April 5



ISRAEL:

Schulz's Holocaust murals not shown at Yad Vashem


The Holocaust murals of Bruno Schulz, clandestinely brought to Israel by
Yad Vashem four years ago causing an international furor, are not being
shown in the new history museum for "technical and curatorial reasons,"
despite Yad Vashem stating then that Schulz's work "will be preserved for
generations, and may be viewed by the millions of tourists from all over
the world that visit Yad Vashem each year."

In the clandestine operation in June 2001, the murals painted by Schulz, a
Jewish-Polish writer and artist, were covertly brought to Israel from the
village of Drohobycz shortly after their discovery.

The arrival of the paintings in Israel created an international stir,
casting a shadow over Poland-Israel relations and provoking angry
responses from artists and scholars around the world.

Yad Vashem justified the act saying that the new museum of Holocaust
history is the most appropriate place for the rare work. However, anyone
hoping to view the famous murals in the museum is in for a disappointment:
they are still in storage.

A member of the Polish delegation who came for the museum's opening told
Haaretz he was surprised the work was not on display, "in light of what
Yad Vashem was willing to do in order to obtain it."

Yad Vashem says the murals have not yet been exhibited for "technical and
curatorial reasons," principally the limited space in the art museum.

Born in 1892, Bruno Schulz lived most of his life and died in Drohobycz, a
town then in eastern Galicia about 60 km south of Lvov, where 15,000 Jews
lived before the Holocaust. He taught art and crafts in the local high
school, and wrote and painted in his free time. His world renown came
years after his death, when his stories began to appear in English. To
many literary critics, Schulz is one of Poland's greatest short story
writers, often referred to as "the Polish Kafka."

On July 1, 1941, the Germans entered Drohobycz. Gestapo chief Felix Landau
was taken by Schulz' talent and ordered him to decorate his son's room
with images of German folk tales.

Despite Landau's vow to protect Schulz, he was shot on November 19, 1942,
by another Gestapo officer. Most of his art work was lost.

After the war the Soviets housed peasant families in the villa where
Landau had lived with his son. The nursery became a kitchen, and the
murals were covered over with plaster. Drohobycz's Jewish past was
forgotten, the synagogues were destroyed or became public latrines.

In 1991 Drohobycz became part of the independent Ukraine. Schulz's nursery
murals were uncovered in February 2001 by Benjamin Geissler, a documentary
film director. The discovery sent waves of excitement through Poland, and
among Schulz's admirers around the world. Polish conservationists rushed
to the site. While Geissler and the Poles were talking to the local
municipality about establishing a museum in the village, they learned to
their astonishment that the murals had disappeared.

On May 29 that year Yad Vashem announced that most of the paintings were
in its possession. Haaretz reported, in the name of Yad Vashem officials,
that a special Mossad team had convinced the house owners to give them the
paintings for free, for the new museum. The couple, who used to charge
money for a 'peek' at the murals, said they received no more than
100 dollars from the Israelis "for expenses."

It would be naive to think that Yad Vashem took the paintings out of the
Ukraine legally, said Bartosz Weglarczyk, an editor at Gazetta Wyborcza,
which reported the affair extensively.

Yad Vashem was the center of an international scandal that ensued,
reported in a front-page story in The New York Times, along with a
petition signed by 30 distinguished Holocaust scholars in its prestigious
literary supplement.

Yad Vashem issued a statement then saying it had "the moral right to the
remnants of those fragments sketched by Bruno Schulz."

The Polish government sent an official protest to Israel, and even
Polish-Jewish leaders criticized Yad Vashem for the unprecedented act. "We
feel robbed," said Konstanti Gebert, editor of the Jewish Polish magazine
Midrash. "A limb of our heritage was cut off, our pain is undescribable."

A counter-petition signed by authors Aharon Appelfeld and A.B. Yehoshua,
and Holocaust scholars in Israel claimed that the Drohobycz municipality
had recognized that Yad Vashem would know better how to preserve the
memory of Drohobycz's Jews. Three years have gone by since the petition,
and it seems that the burden of proof is still on Yad Vashem.

(source: Ha'aretz)