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

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.

The day after…

by Marc Masurovsky
 
We just commemorated the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, at least that portion of the war being fought on the European continent. It took another three months of heavy fighting, two atomic bombs, and an invasion of Japan to bring the Empire of the Rising Sun to the table and sign an unconditional surrender in mid-August of the same year.

Let’s try and imagine what it must have been like to wake up the day after the surrender of the Reich and to think about all that had occurred since Hitler took power in January 1933.

With 60 million people dead, including six million Jews, men, women and children, five million others who perished in prisons and camps, a third of the male population of the Soviet Union destroyed, one third of Europe’s infrastructure in ruins. Basically a traumatized world. Not a pleasant morning on which to view a sunrise.

Let’s focus on the thefts and displacements of objects. With every act of physical aggression comes a theft especially during military conflicts, civil disorder, and wholesale extermination of one group by another. In this case, the backdrop of a war on culture decreed by National Socialism everywhere Nazis set foot provoked a systematic and systemic displacement of objects from homes, businesses, and public places.

Take a camera with a very wide angle lens and click. The snapshot you record should tell you where objects were located on May 10, 1945.

 In short, it was an utter mess. Displacement meant movement. Objects were removed from their original home and taken somewhere else, never to return again. Liberators, whether military or militia or resistance units, found “things” everywhere they went---barns, attics, basements, gyms, cellars, abandoned apartments and villas and farmhouses, barracks, everywhere someone with a gun showed up, there were objects strewn about or carefully stacked, no matter.


There was no system in place on May 10, 1945 to properly dispose of “found” objects. It was all improvised which led to massive abuses, naturally, like theft.

In most places, objects did not travel very far. They remained within the immediate geographic area and ended up mostly in other people’s homes, which means that those objects were never recovered unless someone denounced you after the war ended, neighbors stealing from their neighbors, communities cannibalizing themselves.

Those objects which traveled far were those taken either by people fleeing one area and getting as far away as possible from the scene of the crime, or by paramilitary or military units, resistance groups on the prowl. In that case, objects could travel long distances, ten, one hundred, even one thousand kilometers or more.

So, on May 10, 1945, you must imagine that most objects that were removed illegally from people’s homes by neighbors, strangers, policemen, thugs, agents, soldiers, officers, either stayed on your street, or moved to another neighborhood, or another city, or another country, ultimately another continent.

On May 10, 1945, Europe was a mess, like an attic through which a tornado had passed and objects blown out and falling wherever.

That is why “things” taken from Western Europe went as far as Kiev, Ukraine.

Soviet counteroffensive, 1943-44

That is why “things” taken out of the Soviet Union went as far as Germany and Austria.

That is why “things” taken out of Norway went “south.”

Norway

“Things” taken out of France went north, east, south, and west.

Northern France

   And so forth and so on.

Axis-occupied Europe

The problem of restitution on May 10, 1945, was a staggering mess with a crime scene engulfing 15 European countries.

Now, let’s finally get to the point.

How many objects were removed?

No number can adequately reflect the reality of the thefts.

But, governments and armies are in the business of releasing information which is supposed to be accepted as “official”, therefore not up for discussion.

When the French government says that 40,000 objects were removed from its territory, it’s because it recovered 40,000 objects from Germany, Austria and other places. Half of those objects presumably went through the Jeu de Paume in downtown Paris. That makes it easier to count. 

On December 1, 1998, American pundits announced that there were 125,000 works of art still missing which needed to be identified, recovered and returned to their rightful owners. No one bothered to ask: How did you come up with that figure?

Then, as recently as this year, another figure was proposed: 600,000 objects were still missing. And yet again, no one bothered to ask where that figure came from and what documents were used to tabulate a figure which had grown more than five-fold in less than two decades.

At the end of the movie, “Woman in Gold” a text appears indicating that there are 100,000 works of art still missing. Already people who have seen the film are quoting that figure as if it is manna from heaven. But here again, where did the filmmakers obtain that figure? Does it apply only to Austria or to Europe as a whole? That figure mysteriously coincides with one put forth by the London-based Art Loss Register (ALR) as the total number of all objects in its registry of stolen objects, including contemporary commercial thefts.

The short answer is: no one knows because no one has bothered to know. Simple. If you don’t bother to know how many objects were stolen, you don’t really have to focus on restitution issues. The missing objects are gone with the wind, just like in the wake of a storm. Poof! Disappeared. It would be simpler to consider WWII and the Holocaust as a natural disaster. It does not work that way. These were nightmares created by human beings against other human beings, a man-made disaster which implies accountability.

If you do come up with a number like 100,000 or 125,000, you might have something in mind. Could it be that those 100,000 works of art are worth something? Could it be that the numbers game is all about value? And not necessarily about individual losses? That the only way to interest someone in restitution is to place a monetary value on an object?

Maybe, for some people, the “restitution game” is just a global treasure hunt where we forget about the “why”, the ”where” and the “how” of the thefts committed in the context of genocide. People hunt for treasures from the Holocaust the same way they look for metal on beaches and dive for gold laying about on the ocean floor. With a little effort, you too can get rich. Or so you think.

Except that we have no idea how to define a “treasure” and, for the most part, we don’t really know what we are looking for, except for objects listed on online databases.

The only way to understand the reality of the thefts that took place across Europe is to collect all relevant information about what disappeared, sift through the evidence, sort it, and catalogue it. This exercise began but was never finished in the years that followed May 9, 1945, perhaps because it took too much time and the chances of finding anything were deemed to be close to zero. So why bother? Instead of recording everything that was lost, the focus was placed on registering losses of “culturally significant” items. No one really defined “culturally significant” except to suggest that the loss of the cultural item meant a loss for the nation. In other words, someone had to decide whether your objects had any “cultural” meaning as determined by the government of your country. That “someone” was usually an art historian, a museum curator or director, or an official in a government ministry. This is where the recording of cultural losses crossed over into cultural policy and esthetics.

If you were unfortunate to have owned objects deemed “insignificant”, chances are that your government was not going to assist you in locating them.

insignificant?

If, on the other hand, there was something “significant” about your collection, the government did take an interest and registered your claim.

significant?

Treasure?

unworthy?

It is difficult to pinpoint the difference between significant and insignificant. If we use French archival records as a point of reference, those containing information about cultural losses as an example, we can begin to understand the difference.

The members of the Art Restitution Commission, Commission de récupération artistique (CRA), were mostly museum curators and art historians. They devised, perhaps through trial and error, a ranking system using different colored pencils and a lettering system from A to H. Each letter stood for a type of object. Many lists of losses submitted by victims were hardly annotated, meaning that there was little chance that the objects that they contained would ever be registered as “worthy” or “significant.” [This question will be explored in greater detail in future articles on plundered art. Stay tuned…]

As an example, the “Répertoire des biens spoliés”, a central registry that the French government published in 1947, can be viewed as a central catalogue of “culturally significant” objects listed as still missing by that date. Similar lists were published in other countries using different formulas and presentation schemes. But the end result was the same: these official lists tended to summarize, encapsulate the universe of what was missing as “significant” and what was being sought by the governments of the nations which had suffered under the Nazi boot.

It’s time to understand, better late than never, that art restitution, the idea of cultural loss, was quickly subverted even before the ink had dried on the act of surrender of the Third Reich. It was not about what you lost but whether what you lost was important enough for the government to take heed of your loss. The principle of restitution was transformed into an arbitrary State-sponsored diktat which implicitly carried a judgment about the quality of your losses and how the government perceived your ownership of cultural assets.

A far cry from being the victim of an act of cultural plunder and genocide.

That explains in part why restitution efforts fell far short of their potential, because they quickly had very little to do with you as an individual victim. The idea of ‘recovery’ was intertwined with the interest of the nation, of the State. When the State decided: enough was enough, it meant that it was no longer interested in promoting location, identification and recovery of objects, even those that were deemed “significant.” It was easier to mourn them as a nation’s loss than to make the effort to “find” them.

The irony of this exercise is that many “mourned” objects ended up sitting in the museums of the nations that “stopped looking for them.” Hypocrisy? Double speak? Or sheer deceit?

So, we are back to where we started: a staggering mess. The only way to solve it is through citizens’ initiatives, publicizing the losses, identifying where lost objects are located especially if they sit in State collections and demanding their return.

It is up to each and everyone of us to document these crimes and to tell their stories, not necessarily for the sake of restitution but to teach a public lesson about the crime of cultural plunder, to restore the word “significant” to its proper context and to assert that an individual’s cultural tastes and losses are not subject to government whims and elitist conceptions of “Kultur.”