December 6, 1998

CONTENTS:

Freeze Drying (Duncan Campbell)

Security and People Counters

Conference Agrees On Guidelines For Nazi-Looted Art

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An international conference on assets seized from Holocaust victims by the Nazis ended Thursday with agreement on guidelines that are expected to have a major impact on the international art world. The 11 principles, which are nonbinding on the 44 nations and 13 nongovernmental groups at the U.S.-hosted meeting, would impose on countries a moral commitment to identify and publicize stolen works so the original owners can claim them. ``From now on, the sale, purchase, exchange and display of art from this period will be addressed with greater sensitivity and a higher international standard of responsibility,'' U.S. delegation leader Stuart Eizenstat said. ``This is a major achievement which will reverberate through our museums, galleries, auction houses and in the homes and hearts of those families who may now have the chance to have returned what is rightfully theirs,'' he added. Despite what organizers called a ``breakthrough'', the complex art issue continued to fan debate. The World Jewish Congress faulted France, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland for not doing enough. But Eizenstat, in his concluding remarks, cited several countries for ``courageous steps,'' including Switzerland, the Netherlands and France. All hailed Austria as a model. Some feared the conference would harm the art market by creating greater uncertainty. The United States called the conference as part of the recent campaign to clear up loose ends from the Nazi era, when Germany plundered and massacred millions of European Jews. Delegates discussed how to restitute or compensate Holocaust survivors for billions of dollars in art, communal property and insurance claims seized by Hitler's forces. They also focused on efforts to educate people on the Holocaust as a way of preventing such a thing happening again. Sweden offered to hold a conference on this subject next year. Chairman Abner Mikva called the meeting a ``landmark'' that made advances in all areas, although Eizenstat said efforts to return communal property to Holocaust survivors were too slow. Russia, which earlier shifted position and agreed to cooperate fully in restitution efforts, stunned organizers by handing over actual records Thursday to Eizenstat. One is a 40-page list of several hundred art works, including coins and weapons, taken from Austrian Jews and sent to various museums in Austria. The second document lists art seized by the Nazis from the collections of two Austrian Jews, Louis Rothschild and Leo Furst. Some of the pieces went to Hitler's museum in Linz. The third was a letter to Dr. Hans Posse, who chose looted art for Hitler, warning him that Rudolph Gutmann, a Jew, might have fled Germany for Austria with a medieval manuscript. ``This is not proof ... but one of the leads that might help the legal successors of his (Gutman's) family to find his own property. In September 1942, his property was in the Vienna National Library,' Russian delegate Valery Kulishov said. German delegate Antonius Eitel, in a move hailed by participants as significant, announced that henceforth ``any work of art that belonged to a victim of the Holocaust and may still be in the possession of the German government will be returned to the survivors or their successors.'' ``If neither victims nor successors can be traced, the work will be handed over to the Jewish claims conference,'' he said. The total value of Holocaust era assets is not 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 World Jewish Congress's art recovery commission, has asserted that 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. Under the 11 principles, countries would make an active commitment to encourage the process of identifying the stolen art and restoring it to the owners. For the past 50 years, many governments have obstructed such claims. They would also try to set up a central registry of information about art looted by the Nazis, probably on the Internet, so that claimants can have easy access to it. In addition, Eizenstat said there are plans for a ''mega-website'' as central database for all Holocaust-related information, including the conference proceedings. He said the conference put a sharp focus for the first time on the contentious issue of communal property -- schools, churches, synagogues -- seized by the Nazis. He placed special emphasis on urging new democracies in eastern Europe to return property, especially Poland where there are upward of 5,000 claims and the government in recent years has shown more commitment to resolving the problem. Poland may host a follow-up conference on this issue.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

Belgian filmmaker rules against Prague on picture

WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) - A Belgian filmmaker on Thursday offered damning evidence against the National Gallery in Prague in a dispute over a painting attributed to Rembrandt and stolen from the collection of a French Jewish industrialist in 1943. The French government in October sent the Czech Republic a formal request for the return of the painting, one of about a dozen similar portraits entitled ``Elderly Jew in a Fur Hat.'' It said it came from the Paris collection of Adolph Schloss, which was looted by the Nazis during the German occupation of France in World War II. Czech officials, in Washington for a conference on the assets of Holocaust victims, said on Wednesday that the French had rushed to judgment. They pointed to documents suggesting the Schloss version of the painting is really in the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But Marc van Dessel, a filmmaker preparing a documentary on looted art, said he had compared both the Prague and the Pittsburgh paintings with a photograph of the painting which was in the Schloss collection. ``The Prague painting is exactly the same,'' he told Reuters from Paris in a telephone interview. ``The other pictures (including the Pittsburgh painting) didn't match.'' He said the grain of the wood in the Pittsburgh painting ran vertical, while in the photograph of the Schloss version the wood grain ran horizontal. Dan Lagiovane, a spokesman for the Carnegie Museum who also made the comparison, said there were also differences between the renditions of the elderly Jew's left eye, the shape of the right ear, and aspects of the beard. Van Dessel said it was he who advised the French authorities of his conclusions, leading to the claim. The Czech authorities have told the French they will look into the case but the demand clearly irritated them. ``It (the confusion) shows that the identification of pictures after 50 years is very difficult sometimes and leads to some ridiculous stories on very high diplomatic levels,'' said Vit Vlnas, head of the archives at the National Gallery. ``For us it is a little offensive because there is no need to be so accusatory at the very beginning. In the end it could turn out there is nothing to it,'' added a Czech official. Van Dessel said his findings were not the end of the matter for the Pittsburgh museum. ``There is still some mystery about the provenance of the Carnegie painting,'' he said. Tey Stiteler, communications manager at the Carnegie, said late Pittsburgh attorney Charles Rosenbloom probably acquired its version through a Philadelphia art dealer. It was first exhibited in the museum in 1946 and was acquired in 1975 through a swap with the Israeli museum to which Rosenbloom bequeathed it, she said. ``Its provenance before that date (1946) is unknown,'' she added. The one in Prague reached the National Gallery in 1945 and was listed as confiscated German property. That seemed to give strength to the association with the Schloss collection. The French government, in a catalogue of the Schloss paintings published this year, continues to attribute the painting to Rembrandt but Vlnas believes that none of the dozen or more versions are by the 17th century Dutch master. The World Jewish Congress, in a publication by art writer Hector Feliciano distributed at the Washington conference, identified the Pittsburgh painting as the looted picture. But Lagiovane said Feliciano had never contacted the Carnegie to ask about the provenance of the painting. ``You can draw your own conclusions about that,'' he added.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited

Albright talks of blood and balance at Holocaust conference

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told an international conference Tuesday that returning Nazi-seized artwork and other property to Holocaust victims and their heirs would "make the ledger slightly less out of balance." Albright said that she learned only last year of her Jewish heritage and that her Czech grandparents and other relatives were victims of the Nazis. A refugee who came to the United States as a child, Albright was raised Roman Catholic. Albright said that now, as a grandmother, she has begun to "think of the blood that is in my family veins." "Does it matter what kind of blood it is?" she asked delegates at the Holocaust conference. "It shouldn't. It is just blood that does its job," she said. "But it mattered to Hitler and that matters to us all, because that is why 6 million Jews died. And that is why this obscenity of suffering was visited on so many innocent, irreplaceable people." Albright said archives around the world should open their files to researchers and the public so the Nazi loot can be tracked down and returned to the proper owners. Among the governments and other groups represented at the conference was the Vatican, which has refused to open its files. "We cannot restore life nor rewrite history," Albright said in opening the conference. "But we can make the ledger slightly less out of balance by devoting our time, energy and resources to the search for answers, the return of property and the payment of just claims." The total value of Holocaust-era assets is not yet officially known.

Lauder: Every museum has Nazi loot

Victim art vs. trophy art

U.S. offers 'principles and processes'

Pompidou center has looted Picasso - Jewish group

Subject:

Stolen Art update

Dear Subscribers,
Unable to attend last weeks Washington Conference, but assured by the U.S. State Department that a conference report will be published. The Art Loss Register has several press releases relating to their Hollocaust Art initiatives. These can be found at their website - http://www.artloss.com/main.htm
In other cultural property news, COPAT's website is worth a look. http://www.thesaurus.co.uk/023348.cus/Although objected to, by several major auction houses, their due dilligence proposals will be of interest to those in the filed.
We hope you find this information useful,
SAZ PRODUCTIONS, INC.
www.saztv.com

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From: "Sally Shelton" Shelton.Sally@NMNH.SI.EDU
To: vrtpaleo@usc.edu, securma@xs4all.nl
Subject:

Forwarded from rocks-and-fossils

Please reply to "Arkadiy" . Attention
To everybody whom it can concern
From St Petersburg (Russia) museum of Geological Research (name Chernishova) was stolen Very important sample of Helicoprion bessonovi "holotipe" sample. (Photo available) If some one now anything ore hear ore something Please help us to return it to museum ore to us personal. Address of museum Central Scientific research museum name Chernishova 199178 Sredniy prospect Vasilevskiy ostrov 74 St Petersburg Russia Please help museum if you now something, confidential is guaranteed. Thank for attention Arkadiy PPL. St Petersburg Russia

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