March 28

ENGLAND:

A Painting With a Nazi Past----London Museum Piece Once Belonged to Hitler


A naked goddess, an intrepid war correspondent, Adolf Hitler's inner
sanctum and the secret wartime journey of a 500-year-old painting worth
millions of dollars.

Art stories don't come much more Indiana Jones than this.

Britain's National Gallery announced Thursday that new research has
disclosed that a painting in its collection, "Cupid Complaining to Venus,"
by the German Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, was once part of
Hitler's private collection.

"We've never had anything like this before," said museum spokesman Thomas
Almeroth-Williams. "It's incredibly rare."

The museum is investigating to determine the exact provenance of the
painting, which was painted in about 1525, with particular emphasis on
whether it might have been looted from Jewish owners by the Nazis.

So far, Almeroth-Williams said, the museum's experts have been unable to
account for the painting's ownership or whereabouts from 1909, when it was
sold at auction in Berlin, to 1945, when U.S. soldiers allowed a U.S. war
correspondent to remove it from a warehouse of art they were guarding in
southern Germany.

A researcher, Birgit Schwartz, who has been studying Hitler's art
collecting, spotted the painting in a photograph of Hitler's private
gallery contained in an album at the Library of Congress in Washington.

She recently brought it to the attention of the National Gallery, whose
experts have concluded that the painting in the photograph is the same one
now in the gallery's possession, Almeroth-Williams said.

While such a discovery is startling, art dealers said it is typical of how
paintings and other works of art often become as famous for their journeys
over centuries as for their brush strokes.

"Whenever I sell a painting, I always tell people, 'It's not just a
painting, it's a little piece of history,' " said Peter Nahum, a London
art dealer. "It takes you to another world -- and this one has already
taken you into Hitler's private collection."

The painting, an oil-on-wood work measuring 33.2 by 22 inches, shows Cupid
complaining to a naked Venus that he has been stung by bees after stealing
honey from their hive. According to the gallery, the painting's message is
that "life's brief pleasure is mixed with pain."

The National Gallery bought the painting in 1963 from New York art dealers
E & A Silbermann, who told the gallery that they had purchased it from
"family descendants" of the buyer at the 1909 Berlin auction.

Almeroth-Williams said that now seems to be incorrect. What is known, he
said, is that the painting was part of a collection belonging to someone
named Emil Goldschmidt, of Frankfurt, auctioned in 1909. The identity of
the buyer is still not known, he said.

In 1999, given growing concerns about Nazi looting of art, the gallery
posted the painting on its Web site with 120 others whose ownership and
location were unclear during the Nazi era, 1933 to 1945.

In December 2004, Almeroth-Williams said, the gallery received an e-mail
from Jay Hartwell of Hawaii, who said his mother, Patricia Lochridge
Hartwell, had owned the painting from 1945 until she sold it to the
Silbermanns in 1963. Reached Thursday in Hawaii, Hartwell said he wanted
to help the gallery "perhaps find the painting's rightful owner."

Patricia Hartwell, who died in Hawaii in 1998 at age 82, was a 1938
graduate of Columbia Journalism School who spent decades as a radio and
print reporter, her son said in a telephone interview.

She first joined CBS Radio, then wrote about the war in the Pacific and in
Europe for Collier's and Woman's Home Companion magazines. She was present
at the iconic raising of the U.S. flag over Iwo Jima in the Pacific in
February 1945 and the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in
Germany two months later, her son said.

According to the National Gallery, in 1945 she was allowed to take a
painting from a warehouse full of art that was then controlled by U.S.
forces. Jay Hartwell said that is how he and his family understand the
story, but he said, "I am unable to verify exactly what happened. We just
don't know."

She then took the painting with her back to the United States, and her son
said he recalled it hanging in their New York home.

Hartwell had a clear interest in art. After the war, she joined UNICEF in
New York as director of information, which required her to travel the
world buying paintings to use for UNICEF Christmas cards, said her son.

She moved to Arizona and became director of the Scottsdale Fine Arts
Commission, overseeing construction of the city's Center for the Arts.
After moving to Hawaii in 1971, she was involved with the Arts Council of
Hawaii.

Patricia Hartwell and her husband approached the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York in 1961, seeking to sell the painting, said Jay Hartwell.
She sold it two years later to the Silbermanns.

The Art Newspaper, the bible of the art world, first reported Patricia
Hartwell's connection to the Cupid painting in November 2006. The
painting's connection to Hitler emerged only when researcher Schwartz
approached the gallery recently. According to Almeroth-Williams, Schwartz
spotted the painting in a photograph from a catalogue Hitler kept of his
collection. The catalogue is now housed at the Library of Congress.

Gallery officials would not estimate the value of the Cranach painting,
and neither would a spokesman for Christie's, the auction house. But
Christie's said the record price for a Cranach painting at auction was
$8.6 million in 1990, in London.

Cranach, suddenly, is something of a celebrity in London. Coincidentally,
the Royal Academy of Arts has just opened a major exhibition of his work.
Huge posters for the exhibition featuring a nude in the style of his Venus
are displayed in London subway stations.

(source: Washington Post)






BULGARIA:

Bulgaria accepts blame for 11,000 Holocaust deaths



Bulgaria accepts responsibility for the genocide of more than 11,000 Jews
in its jurisdiction during World War II, President Georgi Parvanov said
during a visit to Israel this week.

The 11,000 Jewish victims were residents of Thrace in Greece and Macedonia
in Yugoslavia, areas annexed to Bulgaria in April 1941. Nazi Germany
awarded these regions to the Balkan kingdom in gratitude for its
cooperation. Advertisement


Bulgarian police acting under Nazi orders arrested the Jews in the annexed
territories and deported them to Treblinka in 1943. In parallel, Bulgarian
church and political leaders saved the 48,000 Jews living in Bulgaria
proper, whom the Nazis had also demanded be deported to death camps.

King Boris III agreed to the Nazi demands but bowed to pressure from
public figures and did not carry them out. The deaths of the Thrace and
Macedonian Jews were played down over the years while the rescue of the
Bulgarian Jewish population was emphasized.

After the fall of the Communist regime in the 1990s, Bulgarian leaders who
visited Israel refused to take responsibility for the deeds. Parvanov, a
member of the socialist (formerly communist) party, is the first to do so.

"When we express justifiable pride at what we have done to save Jews, we
do not forget that at the same time there was an anti-Semitic regime in
Bulgaria and we do not shirk our responsibility for the fate of more than
11,000 Jews who were deported from Thrace and Macedonia to death camps,"
he said at a ceremony at the President's Residence in Jerusalem on
Tuesday.

Israeli President Shimon Peres also emphasized the historical dichotomy in
Bulgaria during World War II. A monument to King Boris was removed from a
Jerusalem Hills forest in 2000 after protests by a group of Macedonian
descendants.

Dr. Nissim Yusha said yesterday that the Bulgarian president's comments
are "a great achievement and step forward." But he added that the advocacy
group wants Bulgaria to formally and publicly apologize.

(source: Ha'aretz)





GERMANY:

Nazi Records Given to Holocaust Groups


The names of some 3.5 million people displaced after World War II have
been provided to Holocaust memorial groups and museums in the United
States, Israel and Poland by a recently opened archive of Nazi-era
documents.

The International Tracing Service of the International Committee of the
Red Cross said Tuesday that it had handed over a third round of digitally
copied documents to the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem, the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the Warsaw-based National
Institute of Remembrance.

The archive, based in Bad Arolsen, Germany, said the transfer involved
copies of index cards that feature the names of people who were freed from
Nazi concentration and labor camps as well as prisoners of war.

The move came after a meeting March 18-19 of representatives of national
organizations from the member nations of the International Commission,
which oversees ITS.

"It is essential that we can share, thanks to the opening of the archives,
our documentation on the fate suffered by the victims of the Nazi regime,"
said Reto Meister, the ITS director. "This will facilitate access to the
information that is of such great value to the victims and their families,
irrespective of whether they live in Europe, Israel or America."

Paul Shapiro, director of the center for advanced Holocaust studies at the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, said the records on refugees displaced by
the war are extensive. "It's an incredibly rich resource," he said.

There are millions of index cards, documents and files in the ITS archive,
some of which contain detailed family histories. The archive made its
first distribution of copied documents late last year, to make access
easier for family members, friends and now researchers.

For more than 60 years, the information was locked away in the secretive
archive, which houses records scooped up by Allied troops from
concentration camps, Nazi SS offices and postwar displaced-persons
compounds.

It will take the ITS two more years to finish copying onto hard drives the
16 linear miles of papers that fill a half dozen buildings. So far, around
67 million images of documents have been transferred to the memorials and
museums.

Sharing the files will allow survivors and victims' relatives to see true
images of documents transportation lists, Gestapo orders, camp registers,
slave labor booklets, death books that demonstrate their tortures and
that may have determined whether they lived or died.

"We aim at providing easier access to the documents available at the
Tracing Service for the victims and their families, and researchers
alike," Meister said in a statement.

"For this it is essential that we create a close cooperation between all
the institutes that plan on working with the documentation available at
the ITS. This will allow us to share experiences, and what's more, share
the tremendous time and effort that will be needed for this indexing and
cataloguing work."


On the Net:
International Tracing Service: http://www.its-arolsen.org
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: http://www.ushmm.org
Yad Vashem: http://www.yadvashem.org
Institute of National Remembrance: http://www.ipn.gov.pl/wai/en/10/5

(source: Associated Press)





AUSTRIA:

Austria to return more art Nazis stole from Jews


Austria will tighten rules requiring the restitution of art seized during
the Nazi period, the government said on Wednesday following criticism
from the Jewish community.

Culture Minister Claudia Schmied said an exemption for private
foundations, which has excluded claims against Vienna's Leopold Museum,
would be re-examined.

"I am seeking a clear regulation of the matter of restitution regarding
the Leopold Foundation. The debate of the past few weeks has not enhanced
the reputation of the republic and especially not that of the Leopold
Foundation," she said.

She had asked the foundation to agree to a comprehensive survey of the
provenance of the museum's entire collection.

Property belonging to Jews was confiscated as a matter of course during
Nazi rule in Germany and neighboring countries.

Debate was revived after Austria's Jewish community leader, Ariel
Muzicant, said in a television interview in February the Leopold Museum
should be closed down until the law was changed.

The museum, one of Vienna's major tourist attractions, is classed as a
private foundation even though it is state-funded.

In addition, the government will seek the return of works taken between
1933, when Hitler first came to power in Germany, and 1945, when Nazi
Germany was defeated.

The current law covers from 1938, when Austria was annexed by Nazi
Germany, to 1945.

Before the war, Austria's Jewish community numbered around 200,000 and was
among Europe's most vibrant. Many fled and 65,000 were killed in Nazi
pogroms or camps. Only 10,000 Jews remain in Austria today.

The change in the law would also broaden the definition of property that
could be returned and include goods expropriated in all areas of influence
of the Nazis' Third Reich.

Thousands of art works have been returned to their original owners or
their heirs under the present law. It was unclear how much more property
would be covered by the changes announced on Wednesday.

Sophie Lillie, an art researcher, told Reuters the most significant work
at issue is "Haeuser am Meer" (Houses on the Sea) by 20th-century
expressionist Egon Schiele. It was seized by the Nazis in 1938 and is
claimed by a British family.

One report values it at $15 million.

"Any national museum would have given it back long ago," Lillie said.

Erika Jakubovits, a spokeswoman representing the Jewish community in
Austria, welcomed the government's change of heart.

"This is what we have long wanted and hoped for ... the initiative on the
Leopold Museum is to be welcomed.

"We feel a responsibility for all Austrian or former Austrian Jews
wherever they may be to help them advance this matter so that art works
can be returned," she said.

Rudolf Leopold, 83, founder of the collection and an expert on Schiele,
was quoted by cultural weekly Falter last month as refusing to return
"Haeuser am Meer".

"I have never extorted from anyone and never bought anything that I knew
had been Jewish property," he said.

(source: Reuters)





USA//COLORADO:

Victim of Nazis seeks reparations----Denver woman among thousands who may
be eligible for German fund


Denver resident Goldie Farkas worked under the eyes of Nazis in a sewing
shop in Budapest, Hungary, during World War II. She has applied to receive
a $3,000 payment that Germany is offering to Jews who were forced to labor
in the ghettos.

Goldie Farkas lived in three rooms with three families when she was a
young woman. She was allowed to leave her cramped apartment in Budapest,
Hungary, only to work in a sewing shop under the eyes of the Nazis.

Today, Farkas hopes to be compensated by the German government for that
painful episode in her life.

Farkas, a Denver resident since 1958, has applied for one of the newest
reparation programs offered to Jewish Holocaust survivors. The Ghetto
Labor Compensation Fund, established last September, is for Jews who
worked at jobs with little or no pay while living in German-controlled
ghettos.

As to whether today's money can make up for that time, "Oh no, never!"
Farkas said. "My husband suffered a lot, even more than I did. You can
never make up for that. Some people can't even imagine the way it was. If
I wasn't there, I wouldn't believe it either."

Reparations date to 1952

Farkas, who turns 81 this week, is among an estimated 20,000 people in the
U.S. who may be eligible for the ghetto labor program. The one-time
payment would be about $3,000.

In the metro area, several survivors have applied for the fund, says
Mirella Schreiber at Jewish Family Service of Colorado, which handles the
application process for Coloradans seeking compensation from the German
government.

Since Germany first agreed to make Holocaust reparations in 1952, there
have been more than 60 programs worldwide, each designed for various
categories of victims.

Some programs made reparations to those forced into concentration camps,
others for slave labor. Some survivors have received reparation for being
deprived of their livelihoods.

Most of the programs have expired. Some provide ongoing sums.

Indeed, every three months, the German government sends Goldie Farkas
about $900. She describes it as a Holocaust "hardship" payment, which she
applied for in 1990.

Still, Farkas says she lost years of compensation. In the post-war chaos,
first as a refugee in Israel and then in the U.S., she didn't know she was
even eligible for anything. When she did learn of the programs, many had
expired.

All in all, she said, "I didn't get enough for what I went through."

'How can this be repaid?'

Germany also makes reparations to Denver resident Zachary Kutner, 82, a
semi-retired fabric salesman and a longtime cantor at Congregation BMH/BJ.

Kutner, who was born in a Polish village so small he says it wasn't on the
map, was just 14 when the Nazis came for him.

So began a merciless odyssey through some of history's most notorious
death camps, ultimately leading him to Auschwitz and Dachau.

Kutner says at various times he worked back-breaking hours at everything
from feeding chickens and polishing boots to building Nazi factories and
making powder for grenades.

Today, he receives about $700 a month from a compensation program, the
amount fluctuating with the dollar's value.

Does the money make up for those years?

"I really don't know," Kutner said. "There are so many things they should
pay me for. I lost my parents, my two sisters and my brother. I worked for
4 1/2 years in concentration camps. I lived in Poland, but I can never go
back there. I never finished school.

"There are so many things. How can this be repaid?"

Help for survivors

A number of the compensation packages, including the recent Ghetto Labor
reparation, have been negotiated by the Conference on Jewish Material
Claims Against Germany Inc., which is based in New York. For information
on Holocaust compensation packages from the German government:

* Jewish Family Service of Colorado:

jewishfamilyservice.org or 303-597-5000, ask for Mirella Schreiber at
extension 302

* Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc.:
claimscon.org

(source: Rocky Mountain News)