Prelude to founding of HARP—Spring 1997

Truth be told, the founders-to-be of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP), Willi Korte and Marc Masurovsky, had approached the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in the spring of 1997 with a proposal by which the Washington-based Holocaust Museum would house all historical information pertaining to cultural losses suffered by Jews across Axis-controlled Europe.

The proposal met with a terse rebuttal from the Holocaust Museum's chief of staff, making it very clear that this project did "not fall within the mandate of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum."

Dejected and confused, Korte and Masurovsky then went to the only explicitly Jewish museum in the District of Columbia, the Klutznick National Jewish Museum of B'nai B'rith, whose then director was Ori Z. Soltes.  And the rest is history...

Origin of HARP—September 1997

The Holocaust Art Restitution Project was founded on September 4, 1997, in Washington, DC.  Its founders were Ori Z. Soltes, then director of the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, Marc J. Masurovsky, and Willi Korte.

At the time, HARP's mission was to provide the best possible information on the paths of dispersal of works of art and objets d'art stolen between 1933 and 1945 at the hands of the National Socialists and their Fascist allies across Europe.  The works in question included those on canvas, paper, rare books, manuscripts, furniture, decorative objects, sculptures, antiquities, and religious objects.