathless. From his posts at the European Union and the Commerce, Treasury and State Departments, Eizenstat was the administration's "point man" on Holocaust restitution, with a unique portfolio to pursue the assets that were looted from Nazi victims. This was to be the final financial accounting for the crimes of World War II. In the frenzied final days of the Clinton presidency, Eizenstat was wrapping up deals with the Austrians and French that — together with earlier agreements with the Germans and Swiss banks — were worth some $8 billion.
In his memoir, "Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II," Eizenstat recounts his five peripatetic years as a facilitator/mediator sprinting among the various parties in the most emotional legal and diplomatic issue of the time. On one side were the Western European governments and businesses that faced lawsuits in U.S. federal courts assailing them for their failure to honor war-era insurance policies and demanding compensation for slave labor and the restoration of dormant and unclaimed Jewish accounts in Swiss banks. On the other were the lawyers, Jewish organizations, American regulators and Eastern European governments that pressed victims' claims. "I felt like the manager of an insane asylum," he writes.
It's a valuable, if lopsided, book, and it contains some surprises. The U.S. government jumped into this fray without any thought. Eizenstat was based in Brussels, nudging the post-communist governments of Central and Eastern Europe to restore communal properties confiscated during the Nazi-era to religious communities, when, in June 1995, he read a Wall Street Journal story about the dormant accounts in Swiss banks. He asked Richard Holbrooke, his boss at the State Department, for authorization to extend his restitution work to Switzerland. Holbrooke did not hesitate to approve. "No one in Washington held any meetings or weighed the pluses or minuses," writes Eizenstat, now an international trade lawyer in private practice in Washington and special counsel to the Commission on Art Recovery of the World Jewish Congress. "I just plunged in, initially with no goal other than to find out the facts about the numerous dormant bank accounts in Swiss hands for over five decades. There were no grand plans or strategies; these came later."
Eizenstat's work on the issue entailed juggling conflicting interests as the Swiss banks issue snowballed. Eizenstat was attempting to help Nazi victims while trying to steady the U.S.'s diplomatic and economic relations with European governments, which were roiled by the American lawsuits and regulators' threats of sanctions. Much of it was far beyond his control, and he routinely battled with state and local regulators, arguing that their threats of sanctions interfered with U.S. foreign policy. The $1.25 billion Swiss banks settlement was under the supervision of U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in Brooklyn, not the U.S. executive branch. Where Eizenstat did take some control — to deal with claims against German and Austrian interests — he freely admits in his memoirs that he used "creative accounting" and "dubious" arithmetic to reach deals that looked better than they were.
He also was creative with funds that the U.S. government set aside for Holocaust survivors. The funds were supposed to be "redress" for the American failure to turn over to Jewish successor organizations the heirless Jewish assets held by American banks after the war. Eizenstat was "rarely more proud" than when he announced in 1997 that the U.S. would contribute $25 million to a new international fund for Nazi victims. The money, he writes, was to be used for food and social programs for Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe. However, 150 pages later, he recounts that, in the midst of the slave labor negotiations, the Polish delegation was balking at the amount of compensation being offered to its war-era forced laborers, so Eizenstat made a "secret" deal in which Poland would receive $10 million of the $25 million.
The public did not notice Eizenstat's efforts until May 1997, when he issued a U.S. government historical report on Switzerland's commercial links to the Nazis. His statement that these links helped "prolong" the war was the sound bite that made the news. In his memoirs, however, he says that these were "ill-chosen words" and that he could have made the same point less harshly by saying these links helped "sustain" the German war effort. "Prolong" is not the only thing from which he is backtracking. The cover of the book — a swastika-shaped image superimposed over the Swiss flag — raised a hue and cry. Eizenstat has said he regrets that the book cover offended the Swiss. Apparently, that is not good enough. In January, a lawyer in Zurich filed criminal charges against him, under a Swiss law that protects the flag from inappropriate use.
Eizenstat seems to have an aversion to giving others proper credit — even to the government he served. He refers repeatedly to the fact that, over 50 years, Germany paid DM 100 billion to Nazi victims, without stressing that it was American military occupation authorities who, after the war, compelled the German states in the American Zone to enact restitution and compensation measures for victims, and that in every subsequent treaty dealing with German sovereignty, including reunification, the U.S. insisted that Germany retain its commitment to Nazi victims.
In his chapter on Nazi-looted art, he discusses the "poster child" of all successful claims: a 16th century painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder that was looted from the collection of Philip von Gomperz, a Viennese industrialist, and turned up at the North Carolina Museum of Art. The Gomperz heirs, so impressed that the museum agreed to return the painting, agreed to sell it to the museum for half its value. Eizenstat mentions by name everyone except the woman who mediated between the museum and Gomperz heirs, arranging both the recovery and the sale: Monica Dugot of the Holocaust Claims Processing Office of the New York State Banking Department.
"Imperfect Justice" focuses on the political and diplomatic aspects of Holocaust restitution. The legal dimensions are covered in "Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America's Courts" by Michael Bazyler, a professor at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, California. (I should disclose here that Bazyler mentions me in the acknowledgements, for reading part of the manuscript in draft.) The book, which is due out in April, is valuable as a play-by-play of litigation on the Swiss banks cases, slave labor, Nazi-looted art and Holocaust-era insurance policies, the latter being a topic Eizenstat ignored. But to tell the story, Bazyler relies heavily and indiscriminately on news accounts, especially those that bolster his points. However, most of the news reporting of the litigation, negotiations and settlements was shoddy. Most reporters were ignorant of the relevant history and law, and the stories were only as accurate as the sources cited. Thus, the stories routinely were incomplete, ahistorical and often served as platforms for partisans in the disputes.
Despite these flaws, taken together, the two books provide the most realistic picture yet of the road to Holocaust restitution settlements at century's end. Try to overlook the titles. Bazyler's title implies that the courts provided a remedy, although the major suits — against German companies for slave labor compensation — failed. The Swiss banks' settlement was not a triumph of law and legal rights, but instead was due to Korman jawboning everyone to reach a settlement. As for Eizenstat's choice, it suffices to say that Nazi victims rarely call this justice, imperfect or otherwise.
Marilyn Henry, a contributing editor at ARTnews magazine, is the author of the monograph "Fifty Years of Holocaust Restitution" in the "2002 American Jewish Year Book" (American Jewish Committee). She last appeared in these pages August 16 reviewing "The Plunder of Jewish Property During the Holocaust: Confronting European History," edited by Avi Beker, and "The Victim's Fortune: Inside the Epic Battle Over the Debts of the Holocaust," by John Authers and Richard Wolffe.
http://www.forward.com/
Historians find source of Drake hoax
Team dedicates 11 years of research into uncovering identities of brass plate creators
February 14, 2003
By BOB NORBERG THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Researchers say they have solved the mystery surrounding a phony brass plate found in Greenbrae and attributed to Sir Francis Drake, an enduring hoax that added to the debate over where the 16th-century explorer really landed.
"We knew from testing that the plate is a forgery," said Ed Von der Porten of San Francisco, a maritime historian, archaeologist and member of the Drake Navigators Guild. "What had remained a mystery is who made the plate and why." Von der Porten said that after 11 years of research, they now know the identities of the individuals who perpetrated the hoax. The identities will be released Tuesday at the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library, where the brass plate has been kept since 1937. The findings also are being published in California History, the official publication of the California Historical Society. "Last year, we finally pulled it together and got it to the California Historical Society," Von der Porten said. "There is nothing simple. They left lots of bits of clues." Von der Porten said the hoax involved more than one person, all of whom clung to a strict code of silence. None of the perpetrators nor the few who knew them are still alive, and the fact that the plaque is a hoax doesn't have any bearing on the belief that Drake landed in Drakes Bay, Von der Porten said. Still, the hoax was well-known among historians following the controversy of where Drake landed, and has great entertainment value, said Breck Parkman, senior archaeologist for the state Department of Parks and Recreation. "It is one of the more famous hoaxes in California," Parkman said. "It also makes you wonder what else out there we accept as true that is a hoax." Drake, an English explorer and pirate, made landfall on the California coast in June 1579.
Historical and archaeological evidence puts the likely landing spot at Drakes Cove in the Point Reyes National Seashore. The Drakes Navigator Guild for more than 50 years has been leading the research into Drakes' landfall and believes it to be Drakes Cove. Dozens of alternative sites on the West Coast have been suggested during the past 60 years, many spurred by the existence of the plate, Von der Porten said. The brass plate was found on a Greenbrae hillside in 1936. Measuring 51/2 by 8 inches and made of brass, it bears an inscription in old English that claims California for England. The plate was turned over to Herbert Bolton, director of the Bancroft Library and a noted California historian, who immediately proclaimed it as authentic, Von der Porten said. "What the plate did was get some people thinking that because it was found at Greenbrae, maybe Drake was at Greenbrae," Von der Porten said. It wasn't until 1977 that metallurgy tests at UC Berkeley and Oxford University, using methods not known 30 years earlier, determined it was a fake made from machine-rolled brass that was cut into a plate with shears in the early 1930s. In 1991, Von der Porten, the late Drake Guild president Raymond Aker, and researchers Robert Allen and James Spitze began tracking down clues to the perpetrators. Von der Porten said they found an elaborate hoax that had gotten out of hand. "It is not important at all, but it is an interesting bit of research," Von der Porten said. "For 40 years, it skewed the history of the state."
You can reach Staff Writer Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bnorberg@pressdemocrat.com.