PARIS (Reuters) - President Jacques Chirac, opening a new museum of
Jewish art and history in Paris Monday, said paintings looted by the
Nazis in France and never claimed by their original Jewish owners
should remain in the country. Speaking only hours before a conference
on lost Holocaust era assets opened in Washington, Chirac said the
issue of compensating descendants for their artworks plundered during
World War Two was now ``a top priority.'' But he echoed calls by
French Jewish leaders for unclaimed artworks to stay in France rather
than be auctioned off, possibly to foreign buyers, to raise funds for
Holocaust survivors. The World Jewish Congress (WJC) said last week
these homeless works, which include paintings by Picasso, Matisse and
Leger, were the ``last prisoners of war'' and should be ''freed.''
``Among the works on exhibit in this museum are some that were stolen
from families that never returned from their long path of suffering,''
Chirac said at the Museum of the Art and History of Judaism in the
Marais, the old Jewish quarter of Paris. ``This is, of course, where
these works should be.'' The museum, which traces Jewish life in
France and Europe from the Middle Ages to the present day, has a small
corner exhibiting 27 of the 2,058 seized artworks still being held
``in safe keeping'' by French museums including the Louvre. A catalog
detailed fruitless efforts to establish the exact ownership of the
paintings in 1940, when the Germans occupied France, or explain why
some survivors did not claim them after 1945 even though they knew art
was being returned. French Jewish leader Henri Hajdenberg told Reuters
the artworks belonged to France's national heritage and should not be
auctioned off as the WJC recommended. ``These artworks were here in
France and it's normal that they should stay here,'' he said. Since
their owners could not be found or ownership not established, the
French state should become their legal owner by paying compensation
for them to the French Jewish community. This sum would fund a
foundation -- ``a national institution, not just a Jewish one,''
Hajdenberg stressed -- to teach younger generations about the horrors
of Nazism, the history of the Holocaust and the need to defend human
rights. Historians say the Nazis plundered about 100,000 artworks from
France during the war, of which 61,257 were later returned from
Germany by Allied forces. A total of 45,441 items were handed back to
their original owners or their families. Of the 15,816 unclaimed
artworks, 2,058 were chosen for safe keeping in French museums while
the others -- works judged of little artistic value -- were auctioned
off. Some of the unclaimed items are believed to have belonged to
families which were entirely wiped out. Five paintings were claimed by
their owners and returned after being exhibited last year. France
plans to publish a catalog of all the confiscated artworks in its
museums by the end of next year. The Washington conference, held in
the Holocaust Museum there, aims to forge an international consensus
on returning thousands of Nazi-confiscated artworks and religious
buildings to Holocaust survivors. The museum, co-funded by the French
state and the city of Paris, is housed in a 17th-century mansion that
had been split up into workshops for Jewish craftsmen in the 19th
century. Names of the occupants during a 1942 roundup of Jews are
listed like gravestones on one courtyard wall. Thirteen of them died
in concentration camps.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
WASHINGTON -- Jewish groups said Monday that they will use a
conference on art and property looted by Nazi Germany to press for the
release of the "last prisoners" of World War II. The four-day
conference, sponsored by the State Department and the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum, brings together more than 40 countries and more than
a dozen art, history, insurance, and Jewish groups hoping to set
informal standards for the return of stolen assets. Delegates will
deal with material and moral questions from a period in which the
Nazis killed 6 million Jews and looted billions of dollars of gold,
art, and private and communal property across Europe. "This chapter in
history cannot become a footnote in history," Miles Lerman, chairman
of the Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, said before opening the
conference Monday evening at the museum. "We have to try to find a
just and proper way to resolve these issues and restore justice to the
wrongs that have been done in the last 50 years." Elan Steinberg,
executive director of the World Jewish Congress, said it's not enough
for governments, museums, and other institutions to acknowledge that
they have custody of Nazi loot, including much that's difficult to
trace to Holocaust victims and their families. There must be real
restitution, whether to individuals or to Jewish and humanitarian
groups that help the survivor community, he said. "We are going to ask
that the last prisoners of war be released to the rightful claimants
or heirs," Steinberg said, adding that untraceable art and property
should be auctioned to help survivors. Almost 2,000 artworks in French
government custody, for example, are believed to have been stolen from
European Jews or sold under duress during the war. France has listed
them on the Internet and taken other steps to try to identify the
rightful owners. Often, however, it's difficult to establish who
originally held art and whether later buyers knew pieces were taken by
the Nazis. Stuart Eizenstat, undersecretary of state and the
conference's organizer, cited the case of two Egon Schiele paintings
as examples of the legal confusion caused by an artwork's disputed
history. "Dead City III" and "Portrait of Wally" were displayed at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which borrowed them from an
Austrian foundation. Earlier this year a New York court blocked the
paintings from returning to Austria as scheduled because families
claimed that the works were plundered from their relatives'
collections. Eizenstat said he hoped the conference would agree on
standards for proving ownership and guidelines for restitution. In one
of the latest cases, a Monet water lily painting on exhibit at the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts appears to have been stolen from Jewish
collector Paul Rosenberg during the war, The Boston Globe reported.
Last June, the Association of Art Museum Directors created guidelines
that required a search of collections to ensure that there's no looted
art. Members also agreed not to borrow art known to be stolen by the
Nazis. European governments separately are moving to return stolen
art. Austria passed a law this fall requiring return of art
confiscated from Jewish families, including from the prominent
Rothschilds. The Swiss, who were targeted in a 1997 U.S. report for
acting as Nazi Germany's banker, in February will launch a project to
help identify looted art in public and private collections, according
to Thomas Borer, head of the Swiss delegation to the conference. The
Nazis looted an estimated $9 billion to $14 billion in art and other
assets. The current value of that is about $90 billion to $140
billion. Adolf Hitler's troops also seized an uncounted amount of
communal property from Jews throughout Central and Eastern Europe,
from graveyards and synagogues to schools and community centers. After
the war in 1945, Communist governments took over the property and only
now post-Cold War governments are moving slowly to make restitution.
Another issue before the conference is life insurance policies sold to
Jews, whose families never collected because the companies claimed
that the money or policy payments had stopped upon the victim's death.
Copyright c 1998 Bergen Record Corp.
THE Pompidou Centre in Paris has been sued for receiving stolen goods
after refusing to return a Cubist masterpiece by Braque to the heirs
of its pre-war owner, a Jewish art-collector. The lawsuit, the first
of its kind in France, is embarrassing for the museum, which claims it
acted "in good faith" when it acquired Georges Braque's L'Homme á la
guitare for the equivalent of £1.6 million 17 years ago. The case
could also embarrass the French state, which has been accused of
dragging its feet over the return of more than 2,000 looted artworks
now held by the French National Museum Authority. The works, all
seized by the Nazis during the Second World War, are officially said
to be awaiting reclamation by their rightful owners. The 1914 Braque,
considered to represent a turning point in the history of art, was
taken by the Nazis in 1940 after its owner, Alphonse Kann, fled from
Paris to London to escape persecution. Unlike the fabled Kann
collection's other treasures - including works by Renoir and Cezanne -
The Guitar Player was reckoned too "decadent" for Nazi tastes. It
returned to the art market in 1942, when it was traded for a Dutch
Nativity painting destined for Hermann Goering. In 1981, the work's
strange odyssey appeared to have ended when the Pompidou Centre bought
it from the dealer Heinz Berggruen and put it on public display. M
Kann's heirs, who recently asked for the painting's return, have been
told by the Ministry of Culture that their claim is invalid under the
French "code civil". This states that anyone buying a stolen work in
good faith can keep it unless its owners lodge a claim within three
years. The Pompidou Centre's president, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, said
the museum was covered by this law because it "had no idea that the
painting passed through the Kann collection" - a line formally
contested this week by lawyers for the heirs.
PARIS, Dec 2 (Reuters) - A Paris museum accused of holding art stolen
by the Nazis said on Wednesday it was the rightful owner of a Georges
Braque painting claimed by the heirs of a Jewish art collector.
Jean-Jacques Aillagon, head of the Georges Pompidou Centre, told
Reuters his museum had bought the 1914 cubist work ``The Guitar
Player'' in 1981 from a Swiss art dealer who had obtained it legally
on the art market.
``We can only consider ourselves owners in good faith,'' said
Aillagon, who had not yet seen details of an ownership suit filed by
descendants of the French art collector Alphonse Kann.
The descendants' lawyer, Francis Warin, said on Tuesday he had filed
a lawsuit against unnamed defendants for receiving stolen goods.
According to the French daily Liberation, the Braque painting was
stolen from Kann's large collection in 1940 but the Nazis had no
interest in such modern art and ``recycled'' it on the open market.
The work was exchanged for a Dutch nativity scene meant to be given
to top Nazi Hermann Goering, it said, and was then bought and sold
during the postwar years until the Pompidou Centre finally acquired
it in 1981.
Boston's Museum of Fine Arts said on Monday the Claude Monet painting
``Water Lilies 1904'' that it had on loan from a museum in Caen,
France, was probably confiscated by the Nazis from its prewar Jewish
owner Paul Rosenberg.
The museum in Normandy had no comment on the report, referring
questions to national museum authorities in Paris, who were not
immediately available for comment.
President Jacques Chirac opened the new Museum of the Art and History
of Judaism in Paris on Monday containing 27 paintings from the
Pompidou Centre that were unclaimed after the war.
He said the families of the former owners should be compensated
somehow but that these artworks belonged to France's national heritage
and should stay in the country.
Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, told
Le Monde daily the WJC wanted these artworks to be at the centre of
discussions at a conference on Holocaust era assets currently being
held in Washington.
``Can French museums be allowed to enrich themselves with the remains
of Nazi plundering?'' asked Steinberg, who said these paintings should
be auctioned off or contributed to a future ``museum of rescued art''
in Israel.
``We will tell the French delegates in Washington: 'The MNR paintings
do not belong to you,''' he said, using the official French acronym
for stolen artwork recovered after the war.
Museum authorities had not received any demand for the Monet painting
on loan in Boston to be restored to the Rosenberg family, Liberation
said. But it quoted an unnamed offical as saying: ``If there is any
claim, it will be handled in France.''
The head of the French Jewish community, Henri Hajdenberg, suggested
the French state could solve the ownership question by paying a sum
which would be used to start a foundation to teach younger generations
about the Holocaust and human rights.
That would keep the artworks in France, a goal Hajdenberg said he
also supported.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia told an international conference Tuesday
it would cooperate fully in efforts to ensure restitution for
Holocaust survivors whose art work was looted by the Nazis,
participants said.
``The bottom line is he pledged full cooperation in the effort to
identify and seek to return of victim-related art objects,'' Elan
Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), said
of the remarks by Valery Kulishov of Russia's Culture Ministry.
Undersecretary of State Stuart Eisenstat called the development ``a
real breakthrough.'' The Russians were ''extraordinarily forthcoming
about their willingness to participate fully in this process,'' he
said.
They spoke as nearly 50 nations and 13 non-governmental groups ended
the first of three days of serious discussion on how to compensate
survivors for billions of dollars in art, communal property and
insurance claims.
The total value of Holocaust era assets, which includes communal
property and insurance as well as art, is not yet officially known.
But Ronald Lauder, board chairman of the Museum of Modern Art in New
York, estimated that ``50 percent -- 110,000 pieces of art worth $10
billion to $30 billion -- are still missing.''
Lauder, who heads the WJC's art recovery commission, said ''every
institution, art museum and private collection has some of these
missing works.''
Many of the confiscated art works were returned after the war but
others are now held by museums around the world, like the Hermitage in
St. Petersburg, or in private collections.
Lauder, saying ``the list of Nazi collaborators in the art trade is
long,'' urged the international art world to cooperate with the WJC in
identifying unrecovered Nazi loot.
``If you do not want to work with us in this way, we will review all
the (art) publications and find the works with dubious provenance,''
he added.
He faulted the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary and
Switzerland for their handling of the issue.
Steinberg said Kulishov promised Russia would help create a global
database of art objects so survivors can locate their missing property
and Moscow would ``welcome any approach to them to identify
material.''
But Kulishov continued to distinguish between art seized from
Holocaust victims and so-called ``trophy art.''
Trophy art ``is still an issue of great contention because there they
(Russians) are talking about the issue of what is essentially
reparations for the destruction of cultural property in the east,''
Steinberg said.
Earlier, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, invoking her Jewish
grandparents who died in the Holocaust, urged the conference to
resolve the growing struggle over Nazi-seized assets.
Organizers strove to set a balanced tone, with Albright urging an
``atmosphere free from threats'' and saying ``our goal must be justice
... we must dig to find the truth.''
``The struggle to reveal and deal with the full truth surrounding the
handling of Holocaust era assets is wrenching but also cathartic,''
she said.
``Only by knowing and being honest about the past can we gain peace
in the present and confidence in the future.''
Albright recalled how she recently learned that her grandparents were
Jewish and died in the Holocaust, along with some of her with aunts,
uncles and cousins.
``I think of the blood that is in my family veins. Does it matter
what kind of blood it is? It shouldn't. It is just blood that does
its job. But it mattered to Hitler. And that matters to us all.
Because that is why six million Jews died.''
The conference follows one held last year in London that dealt
primarily with gold looted from Nazi victims.
This year, Swiss banks reached a $1.25 billion settlement with
Holocaust survivors and Jewish groups, allowing attention to shift to
other assets.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
BAGHDAD, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Dusty showcases that once glowed with treasures from ancient Mesopotamian cultures now lie empty in the locked rooms of the Iraqi Museum. The Iraqi authorities removed the finest jewellery, statues, pottery and other prized artefacts and stored them in secret caches during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis. ``Even I don't know where they are,'' said Donny Youkhanna, assistant director of the museum. ``But they are safe.'' A wizened attendant with 50 years of service at the museum selects a key to gain access to a musty corridor and opens a metal-framed door that screeches over the tiles in protest. The museum has stayed closed for eight years, its galleries empty except for one containing superb Assyrian stone reliefs, statues of gods and other monumental works. ``These massive pieces were too big to be evacuated,'' Youkhanna said. ``So we wrapped them in sponge and brought sandbags to minimise the risks of bombardment. ``To keep a museum closed for eight years without activity is terrible for the objects and the building itself,'' he said. The Antiquities Department is making plans with the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to restore the fabric of the museum, including air conditioning and security systems, so that it can be reopened. It is not yet clear how much the project will cost, where the money will come from and when it will be completed.
