Skip to main content

President of world Jewish congress says German museums turn blind eye to Nazi-looted art

Speech delivered by Ronald Lauder,president of the world jewish congress. Laszlo Balogh for Reuters

 German museums are wilfully ignoring their duty to come clean about works they hold that were looted from Jews by the Nazis, the head of the World Jewish Congress said on Thursday, and the government must do more to force them to act.
Germany has faced heavy criticism over its handling of the discovery of 1,407 Nazi-plundered works in the flat of Cornelius Gurlitt, an elderly recluse whose father took orders from Hitler to buy and sell so-called 'degenerate art' to fund Nazi activities.Since a magazine broke the story last November, debate over the rightful ownership of works stashed in the Munich apartment - including by masters such as Duerer, Delacroix, Picasso and Matisse - has grown into a wider controversy over thousands of paintings on open display in museums.
"They know what's been stolen," WJC President Ronald Lauder told Reuters in an interview during a visit to Berlin. "And what they've been doing is turning a blind eye."Lauder, an honorary chairman of the board of trustees of New York's Museum of Modern Art, said the discovery of the Gurlitt trove should prompt a thorough examination of the provenance of works in public collections.He said Germany had not addressed the culpability of museums, where the Jewish Claims Conference estimates 20,000 looted items are still on display.
According to a 2012 survey by the Institute for Museum Research in Berlin, more than 2,000 registered German museums hold objects created before 1945 but acquired after 1933 - the official definition for property suspected of having been extorted by the Nazis.Though not every work acquired in this time frame was necessarily attained through Nazi persecution, only 285 museums - less than 5 percent of all those registered in Germany - have researched the ownership history of such collections.
"The truth is, we all know there is a large amount of art in museums which was either looted or sold under questionable circumstances," said Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Council's Berlin office."At the very least, these works need to be researched," she told Reuters in a telephone interview."This is an issue of great ethical and moral importance in our understanding of the Holocaust and German history."
GOVERNMENT RESPONSE
Asked about the criticisms, Uwe Hartmann, head of the German national museums' Office for Provenance Investigation and Research in Berlin, agreed that not enough had been done about looted art historically but said Germany was now moving forward.Germany was one of 44 countries that signed the "Washington Principles" in 1998 providing guidelines for the location, identification and restitution of artworks looted by the Nazis..click here for more brief
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Califonia pastor has been arrested for having sex with one of the teenage girls he took into custody, injuring his dog too

BCCN1 A California pastor was arrested for allegedly injuring his dog and having sex with one of the two teenage girls he had taken under his wing.33-year-old Hyo Bin Im, known in San Ramon as Pastor John, was charged with child concealment, unlawful sexual intercourse and animal cruelty on Tuesday. The bizarre list of charges were a shock for members of Im’s Contra Costa Korean Presbyterian Church. The youth pastor announced his resignation on Sunday, but didn’t explain why he was leaving. He told the police that he was the founder of The Living Well Ministries, a Christian non-profit that allegedly helped widows, homeless, and orphans.But he apparently never brought these high-minded goals home. The  Police also found two 17-year-old runaways living in the youth pastor’s house, BBCN1 reports. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Frankenstein and the Bible

Mary Shelley's  Frankenstein  was published in London in the early 1800's well after the Jewish legend of the Golem-creature who protected 16th century Jews in Prague Although there are some differences between the story lines, the similarities between Frankenstein and the Golem are striking: For starters, they were both big and scary with superhuman strength. Plus, they both had to be Jewish. I mean, most of my Jewish relatives have names that end in "-stein"... Goldstein, Silverstein, Frankenstein... you name it. And my own Grandma swore that my Grandpa looked like a Golem. And just to drive home my logical deductions even more, the Talmud talks about a Golem being created who couldn't communicate verbally (Sanhedrin 65B) and it seems pretty clear that Frankenstein doesn't utter any intelligible language known to man. Either that or Frankie works as a NYC subway operator. Although the Talmud may have spoke about Golems, Isaiah spoke about "wearying...
Post a Comment
Read more

Member of Isreali legislative government being attacked for saying ''Reform is not Jewish''

A member of the Israeli legislative government was slammed for his alleged comments about Reform Judaism on Wednesday, after   media outlets reported David Rotem stating , "The Reform movement is not Jewish … they are another religion." The statement shocked members of the Jewish community worldwide, especially as characterizing the Reform movement as another religion has political implications relating to Israel's Law of Return, which prevents non-Jews from making aliyah, or immigrating to Israel.   The Jewish Telegraphic Agency   reported that a statement released by Israel's Reform movement explained that by using the term "another religion," Rotem effectively stated that "Reform Jews have no place in Israel." Gilad Kariv, executive director of the Reform movement in Israel, called on the Knesset speaker to reprimand Rotem, who is the   Knesset Law, Constitution, and Justice Committee chairman . He said, "An assertion such as this makes it ...
Post a Comment
Read more