Date: Fri 20-Nov-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: LIZAM

Quick Words:

List-World-Jewish-Congress

Full Text:

Art Looted By Nazis To Be Tracked With Secret List

NEW YORK CITY (AP) -- A Jewish refugee from World War II Germany helps sell

looted art to Nazis in occupied France while informing on prominent Jews,

including Baron Guy de Rothschild.

A gigolo from Corsica tight with Paris dealers collaborating with the Germans

receives plundered works from a mysterious source.

An Italian count and top aide to Fascist leader Benito Mussolini sells art,

allegedly for the collection of Hermann Goering, Hitler's second in command.

These were just three of more than 2,000 people who handled artworks that

ended up in Nazi hands -- a list of names that now fill 170 pages of a

secretly compiled U.S. government report.

On November 10, a New York-based Jewish organization said the 1946 list will

become a powerful weapon to help trace artworks stolen from Holocaust victims.

"It's a starting point for the investigation of looted wartime art in all the

galleries and museum collections in the world," said Elan Steinberg, executive

director of the World Jewish Congress, which released the list.

The organization is leading a new international effort to find the art

believed to have ended up in private collections and museums such as the

Louvre in Paris and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.

"In most cases, they have been unknowingly placed there," Steinberg said.

The secret list of dealers and collectors, labeled "confidential," was

compiled by the art looting investigation unit of the Office of Strategic

Services, the precursor of the CIA. Agents were sent to Europe after the war

to track an estimated 200,000 looted artworks then valued at about $2.5

billion.

At least three-quarters of the works came from Jewish families, and about half

were never returned, Steinberg said. Some of the dealers and collectors were

themselves Jewish, according to the report.

The document, from the National Archives in Washington, names individuals who

bought or sold art during World War II in Germany, Austria, Switzerland,

Holland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Luxembourg.

"A work of art is different from gold or money. It tells a story. It's part of

a family, a town, a village," Steinberg said.

France, led by the pro-Hitler Vichy regime, was a prime target of the Nazi art

collectors who took at least 100,000 works of art there.

The French government recently published a catalog of hundreds of allegedly

stolen pieces after museum officials were accused of doing little to trace the

owners of thousands of looted works in the state's collection.

The OSS document won't necessarily prove a work of art was plundered,

Steinberg said, "but it's a warning flag. It's a sign we need to inquire

further."

Museums, curators and Jewish organizations worldwide will use the list to

track the provenance of works and try to return them to their prewar owners,

Steinberg said.

"But in most cases, the owners are dead, or the families have not claimed a

work. It's heirless art," said Steinberg.

In that case, proceeds should benefit other Holocaust survivors, he said.

A precedent for what should be done with identifiably looted works was set by

Christie's auction house. Two years ago at a Vienna sale, Christie's raised

$14.5 million to benefit Holocaust victims by selling art plundered by the

Nazis.

The stepped-up effort to complete restitution follows legal action earlier

this year against The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Prosecutors tried to seize two Egon Schiele paintings on loan from a

foundation in Vienna after two families claimed the works were plundered from

relatives during the war. The case remains on appeal.

"It's more difficult to monitor everything that comes in on loan. But I think

the vigilance is that much greater because of the spotlight that's been thrown

on this issue," said Harold Holzer, spokesman for the Metropolitan, which has

handled only two World War II-related claims since the war.

By Verena Dobnik