Revisiting the numbers game

by Marc Masurovsky

Since 2011, the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP) has periodically addressed the problematic of quantifying the thefts of art works, art objects, and other items of esthetic value, looted between 1933 and 1945 under National Socialist rule, during WWII and the Holocaust. After the conflict, there was no internationally-sanctioned and organized audit of cultural losses suffered by the victims of National Socialist and Fascist aggression on the European continent. Therefore, experts and amateurs alike have wallowed in the murky waters of estimations of human and material losses from 1945 to the present.

Regarding the scale of human losses, the international community accepts that between 45 and 55 million men, women, and children lost their lives as a direct and indirect result of the continental conflagration between September 1, 1939, and May 8, 1945. That figure includes the six million Jews targeted for physical extermination by the Nazi government. The continental theater of operations included 15 European countries (and North Africa) which were directly involved either as a result of being militarily occupied by Axis powers, annexed by Nazi Germany, or allied to the Axis: Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Soviet Union, North Africa (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia).

Wherever the German Army and the Nazi political and security apparatus went, there followed intense repression, the physical eradication of local populations accompanied by systematic, State-sponsored acts of plunder and illicit displacement of individual and communal properties.

By the time Nazi Germany agreed to terms of unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945, the Allies had realized that “art treasures” (museum-quality objects) were systematically looted across Axis-controlled Europe, stored away in gigantic depots or sold on the international art market to replenish the Reich’s warmongering coffers. Allied focus on “art plunder” went hand in hand with “rescuing the treasures of Europe” and returning them to the countries from which they had been forcibly removed. In and of itself, this task was barely manageable, but if you factored in “everything else” that was stolen, the task was simply unmanageable and would have required several decades of full-time focus by myriad specialists from the victorious nations to sort out what had been stolen by 1945, what was recovered, and what was still missing as of Victory-Day (V-E-Day).

The ex-Soviets always wanted to do things their own way, which, if you look back at the consequences of WWII on the Soviet Union’s infrastructure, human and industrial capital and cultural infrastructure, you might understand some of their reasoning. Their losses for the period of 1941-1945 are estimated in the millions. One snapshot of these staggering figures can be best summed up by their estimation of museum losses: 1,129,929 units of conservation comprising objects, rare books, manuscripts, as well as archival collections.https://lostart.ru/fr/svodnyj_katalog/

Some more elliptical estimates suggest that 20% of European art was plundered “from Jewish collectors and other individuals and organizations.” We don’t know what 100% amounts to, which would represent the universe of “stealable” European art. Hence, the 20% ratio seems a bit vapid and lacking substance. 

We still don’t really know…

In the media-hungry and attention-starved world that we all bask in, there has developed an insatiable appetite to provide numbers that explain the true extent of the plunder and what is still missing. These valiant self-interested pronouncements do not usually come from historians and experts who, for professional reasons, are reluctant to venture in such murky and troubled waters. They emanate from politicians, international personalities, media hounds, and anyone seeking attention for not more than 3 minutes but whose pronouncements will live on forever as random digital factoids on the Internet which end up restated and reposted blindly and thoughtlessly. Repeated enough times, they are true. Fact-checking, go take a hike!

So, what’s the problem exactly?

In November-December 1998, an international conference dubbed the Washington Conference on Holocaust-era Assets took place in Washington, DC. It brought together under one roof 44 nations and a smattering of NGOs to assess where we were with respect to honoring postwar claims for compensation and restitution submitted by Holocaust victims’ families to the governments of their adopted countries and against the main architects and perpetrators of the horrors unleashed upon them and their families—Germany and its allies. Although the results of the Washington Conference were mixed, a set of eleven principles was released on its last day to guide the art market and governments on how to address the possibility that looted art objects may have entered public collections and businesses and how to resolve these claims to everyone’s satisfaction (one would only hope…). These principles avoided mentioning anything about the private art market and—in true diplomatic verbiage—kept the notion of plunder at its vaguest and limited the main perpetrators to “the Nazis.”

Ronald Lauder, who, at the time of the December 1998 Washington Conference, was Chairman of the Board of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the chairman of the recently-established Commission for Art Recovery (CAR), proclaimed that 110,000 art works were still missing, half of the total number that was allegedly stolen (or 220,000)-- a figure advanced without a hint of critical insight as to its veracity and on what facts it rested. He also placed a value on the missing works: 10-30 billion dollars (1998 value). This would assign an approximate value per object of 100,000 dollars, give or take 50,000. The average value of art objects looted from Jewish owners could be estimated grossly at between 5 and 10,000 dollars (1998) and that is still an uneducated guess. Only 5 to 15%--again, uninformed guesses based on years spent reviewing restitution claims and Nazi inventories of stolen property—reached or exceeded the values hypothetized by Mr. Lauder.

Mr. Lauder's estimates pale against those proffered by the Polish government. They estimate that their battered nation alone lost 600,000 works of art, many of which remain unrecovered. 

Since 1998, the London-based Art Loss Register (ALR), one of the most important proprietary (privately-owned) databases of stolen art in existence today, proffered an estimate of 200,000 stolen works of art, and even averred that 170,000 had been recovered and therefore that would leave only 30,000 still gallavanting about and waiting to be plucked for a handsome finder’s fee. These figures are astounding for several reasons: 1/ they are unjustified and unverifiable; and 2/ they presume a rate of restitution of more than 85%! A rather extraordinary feat which, it too, is surreally wrong. Of course I invite you all to fact-check this and contact ALR directly to verify or infirm the above.

600,000 art objects stolen, 100,000 still missing

This formula, backed up by no scientific research or historical documentation, has been the most popular mantra proffered by government officials, reporters, and restitution lawyers.

The most notable proponent of this statistic is Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, currently Special Advisor on Holocaust Affairs to the US Secretary of State and an internationally-recognized authority on the diplomacy of reparations for Holocaust victims. He first posited (as far as we can tell) these figures at an international conference held in Prague (Czechia) in June 2009. Mr. Eizenstat repeated those figures as recently as 2018 which were reported in 2019 by the Washington Post.

These figures have also been repeated in the following media outlets:

-history.co.uk,
-Time Magazine,
-the Smithsonian Magazine in 2022,
-Swissinfo.ch
-Deutsche Welle
The DW article contradicts itself when, in the same breath, it posits that 5 million artworks changed hands illegally. Which is it?
-The LA Times, whose editorial board actually wondered whether the estimates might be much higher.
-National Public Radio
-and, of course, the US Department of State

Other far-flung estimates include:

-30,000 looted art works are still missing
-10,000 works are still missing

How do we stop the misrepresentation of one of the most heinous crimes committed against culture, against humanity as part of a genocide of the Jewish people?

When someone asks you how many objects were looted during the Nazi years (1933-1945), 

1/ you do not to provide an accurate figure because there is none. 

2/ You do not know how many objects have been recovered, 

3/ you do not how many have been restituted, and how many are still missing, regardless of style, value, and importance to art world denizens. 

4/ you must err on the side of caution and state in all seriousness: between six and ten million.

For more clarifications, see:

30 May 2011
Analysis of an address by Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat at Prague in June 2009

21 April 2015

The illusion of numbers
10 May 2015

The day after...
23 May 2018

Some frequently asked questions

The monetization of recovered Jewish assets

by Marc Masurovsky

The idea is not new and evolved at the end of WWII, when Allied forces and local resistance and partisan units stumbled on mountains of looted Jewish property, consisting of household goods, decorative objects (including furniture and textiles), musical instruments, libraries, works of art (paintings, works on paper, sculpture, etc.), precious stones and jewelry, precious metals, and financial instruments.

These recoveries across Central and Western Europe created an urgent need to identify who the despoiled owners were, find out if they were alive, if family members and relatives could be identified and located to claim the property. This part of the story is well-known as it involves civilian and military efforts to oversee the collection, identification, and repatriation of this found property with a view to its restitution to rightful owners. These procedures were mostly carried out in zones of Europe not occupied or dominated by Soviet military and civilian authorities.

The burdensome aspect of the mission as outlined above soon proved to be too much for the agencies responsible for overseeing this massive task of identification, cataloguing and shipping of recovered Jewish property. In order to make this problem go away, why not sell it all off? The question was reasonable in light of the chaos and confusion reigning in recently-liberated European countries, the desire of survivors to get on with their lives, and the need for governments to rehabilitate their destroyed nations and stimulate the economy by whatever means possible.

If one were to sell off this property, who would administer the process? Who would receive the funds? In what capacity? The answer was fairly simple: if the property was known to have come from Jewish owners, whether or not they could be identified, then Jewish organizations would oversee the sale of these assets and redistribute the proceeds to those who needed the funds most—survivors and their families who were dispossessed of everything that they owned.

The monetization of looted Jewish property recovered by Allied forces started in earnest in mid-1946 after the Paris Reparations Conference where Jewish organizations and agencies would oversee the disposition of recovered Jewish property for the benefit of surviving Jewish communities and their members. It was one thing to sell household goods, clothes, linens, furniture, musical instruments with no apparent artistic value, books and jewelry. But what about works of art and artistic objects with market value that belonged to collectors, dealers and businesses steeped in the art world of the interwar years? Should they be treated as bulk items regardless of who owned them and what importance or value they held? For efficiency’s sake, it was cost-effective to presume the owners dead, which eliminated the onerous and time-consuming task of actually finding them so they could collect their recovered property.

Governments got in on the act, especially in Western Europe—the Netherlands, Belgium, and France—where public sales were held from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s during which more than 100,000 works of art and objects were sold off, a number of which were traceable to victims of Nazi persecution. Local government officials sometimes concocted elaborate schemes by which to divert thousands of works of art from Allied-run depots under the pretext that their owners had not been identified, label them as “heirless property” and sell them through a network of auction houses and businesses in Europe and the United States, the proceeds of which would benefit the organizations and individuals overseeing this effort as well as local public agencies and the victims’ heirs and relatives. The architect of one such a scheme, denounced by the US Department of State, was Dr. Philip Auerbach, a Bavarian official whose portfolio included reparations and restitution of looted Jewish property.

Since then, the physical restitution of individual art objects to their rightful owners has coexisted somewhat uncomfortably with the pressure exerted by Jewish groups to treat these objects as “wholesale items” to be disposed of expeditiously for the benefit of Holocaust survivors and their kin.

Over time, this duality in treatment of recovered Jewish property looted by the Nazis has shaped the cross-generational debate on restitution of looted art vs. reparations. The end result of this duality has been a general indifference across Jewish communities towards repeated efforts by individuals and entities to recover their looted cultural property once it was identified in a particular location. Since the 1950s, the absence of support and lack of empathy towards individual claimants seeking the return of their looted art has been nothing short of astounding.

One can only speculate that unsuccessful claims filed against current possessors of looted Jewish cultural property might have had more positive outcomes had Jewish groups and communities lent their active and vocal support to these claimants as part of a general movement to seek justice and closure for crimes committed against Jews during the Nazi era.

865 kilos of art flown into Barcelona

by Marc Masurovsky

There are historical documents that tend to capture the imagination and leave us dangling for answers and solutions. However, archives can be fickle, in that they are structured like labyrinths of clues, false leads, erroneous analyses and deductions, amongst which one finds pure gems. You just have to endure the pain of hitting your head against a brick wall one too many times until, at the last minute, when you are ready to throw in the towel, you read a document with a throw-away sentence or paragraph on page 20 and you have that aha moment. Yes!

Nothing like that has occurred so far—no aha moment—with the contents of a very strange headless document, unsigned and hiding in plain sight (others have already read it, but they seemed unable to digest it in any meaningful way!). This 11-sentence long document was drafted on 19 March 1945, with a handwritten indication that the intelligence actually dates to the period of 16-28 February 1945.

It speaks of 865 kilos or 1907 pounds (a truckload) of “objets d’art and pictures which have recently arrived in Barcelona on the Lufthansa airline in two consignments. The rest of the cargo was destined for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid courtesy of the Spanish Ambassador to Berlin, Ginès Vidal y Saura.

Apparently, another plane flew in carrying “5 crates of religious objets d’art” which were “consigned to the German Embassy in Madrid, courtesy of the German Reich." When the rats abandon ship, they usually take their loot with them or whatever they can grab at the last minute and leave Dodge City, in this case, Berlin, en route to “freedom” in Franco Spain.

This very brief raw intelligence note was tucked into a folder of the Roberts Commission (Record Group 239) regarding goings-on in Spain during WWII. The Roberts Commission collected raw information from US, British and other Allied agencies about the illicit movement of art works and objects as well as their handlers across Axis-occupied Europe flowing into so-called “neutral countries” like Spain and perhaps even ending up in the United States.

The preceding document was a report dated 20 August 1945 from the Art Unit of OSS to a member of the Blockade Division at the Foreign Economic Administration regarding art smuggling “in the Iberian peninsula.” The following document was handwritten by Theodore (Ted) Rousseau, Jr. (1912-1973), one of the key members of the MFA&A squad in Western Europe.  His jottings pertained to Lufthansa cargo flights landing in Barcelona in February 1945. One of them—dated 10 February 1945—contained unknown cargo. The others were filled with mail, newspapers and spare parts for Lufthansa planes.

And that’s it.

In order to confirm if this document related to an authentic, verifiable event, one would have to follow the trail in the bowels of the records of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services/Record Group 226) for Spain in 1945 and a deeper dive into the Roberts Commission records (Record Group 239) since not all of its records were digitized. There’s no other way. That requires a series of trips to the National Archives, College Park MD, where the OSS records and those of the Roberts Commission are kept.

If the document relates to an actual verifiable event, the prospect of nearly 1 ton of works and objects of art arriving in Barcelona in February 1945 is a symbolic reflection of the extent to which Franco Spain was used as a transit or destination point for looted art coming in from all over Europe.

Happy hunting!

Other relevant digital sources:

“The factual list of Nazis protected by Spain”

« Ginès Vidal y Saura, embajador español en Berlín y excelentísimo ordinario de arte expoliado por los Nazis »

Nazi looted property in the United States in the 1930s

by Marc Masurovsky

Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist movement came to power in Germany on 30 January 1933. The subsequent Nazi era lasted until May 9, 1945, when the National Socialist Third Reich signed an unconditional surrender to the combined Allied military forces which brought an end to a six-year global military conflict known as the Second World War (1939-1945).

In the winter of 1933, there were at least 400 American companies and businesses operating inside Nazi Germany, most of which were subsidiaries of American-based corporations. There were also American-based banks and financial firms as well as businesses displaying, buying and selling art objects. For Americans, Hitler’s coming to power was but a hiccup, for otherwise it was business as usual. For the Jews of Germany and for American Jews, Hitler’s arrival was cause for concern and rightly so.

America’s borders remained open as well as Germany’s. Therefore trade relations between the US and Germany were maintained even if the political checkerboard had changed radically and Germany’s priorities were rooted in a deeply racialist, white supremacist and antisemitic ideology.

The first expropriations of Jewish property began several months after the Nazis took power. The first forced sales accompanied these expropriations in the form of auctions taking place across Germany. Items sold included everything that one could find in a Jewish household, including art objects, precious metals like gold and silver, furniture and decorative objects.

Tourists continued to flock into Germany, despite the economic depression that was engulfing the US, but those who had deeper pockets than the average working person could still afford to “have a good time” in Germany. Tourists usually bring back souvenirs so it’s no surprise if some of the more enterprising ones attended auctions where Jewish property was being sold willy-nilly.

Art collections were being sold under duress. Their owners were persecuted for being Jewish, deprived of an income and therefore forced to sell their belongings in order to fund their exit from Nazi Germany. Their property was dispersed among the local population but it was also acquired by foreign visitors who had a special interest in the art objects and the decorative pieces offered for sale. This illegal outflow of Jewish property reverberated inevitably into the countries of origin of these foreign buyers who returned home with their acquisitions.

As a growing number of Jewish collectors and dealers were being forced out of their professions and obliged to sell their inventories, gallerists and dealers in neighboring countries and the United States saw their demise as a business opportunity for them to acquire at depressed prices items of value which could then be resold for a hefty profit in due course.

Likewise, German art dealers, collectors, museum curators and art historians who had established productive relationships with their counterparts in the US crossed the Atlantic in search of good deals, especially Old Master paintings, on behalf of their wealthy clients. The lines were continually blurred between American and German art world personalities owing to their symbiotic business and scholarly relationships. The same can be said about American university professors and researchers who continued to exchange data and research with their German colleagues and even fostered exchange programs that saw American students and professors spending time on German university campuses after Hitler’s rise to power.

As the years progressed and the ensuing repression intensified against Jews in Germany, an exponential mass of high-value tangible assets changed hands from Jewish to non-Jewish ownership through a pseudo-legal process known as “Aryanization,” a direct result of anti-Jewish laws being enforced to the letter by Nazi administrators. Corporate boards were purged of their Jewish members, while business continued to flow between American subsidiaries, their German clients and the Nazi State. Profit before people. A well-known adage that witnessed a perverse application in the antisemitic German world.

By the late 1930s, Germany had brazenly announced its true colors: territorial expansion and elimination of Jews from all walks of life. Genocide was around the corner. Faced with an appeasement-oriented world that wanted to keep Hitler at bay without antagonizing him, Nazi Germany took it as an invitation and absorbed its neighbor, Austria, in an “Anschluss” in early March 1938, followed a year later by a so-called “police action” against Czechoslovakia which resulted in the disappearance of that country and its replacement with a "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia." Similarly, Austria became Germany’s new province of Ostmark.

If one surveys the New York auction world as of the mid-1930s, one is likely to read about objects coming out of privately-owned Jewish collections which were subjected to seizure and forced sales. German dealers and collectors, specializing mostly in 20th century art, emigrated to the United States bringing with them parts of their inventories which, if scrutinized properly, would have revealed the presence of objects acquired from Jewish collectors and artists who were subjected to duress and forced to sell, or that they had acquired at “Jew auctions.” These objects in turn were displayed in New York galleries and other American cities with few questions asked about provenance. We call it willful ignorance.

Lastly, American businessmen were accustomed to travel to European art fairs and pick up merchandise for their businesses back home and they would sign trade agreements with local European partners including German ones. The Leipzig trade fair, for instance, was flagged by the US Treasury Department as an international event which was suspected of offering for sale expropriated Jewish household goods, including textiles (rugs and wall hangings). This is just one of many instances of how easy it was for foreign businessmen to acquire property displaced from Jewish owners without their consent.

Jewelry was the easiest commodity to move from one border to the next due to its small size. As Jewish jewelers and precious stone brokers were put out of business, their inventories were cast wide on the market and often ended up across the ocean. Although extremely difficult to trace back to original owners, these luxury items were dispersed in urban centers along the East Coast of the US.

In summary, art, decorative objects, jewelry and textiles were some of the many categories of objects which made their way to the United States in the 1930s, unbeknownst to the buyers who had no idea that they had once belonged to a Jewish owner suffering under the Nazi yoke and forced to sell them in order to stay alive. But for how long?

A brief overview of the art trade between New York and Latin America between 1940-1945

by Marc Masurovsky

The United States entered the Second World War after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941. Up to that point, it had remained ostensibly neutral, American companies continued to operate through their subsidiaries in Axis-occupied Europe and Nazi Germany.

When the US first entered the global conflict in late 1941, its primary focus was on Japan and its military campaigns against the Pacific Islands and the Asian mainland, with China taking the brunt of its assault in what appeared to be a systematic attempt to eradicate the local Chinese population and deprive it of its cultural heritage.

The art market has demonstrated time and time again how impervious it is to mass unrest, domestic and international conflicts, including all-out war. Trade between the Western Hemisphere was effectively hampered with the European continent and the US’ closest ally, the United Kingdom. A naval blockade was established in the north Atlantic, whose purpose was to screen maritime shipping lanes in order to prevent the Axis from engaging in economic and commercial ventures as well as exporting agents and military assets.

How did this affect the New York art trade? It must have put a crimp in its style, of that there is no doubt. But one of the hallmarks of a successful art business is to continually expand and strengthen its rolodex of clients, regardless of where they might be based.

Based on US postal censorship intercepts which have been publicly available for decades at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, one can paint a clearer picture of how New York art galleries benefited from the new conditions brought about by global war.

In short, New York galleries and collectors were in regular contact throughout the war, from 1940 to 1945 and beyond with galleries, collectors and dealers in 12 Latin American countries and two island nations (Curaçao and Cuba). The Latin American countries included from north to south:

Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil.

While New York galleries and collectors had a very difficult time doing business directly with their contacts on the European continent, those Latin American countries and islands served as transit areas and willing intermediaries for their transactions. And so, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico were the chosen transit points for works and objects of art streaming out of Europe to be traded locally and/or shipped to the United States for display and sale.

It is impossible to assess the total volume of objects that flowed out of Europe into Latin America and from there to the United States, but some gallerists like the Koenigsbergs who were based in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Mexico City (Mexico) did a bustling business, with shipments of hundreds of objects arriving into Mexico City at a time. Local auction houses were more than happy to disperse these European objects as there was a willing clientele avid to purchase them.

Smuggling lines along the Western Spanish border with France in the 1940s

by Marc Masurovsky

In France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Axis criminals and profiteers engaged in murder, extortion, torture, theft, executions, black market operations, and espionage activities during the German occupation of those countries. In the face of Allied military successes and faced with bolder Resistance operations, they looked to Spain as a refuge. For that, they needed cash and connections to cross into Spain and resume their activities or go into hiding. These individuals often carried fungible items like currencies, securities, gold (preferably) and silver bars, gold coins, precious stones, jewelry, works and objects of art. They even brought cars to sell them for a quick infusion of pesetas.

In order to ensure trouble-free border crossings, it helped to be on familiar terms with the police, the military and the border force which required the recruitment of reliable locals to help ferry these people and their looted property into Spain. Added to that mix the complicity of security services, government officials, businessmen, “notaires” and lawyers to shield you from trouble and officialize future commercial and financial transactions. The local populace staffed the smuggling chains. To the extent possible, local and provincial officials ensured the smooth functioning of these semi-clandestine operations for a fee. In this regard, local Falangists and members of the Guardia Civil were of assistance.

The main open crossing point for Nazi war criminals, Fascists and economic collaborators (with a little help from French and Spanish police and military) lay between Hendaye, Pyrénées-Atlantiques (France) and Irun, the Basque Country (Spain), and from there to San Sebastian—about 20 km south of the border. That ended in August 1944 when the Allies pressured Spain to put an end to the northward traffic in wolfram, a strategic ore used by the Nazis in the production of steel alloys for their war effort. The closure of the official Franco-Spanish border placed the clandestine routes across the Pyrenees in the spotlight.

These routes ran across the western Pyrenees (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), linking French hamlets and small villages to localities in Navarre and the Basque country, within a 50 km radius. Based on Allied intelligence sources, these clandestine cross-border routes were used most often:

1/ Dantxarinea, France (or Duncharinen)—Elizondo, Navarre, Spain—Doneztebe-Santesteban (Spain)
This route ran an estimated 40 km by road.

Two men, Andres [Andreas] Lazaro, from Elizondo, and Elso, from France, managed a “chain” for ferrying goods from France to Spain for the account of German interests. It is worth noting that Elizondo was also used as a local turnstile for smuggling gold acquired in the Western Hemisphere and ferried across the border to France as well as Nazi looted gold coming into Spain.

2/ Bidarray [Pyrénées-Atlantiques] (France)—Errazu [Erratzu] [Navarre] (Spain)



After safe passage from Bidarray to Erratzu, Spanish police picked up clandestine border crossers, took them to Elizondo and from there to Santesteban.

3/ Otxondo/Espelette (between the Basque Country and France; on the French side)—Elizondo (Spain)

For unknown reasons, this route was cited by Allied intelligence as a favorite of smugglers.

4/ Anduitzem Borda farm (Sare, France) –Bera (Vera del Bidasoa, Spain)

This line started at the Anduitzem Borda farm in Sare, France. and extended to its end point, the village of Vera del Bidasoa, Spain. It was organized for the Germans by a member of the Guardia Civil named Marquez who lived in Bera (Vera del Bidasoa). It is likely, although not confirmed at this point, that those who were ferried to Bera were taken to Donetztebe/Santesteban.

5/ Eraso-Alcasena line

The Eraso-Alcasena line was used to smuggle gold obtained in the Western Hemisphere at reduced rates and sent illegally to France where higher prices could be obtained. It ran through Elizondo since Señores Miguel Eraso and Alcasena hailed from Elizondo and participated in the smuggling of Nazis and others into Spain through their home town. 

Wolfram, a critical ore to manufacture steel allows, was also smuggled through Elizondo into France for German account. Eraso was the main point of contact here. In 1945-6, gold acquired in Western Hemisphere ports with US currency and brought back by sailors to the Iberian Peninsula was sold in Bilbao and from there conveyed via Barcelona and Irun into France where rates are allegedly higher making this illegal gold trade highly profitable.

Miguel Eraso was involved in some manner with this activity and enjoyed close ties to Spanish military authorities along the border. The vicar of Erratzu/Errazu, Padre Apesteguia, was allegedly involved, as well as a cattle dealer named Acien, based in St-Etienne de Baigorri.

Here are some tentative findings:

Elizondo served as a nerve center for much of the smuggling activity in the Navarre region. The main originating points for the smuggling activity were situated within a 35 km radius from Elizondo. Sare (France) is 31.7 km from Santesteban, assuming it was a destination point for activity generated at Sare. In more general terms, Santesteban/Donetztebe acted as some kind of temporary transit station before people/goods spread out to other parts of Spain—Bilbao, Barcelona, Madrid, etc.

Elizondo appeared to be a transit point for Nazis and other “obnoxious” individuals crossing from France into Spain. These people were greeted by Spanish soldiers who then took them to Elizondo and from there 14 km west to Doneztebe-Santesteban.

More to follow…

Sources:

Records of the Office of Strategic Services (RG 226)

RG 226 M1934 Reel 17 NARA

RG 226 Entry 108b Box 220 NARA

Solidarity is an aspiration devoutly to be wished

by Marc Masurovsky

If you search for a definition of the word “solidarity”, this is what you find:

“Unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group.”

In other words, “solidarity” requires unity of feeling or action amongst individuals and entities that share a common interest and support one another. It also implies that they all work together to achieve a common objective. Let’s apply the concept of “solidarity” to the interwoven notions of cultural plunder, art looting, and the restitution, repatriation, return of those plundered cultural goods to their rightful owners, be they individuals, groups, entities, or governments.

Past history teaches us that governments, entities, groups and individuals have systematically deprived others of their artistic, cultural and religious objects for a variety of reasons, ranging from greed and avarice to naked hatred of the rightful owners for reasons of race, gender, creed, and/or ethnicity. The international community, in all of its wisdom and desire to improve the lot of people around the globe, has agreed that it is wrong, illegal, and immoral to steal artistic, cultural and religious objects. If one does this, justice needs to prevail in part through the recovery, restitution, repatriation of these objects to their rightful owners.

Colonial expansionism unleashed cultural and other heinous crimes against communities living in areas coveted by the colonialists, resulting in the deprivation of life, identity, and culture for millions of people around the world. Successive wars fueled by racial and ethnic hatred of others have provoked the deaths of tens of millions of individuals and the outright theft of the property of those who were targeted for physical elimination and removal from the surface of Planet Earth. Make no mistake, these conflicts are still with us today and they are always accompanied by crimes against the culture, identity, and beliefs of the victims (case in point: the 1990s wars in the Western Balkans, and currently in Libya, Ukraine and Yemen.)

Since the 1990s, individuals and entities have come forward to hasten the restitution and/or repatriation of these looted objects wherever they may have ended up, either in private hands or in State-controlled collections and institutions. They focus separately on:

-the confiscations of Jewish-owned property displaced by the Nazis and their allies between 1933-1945;

-the expropriations of indigenous cultural objects through colonial conquest and occupation;

-the systematic illegal extraction of archaeological objects from source nations; and

-the plunder of Native American communities and First Nations in North America.

We have identified four categories of looted or plundered cultural goods:

1/ goods forcibly removed from geographical areas targeted for seizure and exploitation by colonial powers;

2/ goods forcibly removed by State authorities, with the help of military, police, and parastatal forces, from communities living within State borders;

3/ goods forcibly extracted from the territories of nations for ideological or commercial reasons under the cover of military conflicts or civil strife;

4/ goods forcibly removed from their rightful owners during acts of genocide, most notably during the Nazi era, the Holocaust and World War II.

Until the early years of the 21st century, there was no perceptible dialogue between the advocates of justice and restitution representing these four groups of looted cultural goods.

Archaeologists and so-called source nations worked in their corner, denouncing the irreparable loss of antiquities which ended up inevitably in private and public collections. Mainstream domestic and international Jewish organizations were never keen on seeking the actual physical restitution of objects plundered from Jewish victims between 1933-1945, preferring instead global schemes by which victims and their families would receive the equivalent of a “check in the mail.” Indigenous communities plundered during periods of domestic territorial expansionism and national unification (some call it “progress”) were left to their own devices for decades before there was widespread outrage at their plight. The systematic and on-going looting of their communities continues to benefit private collectors and cultural institutions worldwide. Advocates and organizations representing these four categories have worked separately in their silos, competing against one another for the attention of private donors, foundations and governments to enlist their aid in furthering the cause of their “clients.”

It is difficult to find instances of “solidarity” between these four categories and their respective communities, although, in theory, they agree on the common goal of restitution, repatriation, and return of looted objects to their rightful owners. Their professed mutual interest does not seem to include the possibility of reaching out to representatives of the “other categories.” Doing so would lead to a greater good by merging their separate agendas under the larger umbrella of a unified approach to the restitution, repatriation, and return of these objects to their rightful owners.

The Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP) was created in September 1997 to document Jewish cultural losses between 1933-1945 and the postwar fate of unrestituted looted objects. Our concern has always been to address in an open public discussion the question of cultural plunder in all its forms, regardless of when and where it occurred. More than 13 years ago, HARP crossed the bridge to get acquainted with the cultural heritage community, including archaeologists, anthropologists and other professionals documenting ancient cultures and the damage and destruction wrought upon them. One group stood out at the time—the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage and Preservation (LCCHP). An instant synergy evolved between HARP and LCCHP over issues of plunder and restitution. Our representatives participated in and attended seminars, workshops, and fora organized by LCCHP. This cooperation has since extended to the Antiquities Coalition. 

Since 2013, HARP has forged ties with the Amelia (Italy)-based Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA). HARP has been teaching a one-week provenance research workshop during ARCA’s three-month annual certification program focused on Holocaust-era losses and postwar restitution, a novelty in an environment mostly populated by cultural heritage specialists, archaeologists, and art law/art crime professionals.

HARP took interest in the continuing thefts of sacred Hopi artifacts from their communities in Arizona and New Mexico, the smuggling of these objects to France where certain auction houses sold these objects, in some instances, for tidy sums. All this under the nose of US Federal authorities. HARP advocated for the Hopi nation before an administrative court in Paris, not once, but six times, in a vain effort to stop these sales and return the sacred objects to their rightful owners. Although these battles were thankless, they helped make a point that, just because HARP specializes on Jewish cultural losses, it should not ignore the pain of other groups constantly subjected to similar forms of cultural plunder, largely unpunished. For the past ten years, HARP has forged ties with the Amelia (Italy)-based Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA). HARP has been teaching a one-week provenance research workshop during ARCA’s three-month annual certification program focused [use gerund] on Holocaust-era losses and postwar restitution, a novelty in an environment mostly populated by cultural heritage specialists, archaeologists, and art law/art crime professionals.

HARP’s pivoting to a more ecumenical approach towards plunder and restitution has attracted some critics. A major Jewish organization once told HARP to remove the word “Holocaust” from its organizational name –HARP­­­–because of our defense of the Hopi nation. That senseless comment signaled an unhealthy parochialism and reaffirmed our resolve to pursue a path towards a more universal approach towards cultural plunder. HARP defines cultural plunder as a universal crime against humanity and promotes an interfaith, inter-ethnic, inter-cultural, global discussion on how to prevent future acts of cultural plunder and protect all cultures from commercial and ideological predation while prioritizing Jewish cultural losses from the Nazi era.

No other Jewish group seems willing to invest itself in an all-embracing dialogue about plunder and restitution. It reminds me of reports and correspondence written in 1940-1941 by officials of Jewish relief groups in France, pleading for assistance from non-Jewish organizations to help stranded, starving, interned Jews. The answer was always the same: you take care of your own, we take care of ours.

We are now in the Fall of 2023. Why do we continue to live in our separate corners, looking askance at the “others”? What will it take to bring these four categories under one big tent and forge a common strategy whose sole purpose is the restitution, repatriation and return of these objects, regardless of where they were forcibly removed, regardless of who or what instigated these crimes, and regardless of when these crimes occurred?

The lack of solidarity will spell the long-term failure of these restitution and repatriation campaigns to the immense relief and delight of those who currently hold these looted objects and continue to acquire them despite the general outcry of such behavior. It’s a bit like the movie “Catch me if you can!”. Unfortunately, this is not a game. It’s about the destruction of society (and humanity) to the great benefit of the perpetrators and at the expense of you, me and them.

A brief introduction to smuggling looted assets into Spain

bt Marc Masurovsky

France and the demarcation line (1940-1942)

During the German occupation of Western Europe (1940-1945), one of the major activities of the occupying forces and their local collaborators was plunder, looting, outright theft of Jewish-owned property, regardless of its form and shape, from residential and commercial property deeds to industrial know-how (patents, licenses, royalty agreements and trademarks), to financial instruments (stocks, bonds, shares) to artistic, cultural and religious objects. Let’s not forget those highly fungible precious stones and metals.

Regardless of the motivations for these wanton acts of thievery perpetrated on an industrial scale against their victims, the idea of monetizing this stolen property was high up on the looters’ priority list. An infrastructural web of connections was carefully woven, often aided by local and national police officials, fueled by pre-war business and political relationships, to allow for these transactions to take place for the benefit of the Reich and its collaborators. Oftentimes, this plundered moveable property was ferried across borders into neighboring countries that acted either as end points or transit centers for this property to move even further. Think Western Hemisphere, the Americas-North, Central, and South, and especially the islands lying between the Gulf of Mexico and the northern edge of South America.

In the case of thefts committed in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, looters looked to the south to sell off or “dump” their loot. Precious stones looted from Dutch and Belgian Jews were very easily transported and promised lucrative payoffs. An exception: many works of art looted traveled to Germany and other “Germanophile” markets to be incorporated into museum collections or sold at auction. Otherwise, paintings and other works of art were taken through Belgium and France into Spain, Switzerland or Italy. The main way station for this movement was Paris, which behaved as an international turnstile based on connections between dealers, collectors, art world officials, intelligence agents and the like. These works would find their way to Swiss cities and banks or make their way further south across the Pyrenees [Pyrénées] mountains into northern Spain.

The literature on the role of Switzerland as an endpoint for looted art is ample. On the other hand, Spain and Portugal, but mostly Spain, have been largely ignored as loci of such activity. We’ve heard of Axis war criminals, collaborators of all stripes and shades, making their way into Axis-friendly Spain governed by the iron fist of Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his Falange. These fugitives sought protection and shelter from prosecution and the justifiable wrath of the victorious Allied forces and national Resistance movements desirous to get their hands on these criminals and bring them to justice. 

What did these people carry with them? Little is known aside from well-documented cases like Alois Miedl, Goering’s personal banker and art agent in the Netherlands who almost single-handedly aryanized the famed Goudstikker collection. Lesser-known players have been largely ignored by the historical field. They turned out to be far more effective than Miedl (after all, he did get arrested at the border) to ferry looted goods into Spain. Still, it might be eventually worth taking a closer look at the Miedl case because he tapped into multiple networks of criminal gangs to ensure his flight to safety. In other words, even someone as important as Miedl was forced to rely on underworld figures and torturers to get across the Franco-Spanish border with his Dutch loot.

In the last years of the Second World War, southwestern France—an area bounded to the north by Bordeaux and to the East by Montpellier and to the South by the Pyrenees, had been teeming with French fascists, criminal elements who were making their way to Spain. Nazi security agents, Italian and Spanish fascists who worked side by side with Nazis and French fascists. In the midst of this beehive of terror and persecution, Allied agents together with Resistance elements did their best to provide some solace to refugees and victims seeking to make their way to Spain and to evade the dragnets established by local collaborators. They set up,at great risk, clandestine chains through which refugees and anti-Nazis could flee to relative safety. It was better to spend time in a refugee camp inside Spain than a jail cell run by Gestapo and Milice agents “up north.”

Southwestern France

In setting up these chains, it was critical to know which village, which hill, which crossroads were safe for travel away from prying eyes. Was the mayor in cahoots with the enemy? How about the local police? The priest? The judicial authorities? The baker? Not knowing was the bane of the victims and their protectors—resistance fighters and Allied agents. As you can imagine, many clandestine operatives were unmasked and arrested. Their resilience and persistence eventually saved many lives. How did one get across a porous border where no one could be trusted? As you can imagine, the odds favored the perpetrators by a long shot.

Smuggling goods and people across the border was a profitable way of life on both sides of the Pyrenees. Entire hamlets supplemented their meager resources with these clandestine acts. As long as there was an exchange of money, locals were at your service, as long as the risk could be mitigated. Knowing this, it was not very difficult for fleeing war criminals, underworld figures, intelligence agents, and economic collaborators to make full use of the “friendly” atmosphere that reigned all along the French and Spanish sides of the Pyrenees, viz., the Basque and Catalan regions separated by a mountain chain. One still had to be careful with whom one did business and in whom one put one’s trust because he/she could turn on a dime, or a franc, or a peseta, and your luck would end there. As a general rule, you were in far more trouble if you were caught on the north side of the border than on the south side. Lastly, the political reliability of the individuals running these smuggling chains ensured the temporary safety of their clients, long enough to get them to a secure area.

To be continued….

The Khmunu Manuscript

by Marc Masurovsky

Part of the Khmunu Manuscript

One of HARP’s goals is to break down the research silos that separate Holocaust researchers from cultural heritage protection specialists and experts on “indigenous” and “colonial” objects. For that reason, we endeavor periodically to showcase items which do not fit into the “Nazi-era paradigm” and see what we can learn from their fragmentary and oh so incomplete histories. Can the methods used to tease out ownership details from items displaced during the Nazi era help us with fleshing out the fragmented stories surrounding archaeological, indigenous and colonial objects?

Every object with cultural, artistic, and/or religious value and significance, has a history as it travels through space and time with human assistance. Ownership trails are difficult to reconstruct in the absence of written documents. Yet, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Strategies developed in the course of several decades to elicit the troubled past of countless objects displaced during the Nazi era are readily applicable to other objects displaced under different circumstances but nevertheless suffer the same fate as they become commodified and monetized on the international art market.

In the case of papyri, ancient handwritten scrolls produced thousands of years in ancient Egypt. If we scratch the surface of the international papyrus trade, we note similarities with the trade in Old Masters and similar art objects.

Let’s now take a look at one such manuscript, referred to as the “Khmunu Manuscript” while scholars have described it as a “Handbook of Ritual Power.”

The “Khmunu Manuscript” or “codex” consists of love spells and other incantations. It was published in its deciphered and annotated form in 2014 as the “Handbook of Ritual Power," the first volume in a series entitled “The Macquarie Papyri” released by Macquarie University in Sydney (Australia). In 2018, another researcher who worked on a papyrus fragment at Macquarie University discovered that it too was a love spell. He wondered whether this fragment could have also come from the “Handbook of Ritual Power.”

The manuscript’s author(s) is (are) unknown. It is estimated to be approximately 1300 years old and handwritten in ancient Coptic script. The use of language traces its origins back to Upper Egypt, possibly near Hermopolis Magna, modern-day Al-Ashmūnayn.

One blogger alleges that the manuscript was discovered during the German Expedition of 1929-1939 (Black dates its discovery to 1929) while exploring around the temple of Thoth at Hermopolis Magna (“Khmunu”, the City of Eight). If so, how and when did the manuscript reach Europe? If the manuscript was discovered during the German Expedition, how and when did it reach Anton Fackelmann and his nephew Michael in Vienna (Austria)?

 

A view of Hermopolis Magna

There is no indication of the date of exportation of the manuscript from Egypt. Neither is there any evidence as to when the manuscript crossed into Austria and reached the Viennese market.

It suffices to say that the provenance record for this and many other papyri is sadly lacking. In the case of the Khmunu Manuscript, we can establish for certain that the manuscript was in the hands of Michael Fackelmann (Vienna) as late as 1981. He may have come into possession of it in the 1970s.

In late 1981, the Museum of Ancient Cultures at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, acquired the manuscript from Michael Fackelmann. The relationship between Macquarie University and the Fackelmann family dates back to the 1960s and 1970s during which time the University acquired many papyri.

By Anton Fackelman’s own admission, he dealt directly with “mummy looters” in Cairo and perhaps elsewhere in Egypt. This fact alone has raised eyebrows about the ethics of Fackelmann’s collecting habits and whether it is safe to acquire any papyri from the Fackelmann family. If “mummy looters” represent one of the few ways by which to acquire papyri in Egypt, then the bulk of the international papyrus trade should be questioned as a hotbed of illicit activity.

One of the Fackelmann family’s strongest critics is Dr. Michael A. Freeman, who describes himself as a “Greek historian and manuscript researcher” working at Duke University. [link to Freeman’s page at Duke] Freeman reports how, in January 1969, Anton Fackelmann acquired papyri from a “mummy looter.”

“Dr. Anton Fackelmann claims, for example, that he extracted P.Duk.inv. 34 and 16 other pieces of early Ptolemiac papyri from the chest of a mummy purchased from a mummy looter in Faiyum, Egypt in January 1969. Among these papyri are five documents verifiably dateable to the early Ptolemaic period, ca. 256 BCE (P.Duk.inv. 23, 24, 25, 26, 28). If one takes Fackelmann at his word—that is, that his papyri were all extracted from the same Ptolemaic mummy—this would date all 17 pieces of the cartonnage archive to the mid-third century BCE.” Freeman’s critique is largely based on the dating methods Fackelmann used to prove that some of the papyri were from the early Ptolemaic period, which would increase their value. As Freeman states, “Early Ptolemaic papyri were exceptionally rare and difficult to acquire in the 1960s-70s.”

A closer look at the ownership histories (provenance) of papyri acquired by Duke University reveals that from the 1960s on many papyri either came directly from the Fackelmann family or one of the Fackelmanns appears in the fragmentary chains of custody either in first or second position. More often than not, Anton Fackelmann appears after an “unknown source”. These provenance gaps (missing information in the chain of custody) beg questions like:

Anton Fackelmann studying a papyrus

- Where, when and from whom did Anton Fackelmann acquire these items?

- Were there no other intermediaries between the Fackelmann family and the “mummy looters”?

- Have any documents been produced which detail the exportation from Egypt and importation into Austria of these papyri?

In a more general way, Prof. Roberta Mazza (University of Bologna, Italy) points out the due diligence failures inherent to the global papyrology market and wonders how thousands of papyri were removed from Egypt in the 1960s and 1970s without any questions being asked about their provenance and origin by Egyptian officials and Western experts, collectors and, most notably, the museums that acquire and house them. Prof. Mazza describes how mummy cartonnage has been exploited as a source of papyri that eventually wend their way through looters’ hands into the clutches of Western collections. The papyri extraction process destroys the mummy cartonnage and, thus, a valuable piece of Egyptian cultural heritage. What is the value of mummy cartonnage when weighed against that of a potentially priceless fragment of papyrus? Who makes that decision? Is it in the interest of science or the interest of the individual collector or museum to acquire this fragment?

Prof. Mazza charges these papyri collectors and experts with indulging in “colonial” behavior at a heavy cost to Egyptian cultural heritage: “Western papyrologists, scholars and pseudo-scholars are destroying mummy masks and panels” much like Christian evangelical collectors like the Green Family of Hobby Lobby fame whose “search for papyri from mummy cartonnage is dictated by the wish to retrieve biblical manuscripts, and through them the word of God…” a specious reason if there ever was one.

Whatever the motives behind this scholarly and pseudo-scholarly obsession with papyri, Western behavior has all the hallmarks of predation for the sake of acquisition and scholarship. How does this apply to papyri constantly appearing on the international art market? Buyer beware, chances are that they were looted.

In sum, the most reliable pieces of information in the history of the Khmunu Manuscript are:

Ancient Egypt (maybe Hermopolis Magna)
Michael Fackelmann, Vienna (Austria)
Macquarie University, Sydney (Australia)

The location of the manuscript in or near Hermopolis can be reasonably deduced based on the contextual information surrounding the papyrus.

Less reliable is the information regarding its actual find and how it came into the hands of the Fackelmann family.

Additional research requires doing a deep dive into the Fackelmann archives in order to sort out the transfer of the Khmunu Manuscript from Egypt to Austria. More generally, the international papyrus trade needs to be thoroughly investigated in order to ascertain how severe the problem is when it comes to the extraction and acquisition of papyri. A word of caution to those who have acquired papyri from the likes of Fackelmann. The absence of provenance is not a good sign and points to possible theft by  “mummy looters.”

Caveat emptor.

Sources for images:

- Khmunu Manuscript pages were taken by Dr. Malcolm Choat, Macquarie University

- Hermopolis Magna photo courtesy of Wikipedia

- Anton Fackelmann photo courtesy of Claremont College Digital Library.

The Auerbach Case: Part Four-Other views of Dr. Philipp Auerbach

by Marc Masurovsky

Benjamin Ferencz at the IMT, Nurnberg

Benjamin Ferencz, former prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal of Nürnberg:

“One flamboyant German official, Philip Auerbach, in charge of compensation claims in Bavaria, was quite a bizarre figure. It was rumored that he had been interned by the Nazis because he was tainted by Jewish blood. It was known that he paid little attention to formalities. I always considered him neurotic. On several occasions he sought me out for a donation from the JRSO for some strange scheme he concocted. I always refused. I recall a detailed plan he had for shipping Hitler’s stolen art works to the United States for exhibitions in museums that would pay well for the privilege. The money would then go back to the compensation fund. He had the name of the ship, the museums, and the amounts payable. I was not really surprised when, after I checked it out, I learned that it was all a figment of his imagination. When he and the head of a local Jewish community announced that they were establishing a Jewish Restitution Bank to receive deposits from concentration camp victims, I immediately cabled Jewish organizations throughout the world to beware. Exactly one year later, the police closed down the so-called bank; the finances of the Auerbach office were under investigation, and he committed suicide. It was a crazy time with crazy people doing crazy things.”

Le Monde, 19 August 1952, “Suicide of a former Bavarian commissioner on refugee matters provokes general consternation. »

Since Bavaria refused for a long time to elevate the Compensation and Restitution Office and its Director to a legally recognized status, Auerbach was not under any parliamentary oversight and did not benefit from a regular budget. He had to find another way to raise compensation funds using shortcuts and indirect pathways. “He reveled in using expedients, he had a predilection for shady and complex dealings, which allowed him to assert his authority and to engage in opaque and interwoven financial arrangements which would get him into a heap of trouble. No one contests these facts.”

Conclusion:

Was Dr. Philipp Auerbach a victim or a criminal? Did he concoct his outlandish scheme to sell off confiscated Jewish paintings acquired for Hitler and Goering for the purpose of enriching himself? Or was it more of a case of using whatever means necessary to ensure that Holocaust survivors would receive their due, regardless of the legality and reasonableness of his tactics. As Benjamin Ferencz said, “it was a crazy time with crazy people doing crazy things.”

One thing is certain: the Auerbach scandal exposed many of the fault lines that have since haunted the international debate over what to do with unclaimed Jewish cultural assets. Since Auerbach’s death in 1952, Jewish groups have never ceased to look at “unclaimed Jewish cultural assets” as fodder to be sold and monetized for the benefit of Holocaust victims’ heirs. It still remains that nothing is unclaimed unless you declare it to be so. And, if you do, under whose authority and on what grounds?

Sources for Part One-Part Four

Primary sources

National Archives, College Park, MD

Indemnisation des victimes du nazime, 14 mars 1949, RG 59, Lot 62D4, Box 26, NARA

Eric Gration, secrétaire du bureau du Haut Commissariat américain en Allemagne, à George Eric Rosden, 21 janvier 1950, Confidential, 007 Fine Arts, USACA, NARA; [Faison à Hanfstaengl, 11 juin 1951, RG 59 Lot 62D 4, Box 17, NARA

S. Lane Faison, Jr., HICOG, Prop. Div. OEA, Collecting Point Munich to Dr. Eberhard Hanfstaengl, general manager, Arcisstrasse 10, Munich, 11 June 1951, Ardelia Hall Collection, RG 59 Lot 62D4 Box 17, NARA.

Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Européennes (AMAE), La Courneuve, France

Doubinsky to Colonel Bonet-Madry, head of the French restitution mission, Frankfurt, 25 May 1949, RA 237, AMAE 
Doubinsky to Valland, 28 October 1949, RV 237, AMAE
Rose Valland to Munsing, 10 november 1949, Berlin, RV 237, AMAE
Munsing to Valland, 13 February 1950, RV 237, AMAE

Other archives

Auerbach's rich correspondence and other personal material from the years 1946 to 1951, which are stored in Bavaria's Hauptstamtsarchiv, are now open to researchers. The Staatsarchiv in Munich holds the complete court records of the April 1952 trial.

Books, journals and newspaper articles

Brady, Kate
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/26/schloss-elmau-castle-g7-germany/

Brenner, Michael and Kronenberg, Kenneth
https://www.scribd.com/book/392107133/A-History-of-Jews-in-Germany-Since-1945-Politics-Culture-and-Society

Ferencz, Benjamin B.
https://benferencz.org/stories/1948-1956/implementing-compensation-agreements/

Klare, Hans Hermann
https://www.jmberlin.de/en/reading-auerbach

Ludi, Regula
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/reparations-for-nazi-victims-in-postwar-europe/germany/667D60BE8D2B06D1D50BC2B50D94D7CF biblio

Ludyga, Hannes
https://buchhandlung-buchner.buchkatalog.at/philipp-auerbach-1906-1952-9783830510963

Sabin, Stefana
https://faustkultur.de/literatur-buchkritik/opfer-und-taeter/


Other links
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Subsequent_Nuremberg_trials
https://www.jta.org/archive/philip-auerbach-commits-suicide-act-due-to-verdict-of-german-court
https://nataliereardon.weebly.com/victims.html
https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1952/08/19/le-suicide-de-l-ancien-commissaire-bavarois-aux-refugies-provoque-une-grande-emotion-en-allemagne_1999225_1819218.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/philipp-auerbach
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1952/08/17/110062774.html?pageNumber=1

The Auerbach Case: Part Three-The Auerbach plan

by Marc Masurovsky

At a March 1949 meeting at the State Department with Ardelia Hall, Dr. Auerbach laid out his ambitious plan to compensate Holocaust survivors with the proceeds of a sale in the United States of 6000-8000 works of art still stored at the MCCP, including works set aside for Goering and Hitler. The sale of these paintings, in his estimate, could top 200 million dollars. The sales should take place incrementally so as not to “dump” the works on the art market. The Bavarian ministries of education and finance were on board with his plan. Jewish organizations active in Bavaria were on board with the project. He indicated that Bavaria was willing to set aside 20% of the proceeds of the sales to compensate residents outside their borders. The remainder would be assigned to residents inside Bavaria. Auerbach hinted that “private groups in the United States were anxious to invest in industrial projects in Bavaria”, a mini-Marshall Plan recycling the proceeds of unclaimed Jewish assets into the Bavarian economy. Ardelia Hall told Auerbach that his project required an official position emanating from Washington as well as the US military occupation government in Germany. Heinz Berggruen and Georges Wildenstein were some of the dealers interested in negotiating such arrangements.

On 23 May 1949, Auerbach visited the MCCP in his role as Bavarian minister in charge of a commission comprised of Jewish organizations, including one from the US. The purpose of the commission was to draw up a list of unclaimed art objects at the CCP of proven Jewish origin which are not likely to be claimed by formerly plundered nations.” 800 paintings had already been identified and transferred to the Wiesbaden CCP for further disposition. On 28 October 1949 Rose Valland received word from her deputy, Mr. Doubinsky, that Auerbach had requested a list of all unidentifiable works of art handed over to the Minister President of Bavaria during the summer of 1949. “He wanted to obtain approval to sell them for the benefit of the Jews.”

In January 1951, Auerbach became a member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. After five years of hectic leadership, Auerbach’s unconventional methods and personal ambitions finally caught up with him. In March 1951, the Bavarian minister of Justice, Joseph Muller, former liaison between the Vatican and domestic resistance during the Nazi years, launched a formal inquest against Philipp Auerbach with the tacit support of the US High Commissioner, John J McCloy. One month later, Auerbach was accused of financial misconduct and forgery in regard to reparations payments. His supporters insisted that he never personally benefited from the alleged fraud, and that he gave all the money to the victims. Some billed the campaign against Auerbach as a “monstrous defamation” campaign. It is widely believed by present-day historians that antisemitism contributed to Auerbach’s demise. After his arrest, a trial ensued starting in April 1952 which lasted five months.

On August 14, 1952, Auerbach was found guilty of a host of crimes ranging from fraud and embezzlement, using false university credentials, “irregularities in office, bribe-taking in connection with funds allotted to Jewish victims, to passive corruption. A court of five judges, three of whom were ex-Nazis, sentenced Auerbach to two and a half years in prison. Although Auerbach accepted the verdict, he denounced the trial and compared it to what happens in the “Russian area.” His supporters filed an appeal in vain. John J. McCloy, the US High commissioner for Germany, rejected it outright. At 2 :30am on August 16, 1952, Auerbach swallowed a massive amount of sleeping pills and died at the age of 45. Four years later Dr. Philipp Auerbach was posthumously cleared of all charges.

Looking backwards, historians have argued that Philipp Auerbach’s trial and suicide had a chilling effect on public German Jewish life from the 1950s on. According to historian Dan Diner, many retreated into the private sphere.

                                                                                                                   to be continued...

The Auerbach Case: Part Two-Cabal of art dealers

by Marc Masurovsky

Rose Valland, c/o Ministère de la Culture

On 10 November 1949, Rose Valland, France’s point person on repatriation and restitution issues, wrote to Stefan Munsing, then Chief of the CCCP, to inform him on the activities of a recently naturalized American citizen of Jewish extraction living in Paris. His name was Heinz Berggruen. “He flaunts his privileged access to American museums. However, the US Embassy in Paris does not like him. Our suspicions about him grew when we compared his project with the one promoted by Auerbach and Wildenstein.” According to Valland, Berggruen was organizing a sale of paintings in Bavaria in which Georges Wildenstein held an interest. The works being sold had been consigned by Berlin dealers who knew that American clients would be congregating in Munich for that purpose. One of the dealers, a Mr. Buren, apparently consigned two French paintings, one by Corneille de Lyon and the other by Nattier. Valland notified Munsing that France reserved the right to assert its jurisdiction over those paintings and any others offered on the art market. She asked him to take the necessary measures to warn American museums not to deal with these “gangsters” whose behavior is unacceptable. 

Munsing’s investigations into Berggruen produced meager results. Berggruen was mostly dealing in rare books on his frequent visits to Bavaria. He also flaunted his contacts in high French circles as well as his familiarity with French customs who “never opened my bags.”

 

Theodore Heinrich

On 13 February 1951, Theodore Heinrich wrote to one of his former MFAA colleagues, Lane Faison. He warned him about his concerns regarding notables (Jewish and non-Jewish) of the art market who might be involved in postwar shady transactions. He was once the director of the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point in the US zone of occupation in Germany, while serving with the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) administration. The MFAA had established the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP) in central Munich in May 1945 in order to process and dispose of cultural assets stolen from Nazi victims across Europe. In application of international law, their mission was to identify the place where these assets had been stolen and return them to those countries from which they would then be restituted to the rightful owners. At least in theory… Heinrich suspected that something ominous was brewing in the postwar art market with respect to the fate of “undistributed holdings at MCCP.”

The cast of characters included:

Karl Haberstock

- Karl Haberstock, Nazi art historian and art dealer who carried out the plans of Nazi dignitaries to acquire thousands of works of art for Hitler’s Linzmuseum project and, in so doing, partook in the spoliation of Jewish collections across Western and Central Europe.

Georges Wildenstein

- Georges Wildenstein, a legendary art dealer based in Paris, London and New York who was in a business partnership with Karl Haberstock before and—some allege-during WWII. His relationship with Haberstock apparently survived the war years.
                                                                                                                                                            
- Heinz Berggruen, a German Jewish refugee who settled in San Francisco in the 1930s, returned to Europe with the US Army and established what became one of the most famous art businesses of the postwar era, starting in liberated Paris.

Heinz Berggruen

- Dr. Philip Auerbach, a Bavarian official who worked closely with Jewish organizations on the question of unclaimed Jewish cultural assets located in the US zone of Occupation of Germany where he worked.

- Grace Morley, a native of Berkeley (CA) and a UNESCO official who headed its Museums division (innocent bystander)

Grace Morley

It is unclear when and how Theodore Heinrich discovered the “sub-rosa” relationship between Karl Haberstock and Georges Wildenstein. He nevertheless accused Berggruen (Paris), of acting as a go-between between Wildenstein (New York), and Haberstock (Bavaria).

Lane Faison (director of the Munich CCP) was aware of the fact that « many dealers had come to Munich in fall and winter (1950-1) to meet with Auerbach and other officials about Goering’s assets. These dealers believed that some of the Goering treasure would be made available to the art market. Faison condemned this behavior saying that it was antithetical to the spirit of restitution. He made it known that the US would never tolerate such a strategy.

                                                                                                                                    to be continued...