[CPProt.net] Prague. Raiders of the lost art. Group of historians seeks to return Nazi-confiscated works to owners

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

 Raiders of the lost art 

Group of historians seeks to return Nazi-confiscated works to owners 

By Kristina Alda
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
December 07, 2005 

Jan Bauch 
Sitting Nude, 1926, oil on canvas  

Sixty years after the end of World War II, thousands of Nazi-confiscated
artifacts remain unclaimed and unidentified in state and private museums
throughout the country.

But a group of historians in Prague 6 is trying to change that.

Here in a dark, decrepit building is an office called the Documentation
Center of Property Transfers of Cultural Assets of WW II Victims. Fifteen
people spend their days doing laborious research, scouring computerized
archives and paper records in an effort to track down artwork that was
confiscated during World War II from victims of the Holocaust.

"What the center is doing is basically detective work," says Tomáš Kraus,
secretary of the Council of the Federation of Jewish Communities (FZO), an
organization that works closely with the group. 

"Tracking down all these artifacts - it's like solving an intricate mystery.
It takes a lot of time and patience," he says.

The center, which is affiliated with the Czech Academy of Sciences, has
tracked down scores of artifacts. They identified about 200 objects - most
of them porcelain - at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague this year
alone.

Since its founding four years ago, workers have placed about 7,000 objects
in an Internet database, which families of Holocaust victims can use to look
for stolen family property. In most cases, the Nazis seized this property
from families sent to concentration camps. 

But so far people have claimed only about 700 of those listed objects. The
problem, say those involved in the project, is the families are scattered
all over the world and many aren't aware of the database.


The clock is ticking

Helena Krejčová, the petite middle-aged woman who leads the center, is the
driving force behind efforts to track down stolen artifacts.

A special committee made up of government officials and the FZO established
the center in 2001 largely to raise awareness of the issue.

Parliament passed a law in 2000 aimed at facilitating the restitution of
objects confiscated during the war. Under the law, museums are supposed to
compile lists of their collections indicating which objects might have
originally been confiscated. 

How vigorous museums are in compiling the lists is largely left to their
discretion. Under the same law, families of victims have until the end of
2006 to make their claim.

But that means the center has a little more than year to finish its work,
which is not enough time, Krejčová says. And there is the added threat that
the center's funding from the Culture Ministry might run out before then.

"Only now, based on complicated research, can we begin to get results," she
says. "If we don't get [financial] support for another five years, then our
efforts will have been a waste of resources."

Kraus says his organization will work to help extend or abolish the 2006
deadline: The center's work cannot be rushed, he says.

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"Tracking down all these artifacts - it's like solving an 
intricate mystery." 
Tomáš Kraus, secretary, FZO 

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A global drive

Helena Königsmarková, director of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague,
says some confiscated objects were returned to families soon after the war,
and those efforts continued even after the communists took over in 1948.

But eventually, Königsmarková says, the traces leading back to the families
of Holocaust victims became more and more obscure.

And while some may be quick to blame the communist regime, the Czech
Republic is by no means an exception when it comes to how slow the process
of returning confiscated art to World War II victims' families is. 

Countries around the world have begun working more intensely to return
confiscated artifacts since 1998, following an international conference in
Washington, D.C., on Nazi-looted assets of Holocaust victims, says Kraus.
The goal, as stated at the conference, was to track down all the objects by
2000. Five years later, many families are still waiting.


Unclaimed items

Although museums and galleries don't have a legal obligation to actively
seek out the owners of artworks that have been identified as property of
Holocaust victims, Kraus says most such institutions have been cooperative.

Still, many confiscated artifacts will remain unclaimed. In such cases,
Königsmarková says, the Museum of Decorative Arts will label these objects
with the family names of the original owners, identifying them as the
belongings of victims of the Holocaust.

"We would even like to organize an exhibition of these objects, maybe even a
permanent one," she says.

The Jewish Museum in Prague, which is not state-owned, has many confiscated
objects - many of them valuable paintings by artists such as Paul Signac and
Maxim Kopf - according to museum director Leo Pavlát.

The museum, he says, has been working closely with the documentation center
in past years to help Holocaust victims' families reclaim their property. 

Kristina Alda can be reached at kalda at praguepost.com 
 

http://www.praguepost.com/