April 9



POLAND:

Poland Searches Its Own Soul


In "Defiance," a clunky but well-meaning action film set during
World War II and starring Daniel Craig, the Bielski brothers save hundreds
of fellow Polish Jews by battling Nazis in the Belarussian forest.
Directed by Edward Zwick and based on a true story, the movie, released
around New Year's, tried among other things to counter Hollywoods usual
tales of Jewish helplessness during the Shoah.

Whether it did, or instead implied that Jews who didnt fight bore a
measure of responsibility for their own fate, became a matter of some
passing debate in America.

But the film provoked a different sort of fuss shortly before it arrived
here some weeks later. Movie critics in Poland wondered whether Hollywood
would ever get around to showing Polish partisans as heroes, as opposed to
anti-Semites. A book rushed out by a couple of journalists for Gazeta
Wyborcza, a liberal newspaper, raised doubts about the financial motives
of the roughneck real-life Bielski brothers and was pulled from bookstores
soon after publication because of accusations of inaccuracy and
plagiarism.

Then the movie opened, and the whole issue fizzled. The film quietly
disappeared from theaters. Poland, it turned out, had already moved on.

As Europe diversifies, nearly every nation and culture on the continent
seems to battle for victimhood status. Poles have especially good reason
to see themselves as long oppressed, having been fought over and occupied
for much of the last century by vicious regimes. Shifting political power
struggles during and after the war, among other complications of Polish
Jewish history, led some Polish Jews at certain points to side with
Soviets against Nazis and Polish partisans. The whole moral morass,
essential to Polish identity, tends to be lost on outsiders, many of whom
unthinkingly regard the country, throughout most of the last century at
least, as just a Jewish killing field.

Jerzy Halbersztadt is director of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews
in Warsaw, which will soon begin construction of a new $60 million home
next to the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, paid for by the nation and the city.

Polish anti-Semitism persists, Mr. Halbersztadt said. "But Poles are more
strongly pro-American, and a side effect is that Poland also has the
strongest pro-Israel policy, to which there is no opposition anywhere on
the local political spectrum," he added. "Anti-Semitism is no longer an
issue particular to us in daily life."

Michal Bilewicz, a young Jewish psychologist who specializes in
Polish-Jewish relations, echoed that thought. He sat one recent morning in
his office at the University of Warsaw, in a building that used to be
Gestapo headquarters, beside the former ghetto.

Not that there isn't anti-Semitism in Poland, "but there is no place for
it in public today," Mr. Bilewicz said. "The last time a national survey
was done here, in 2002, although the number of anti-Semites rose slightly
- and these were almost all older people - more important the number of
anti-anti-Semites went way up."

He pointed to books like "Fear" and "Neighbors" by the historian Jan T.
Gross, documenting pogroms at Jedwabne and other atrocities by Poles
against Jews during and after the war, which provoked much public
soul-searching and made denial of Polish complicity no longer possible.

Culture, despite the virtual absence of Jews here, has meanwhile helped
shift attitudes in this country, not entirely but significantly. Walk into
a Polish bookstore these days, and youll find shelves heaving with volumes
about Jewish history and culture. There is a Jewish book fair here in
Warsaw, a Jewish cultural festival in Krakow, not to mention Mr.
Halbersztadts museum, planned to open in 2012.

Films like Roman Polanski's "Pianist," released in 2002, about a Jewish
survivor, allowed that a modicum of Polish decency outlasted the war. And
in 2007, "Katyn," directed by Andrzej Wajda, dramatized the murder of some
15,000 Polish officers by the Soviet forces, a massacre Poles were
forbidden to discuss under the Soviets. It also was part of the cultural
process of publicly untangling the complexity of modern Polish history.
Mr. Wajda has said he made the film now to reach a generation of Polish
"moviegoers for whom it matters that we are a society," as he put it, "and
not just an accidental crowd." That is to say, to reach a generation
anxious to unpack the past.

Outsiders' views of Poland may also be changing, slowly. The other day
busloads of Israeli high school students arrived, as they regularly do, at
the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, draped themselves in Israeli flags and sang
patriotic songs. Israeli security guards kept a lookout, but with no one
else around on a gray, chilly morning, the voices of the teenagers echoed
in the silent square against the surrounding Soviet-era apartment blocks.

It was the usual tour of Jewish memorial sites in Poland, a group leader
said. Such trips have for years reinforced an impression among Israelis,
as the Polish former Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz once said,
that Poland is "just one big cemetery" for Jews.

But it turns out that a few of the students on this trip were scheduled to
meet with Polish students. For the last couple of years the Museum of the
History of Polish Jews and an organization called the Forum for Dialogue
Among Nations have arranged these meetings.

"Of course there are historical reasons why the perception of Poland is
the way it is," said Andrzej Folwarczny, the forum's president. "On the
other hand, Communism taught Poles that Jewish suffering was only one
part of the general suffering of the Polish people, and that the first
150,000 or so victims at Auschwitz were Polish political prisoners. So
after Communism, when more and more Jews came here and said, 'Auschwitz is
our place of suffering,' suddenly these two sides, ignorant of each others
narrative, clashed over victimhood.

"But gradually more Poles have come to realize that their history is not
black and white, that we should be proud of Poles who saved Jews but also
be clear that other Poles killed Jews, and that something is missing from
our culture" - he was now referring to the Jewish population of three
million before the war, today barely a few thousand - "for which we have
responsibility."

Mr. Bilewicz, the psychologist, agreed. He described two interesting
studies he conducted not long ago. In one, he said, different groups of
Israeli and Polish teenagers, brought together, were told either to chat
only about their lives today or to discuss only the war and Shoah. The
first group forged easy bonds. The second talked at cross purposes. "Both
sides need to learn to empathize more," Mr. Bilewicz concluded.

The other study surveyed residents of what used to be the Warsaw Ghetto,
where virtually no remnants of the Jewish past remain, aside from street
names and the memorial. To the surprise even of the researchers, many
residents said the Jewish history of their district was crucial to their
own sense of pride and home. The study found that the monuments, museums
and other cultural reminders of the past were essential to sustaining the
neighborhoods collective memory.

"History is being rewritten here every day," as Mr. Bilewicz put it. "How
come you in America believe that you can change, but Poles always remain
the same?"

(source: New York Times)







GERMANY:

A QUESTION OF MORALITY----An End to Restitution of Nazi Looted Art?


For years, it has been widely accepted that artworks looted by the Nazis
should be returned to their rightful owners. But now a prominent British
expert has called for a stop to restitution -- and triggered protests in
the art world.

The art connoisseur Sir Norman Rosenthal may be a British institution, but
the equanimity often attributed to his compatriots is not one of his
distinguishing features.

Rosenthal, 64, was the leading curator at London's Royal Academy for more
than 30 years. Considered the public face of the institution, he was
knighted for his achievements. His vibrant passion for art is legendary.
He helped make British artist Damien Hirst and his peers famous when he
staged the exhibition "Sensation" at the Royal Academy. Last year, he left
the museum where he had caused many a stir -- and shocked the British and
others yet again.

Rosenthal, the son of Jewish refugees from Germany and Slovakia, called
for an end to the restitution of so-called Nazi looted art in an article
in the journal The Art Newspaper.

The fact that someone who lost members of his own family in the Holocaust
is now opposing restitution and is calling for an end to the practice has
injected a provocatively dissonant note into an already angry debate --
and has triggered fierce protest. At issue is nothing less than the
permanent whereabouts of some of the icons of art history.

Restitution is a term that has been constantly bandied about in the art
world for at least the last 10 years. It's a question of morality and the
righting of indisputable wrongs. But it has also become -- at least in
Rosenthal's opinion -- a question of big business.

It is clear that new restitutions will introduce even more turmoil into
the museum world and shrink the inventories of notable collections. The
controversy involves important artists such as Rembrandt, the German
Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, the Austrian Expressionist Egon
Schiele and even Pablo Picasso. Two of the Spanish painter's works with
somewhat murky histories are in New York, one at the Guggenheim Museum and
the other at the Museum of Modern Art. The heirs of the banker Paul von
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy recently reached an out-of-court settlement with the
two museums.

The E.G. Bhrle Collection in Zurich still owns "La Sultane," a painting by
Edouard Manet that is controversial because of its history as looted art.
Max Silberberg, an industrialist from Breslau (now the Polish city of
Wroclaw), was forced to sell the painting in 1937. Silberberg and his wife
were deported to Auschwitz five years later.

The principle of restitution seemed undisputed until recently. Who would
challenge the legitimacy of the claims of the heirs of Nazi victims to
their family property? In those cases in which museums have balked at
returning looted art, they have argued that they acquired the works in
question legally and in good faith. But does this argument truly release
them from the obligation to give back the art?

Each case underscores the unscrupulousness of the Nazis, whose special
teams systematically stole works of art from their Jewish owners from
Paris to Prague. And each case is linked to the tragedy of persecution,
and almost always to murder.

After the war, the Western Allies initially tried to shed light on the
biggest art heist in history. But a process of repressing the history
behind the stolen art soon began, clearing the way for art dealers to sell
many works to private collectors and museums around the world. Few
questions were asked when it came to determining who had owned the works
before 1945. Claims were ignored and inquiries were hampered.

It was not until a 1998 conference in Washington that 44 countries
committed themselves to finding "fair solutions." Under the Washington
agreement, statutes of limitations were lifted, at least for art in public
hands. But the treaty was not legally binding.

Austria, at any rate, enacted its own law and, after 1998, returned about
13,000 works to their rightful owners. But since 2006, when Jewish art
collector Ronald Lauder paid $135 million (102 million) for Gustav Klimt's
famous portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," which had already been returned to
its owners by a museum in Vienna, the public's fascination with such
record sums and the glitz of large amounts of money have overshadowed any
gestures of fairness.

It was also Lauder who, in late 2006, bought Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's
"Berlin Street Scene" at auction for $38 million (29 million). Before
that, Berlin's Brcke Museum had restituted the Expressionist masterpiece
to the granddaughter of collector Alfred Hess, in a move that was
everything but voluntary.

Anita Halpin, the Hess heir, is still stubbornly fighting for other
paintings. A few months ago, she was awarded a painting by Franz Marc
titled "Cat Behind a Tree." Owned by a bank, the work was on loan to the
Sprengel Museum in the northern German city of Hannover.

Art historian Uwe Hartmann estimates that there are more than 10,000 works
that require investigation in German museums alone. Hartmann heads a new
office to investigate the provenance of works of art, which the government
established to assist museums. Commenting on the halting history of
restitution, he says: "After the 1998 Washington declaration, they said:
Now we're going to get started. Ten years later, they were still saying:
Now we're really going to get started."

Is there more activity today? In the Netherlands, 400 museums were
recently ordered to examine their collections. In Great Britain, an
amendment to a law is being considered that would make restitution easier.
These efforts represent an overdue moral victory.

But there are also counter-examples, especially in Germany. Museums from
Duisburg to Munich insist on their supposed right to keep their Emil
Noldes and Paul Klees, despite convincing evidence that the works were
looted. The mayor of a southern German town refuses to hand over a
painting by the 19th-century German painter Franz von Lenbach, arguing
that there is no law forcing him to relinquish the work. According to
Monika Tatzkow, an expert on looted art, the mayor says that the former
owner, Walter Westfeld, just happened to "go missing in a concentration
camp."

A district court in Berlin recently issued a momentous ruling, in which it
ordered the German Historic Museum to restitute a collection of posters
once owned by the Jewish dentist Hans Sachs, which was seized by the
Gestapo in 1938, to his son Peter. Peter Sachs chose to take the unusual
route through the civil courts, which could prove to be the more promising
approach in the future.

Ironically, the German government filed an appeal against the Berlin
court's decision. The Limbach Commission, founded a few years ago and
named after Jutta Limbach, the former president of the German
Constitutional Court, had previously ruled against Peter Sachs. It is
conspicuous that this commission has rarely been involved in disputes over
looted art in the past. Both parties to a dispute must appeal, and the
museums usually refuse.

In which direction is the mood turning, forward or backward? The latter
would be detrimental to the victims' heirs.

The best-known opponent of restitution in Germany is Bernd Schultz, 67,
the director of the Berlin auction house Villa Grisebach. In a speech at
the Chancellery two years ago, Schultz accused the heirs of having a
purely financial interest in looted art: "They say Holocaust, but they
mean money." He has never retracted the statement.

Rosenthal is also defiant, and he too wants to put an end to restitutions,
but his reasoning comes from a different direction. His motives include
the desire for reconciliation, rather than a wish to downplay the issue.

After ending his stellar career at the Royal Academy, Rosenthal is now
active in the art world from Abu Dhabi to Philadelphia. He does not
believe that restitution is an effective way to overcome the past. After
his article appeared in The Art Newspaper, which earned him the hostility
of leading members of the art world, including Nicholas Serota, the
director of the Tate Museums, he stopped commenting on the issue -- until
a new interview with SPIEGEL, in which he says: "We can no longer wipe
history clean."

Rosenthal and his Spanish wife, who works at the Prado in Madrid, have two
daughters. Every generation, says Rosenthal, must reinvent itself. The
claim to Nazi-looted art, he says, should expire with the death of the
last surviving owners.

(source: Spiegel)



USA:

Hearst Castle to return artworks seized by Nazis----State parks officials
agree to turn over two paintings to heirs of Jewish art dealers. The
family allows a third to be kept at San Simeon to help tell the story of
the Holocaust.


For decades, three Italian Renaissance paintings have hung on the walls of
Hearst Castle without betraying their grim history.

But on Friday, state parks officials will formally acknowledge the
artworks' past, turning them over to the heirs of a Jewish couple who were
forced by the Nazis to liquidate their Berlin art gallery in 1935.

At a brief ceremony in Sacramento, the paintings will be repatriated
to descendants of Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer, who were among Germany's
premier art dealers before World War II. The transfer will be witnessed by
family members from as far as Argentina, and their Paris-based attorney,
who for two decades has been pressing claims on their behalf at museums in
Europe and the United States.

After researching the Hearst paintings since 2007, the state agreed with
attorney Eva Sterzing that they were sold at a Nazi judenauktionen -- a
coerced sale aimed at stripping Jews of their assets.

"This is an opportunity to right a wrong," state parks Director Ruth
Coleman said. "It also gives us a chance to tell the story over and over,
so we don't forget our history. Every time someone tours the castle,
they'll be learning about this."

Under the family's agreement with the state, one of the pieces -- "Venus
and Cupid," done by a student of Venetian painter Paris Bordone -- will
remain at the castle, the opulent 165-room home built by newspaper tycoon
William Randolph Hearst. Guides will be schooled in its history and make a
point of explaining it during their tours.

"I think it's marvelous that the state will continue educating people as
to what occurred," said Peter Bloch, an Oppenheimer grandson who lives in
Pompano Beach, Fla. "The family very willingly agreed to that."

The other two paintings -- a portrait by a student of Jacopo Tintoretto
and one by a Venetian artist thought to be Giovanni Cariani -- will
probably be sold by the family.

"There are nine heirs involved on three continents and trying to keep the
paintings would be difficult," said Bloch, a retired food services
manager. He would not discuss the works' monetary value.

No other pieces at Hearst Castle are thought to have tainted origins,
museum Director Hoyt Fields said. In 2003, staff members started the
laborious process of vetting the entire collection as required by the
American Assn. of Museums. However, they had not yet examined the
paintings when the Oppenheimer heirs made their claim.

Denounced as "Jewish capitalists" by the Nazis, Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer
fled to France in 1933. He died in 1941 in France. She died at Auschwitz
two years later. Proceeds from the many valuable paintings in their
gallery went to pay "flight taxes" and other fees levied on Jews who left
Germany.

Repatriating art confiscated or looted by the Nazis has become a subject
of intense interest in the museum world only in the last decade, according
to Erik Ledbetter, the head of international programs and ethics for the
American Assn. of Museums. When the Berlin Wall fell, previously
inaccessible archives opened up. By then, descendants of Holocaust victims
were a generation or two removed from the horror, and more interested than
many of their parents in seeking reparations.

Twenty-five U.S. museums have negotiated settlements over Nazi-looted art
in the last 10 years.

"There's not a great deal of law on the subject, but the dominant view
right now is that, for sales ordered by the Nazi government, the
transaction is the equivalent of theft," said Thomas R. Kline, a
Washington, D.C., attorney who has done extensive work in the field.

Although documents tracing the ownership of disputed works are scattered,
a surprising number still exist because of the Nazis' penchant for
record-keeping.

"The consensus seems to be that they were fascinated by creating a legal
framework for their art looting," Kline said. "If a Jew fled the country
or was even taken to a camp, his property was considered abandoned and
could be seized."

Attorneys for the California State Parks Department approached the
family's claim with predictable skepticism. But they verified it after
examining numerous documents, including 50-year-old West German court
records in a successful claim filed by the family. They also conferred
with the San Diego Museum of Art, which had settled with family members in
2004 over their claim for Peter Paul Rubens' "Allegory of Eternity."

"The debate soon became: Was there a solution greater for both parties
than just returning the paintings?" said Bradly Torgan, a Los Angeles
attorney who was general counsel for the state parks at the time.

The transfer will not leave the Hearst Castle art-poor. A legendary,
voracious collector, Hearst had buyers scouting galleries all over Europe.
His home at San Simeon, which was opened to the public by the state in
1959, still holds about 25,000 pieces -- a small portion of all he
collected.

As for the Oppenheimers' paintings, "we have no evidence to indicate he
was anything other than an innocent purchaser," Torgan said. "Our best
guess is that the gallery that acquired them at auction called Hearst's
agent and said, 'We've got some pieces Mr. Hearst might be interested in.'
"
(source: Los Angeles Times)


**********************

Demjanjuk: Deportation would be like 'torture'-----Appeal made to
immigration board, citing fears of physical and mental pain


The deportation of alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk should be
blocked because forcing the frail 89-year-old to go to Germany would
amount to torture, his attorney said in a court filing Tuesday.

John Broadley, the attorney for the retired Cleveland area auto worker,
asked the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va., to block his
client's deportation and reopen a U.S. case that has ordered Demjanjuk
deported.

Germany had wanted Demjanjuk in the country Monday. But a U.S. immigration
judge Friday agreed to temporarily halt his removal from the United
States, then revoked that decision Monday. The stay expires Wednesday.

Demjanjuk is accused in a German arrest warrant of 29,000 counts of acting
as an accessory to murder at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied
Poland in 1943. He has denied involvement in any deaths.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk came to the United States after World War II
as a refugee.

In Germany, Demjanjuk would have a chance to respond to the allegations
before a judge in Munich. German prosecutors are making their case based
largely on evidence used in the U.S. to strip Demjanjuk of his citizenship
in 2002.

'Severe physical and mental pain'
In a three-page signed statement last week, Demjanjuk asked for asylum in
the U.S. and said deporting him "will expose me to severe physical and
mental pain that clearly amount to torture under any reasonable definition
of the term."

He said he suffers severe spinal, hip and leg pain and has a bone marrow
disorder, kidney disease, anemia, kidney stones, arthritis, gout and
spinal deterioration.

Broadley said a government physician examined Demjanjuk on Thursday to
determine his ability to travel and there was "dramatic evidence" of his
back pain. Broadley submitted a portion of the exam videotape to the
government on Friday as part of his argument against deportation.

The Justice Department responded by saying Demjanjuk's medical capacity to
stand trial abroad "is, of course, irrelevant in a removal proceeding."

Demjanjuk first gained U.S. citizenship in 1958. But his citizenship was
revoked in 1981 when the Justice Department alleged he had served the
Nazis as the notorious Nazi guard "Ivan the Terrible" in Poland at the
Treblinka death camp.

He was extradited to Israel in 1986, and two years later he was found
guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He appealed, and
Israel's Supreme Court in 1993 ruled that Demjanjuk was not Ivan the
Terrible and allowed him to return to the United States.

His U.S. citizenship was restored in 1998. The Justice Department went
after his citizenship again, making a case that he had served at Sobibor
and other death or forced labor camps.

(source: MSNBC News)



********************************


Rare Holocaust artifact stolen from Elmore store

A rare Holocaust artifact found at Auschwitz concentration
camp in Poland during World War II has been stolen from an Elmore antique
shop, the store owner said.

Ernie Scarano, owner of Mantiques on Rice Street, said he noticed the
artifact, a Star of David that was part of a piece of art for sale in his
shop, was missing this afternoon and reported the theft to Elmore police.

Scarano believes someone snatched the star, made of woven felt and sewn on
heavy canvas, while the store was open during the past week or two. He
said the star was with the artwork, an abstract sculpture that represents
good and evil, about 10 days ago.

Somebody just lifted it while they were back there browsing around in the
art section, he said.

Anyone with information regarding the theft is asked to call the Elmore
Police Department at 419-862-3100.

(source: Port Clinton News Herald--Ohio)


******************


Holocaust Commission wins Senate approval

A Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission would be created under a bill
passed unanimously by the Senate on Tuesday. The 18-member commission
would meet four times a year to provide educational materials to schools
and colleges, help implement course studies and awareness programs. It
also could coordinate work among organizations, agencies, museums, as well
as survivors.

The bill was co-sponsored by Sens. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, and Florence
Shapiro, R-Plano, whose parents were Holocaust survivors.

"This is a very personal bill for me. I get pretty emotional when I talk
about issues like this," Shapiro said.

Citing that 15 million people were killed in the 20th Century through
persecution, Ellis and Shapiro said the bill is designed to provide the
learning tools so that the atrocities from Auschwitz to Darfur might not
be repeated.

"You don't need death camps or gas chambers," Shapiro said. "Mass killings
with the idea of wiping out a people can be carried out with machetes."

(source: Dallas Morning News)