For many Jewish families whose artwork was stolen by the Nazis during World War II, the theft was compounded by murder in concentration camps. For the children and grandchildren of survivors, finding the missing art can be an international decades-long search through archives and across continents, into the archives of museums, galleries and auction houses.

 

Detail from Marc Chagall's Purim - Painted Circa 1916-1917 - Philadelphia Museum of Art 

 

Others — like Marc Chagall’s “Purim,” a study for a commissioned St. Petersburg mural he never painted — were confiscated, labeled “degenerate” for their Jewish authors and content. But that didn’t stop the Nazis from selling them to fund the war effort. The exhibit calls out these financial incentives that spurred the Nazis to steal from Jewish collectors: It was as much about seizing Jewish wealth as about any ideological beliefs. Germany was in debt when the Nazis came to power, and even “degenerate” art was often sold on the international market “to raise funds for the Nazi war machine” if they thought it would fetch a good price. So the Nazis weren’t even principled in their anti-Jewishness; they were happy to profit off of works by Jewish artists and were often motivated by simple greed.  “Purim,” painted in 1916-17, contains “folkloric imagery and vivid colors draw from Chagall’s memories of his childhood in a Jewish enclave in the Russian empire.” Seeing a depiction of a holiday that celebrates Jews surviving persecution in this World War II context is poignant.

 

 

 

The New York Jewish Museum's exhibition traces the fascinating timelines of individual objects as they passed through hands and sites before, during, and after World War II, bringing forward their myriad stories. During World War II, untold numbers of artworks and pieces of cultural property were stolen by Nazi forces. After the war, an estimated one million artworks and 2.5 million books were recovered. Many more were destroyed.

 

Max Pechstein "Nudes in a Landscape" 1912 - Oil on Canvas

 

This exhibition chronicles the layered stories of the objects that survived, exploring the circumstances of their theft, their post-war rescue, and their afterlives in museums and private collections.

 

 

Afterlives includes objects looted from Jewish collections during the war, including works by such renowned artists as Pierre Bonnard, Marc Chagall, Paul Cézanne, Gustave Courbet, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Camille Pissarro. The Jewish Museum has also commissioned four contemporary artists to create new works that address the resonance of the exhibition’s themes: Maria Eichhorn, Hadar Gad, Dor Guez, and Lisa Oppenheim.

 

 Tiered Seder Plate from the 18th/19th Century

Gift of the Danzig Jewish Community to The Jewish Museum NYC 

 

Silver Torah Finials from the 18th Century

 Jewish Cultural Reconstruction - The Jewish Museum NYC 

 

Treasured pieces of Judaica, including rare examples of Jewish ceremonial objects from destroyed synagogues, will also be on view, as well as rarely seen archival photographs and documents that connect the objects to history.

 

Included in the Afterlives exhibition is Franz Marcs The Large Blue Horses 1911 

 

The exhibition showcases 53 works of art that were stolen from Jewish art collections by Nazi forces before and during World War II. The paintings and drawings that will be on display in the exhibit — titled “Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art” — include works by renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Franz Marc, Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, Gustave Courbet and Paul Klee. The exhibit also includes items stolen from French Jewish art collector and philanthropist David David-Weill, who had more than 2,000 artworks seized by the Nazis.

 

Henri Matisse, Girl in Yellow and Blue with Guitar, 1939, oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago, Brooks McCormick Estate, 2007.290. © Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; image provided by The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, New York

 

Henri Matisse "Daisies"  1939

 

Two famous Matisse works included in the show, “Daisies” and “Girl in Yellow and Blue with Guitar,” are from 1939, and once belonged to French Jewish gallerist Paul Rosenberg. They were stolen from a bank vault in Bordeaux, France, where Rosenberg had stored them for safekeeping before he fled to the US. The latter artwork remained in Nazi commander Hermann Goering’s personal collection of looted art until the end of the war, when it was recovered by Allies forces and returned to Rosenberg.

 

Felbermeyer Movement of Repatriated Art

 

After the war, an estimated one million stolen artworks and 2.5 million stolen books were recovered, while many more were destroyed, according to the museum. The exhibition “chronicles the layered stories of the objects that survived, exploring the circumstances of their theft, their post-war rescue, and their afterlives in museums and private collections ... [It] follows the paths taken by works of art across national borders, through military depots, and in and out of networks of collectors, looters, ideologues, and restitution organizations.” 

 

Paul Cezanne -  "Bather and Rocks" circa 1860-1866

 

One of the most striking instances of bravery the exhibit recounts is that of Rose Valland, a curator at the Jeu de Paume, which housed the work of the Impressionists. During the collaborationist Vichy regime, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, or ERR, took over the museum building. The ERR, “one of the largest Nazi art-looting task forces operating throughout occupied Europe,” used the space to store masterpieces it had taken.

 

Edith Standen and Rose Valland at the Central Collecting Point in Wiesbaden, Germany

 

Valland, who had worked at the Jeu de Paume before the war, stayed on during the Occupation and collaborated with the French Resistance to track what the Nazis did with the stolen paintings. “At great personal risk,” including sneaking into the Nazi office at night to photograph important documents, “she recorded incoming and outgoing shipments and made detailed maps of the extensive network of Nazi transportation and storage facilities.” Pieces by Jewish or modernist artists were often labeled “degenerate” and slated for destruction. Valland was unable to save many of them, and referred to the room where they were housed as the “Room of the Martyrs.”

 

Kurt Schwitters Opened by Customs 1937-8 Collage - Tate London

 

 

“Afterlives” additionally features 80 Jewish ceremonial objects, such as candelabrums and a Passover seder plate — many from destroyed and looted synagogues.

 

“Afterlives” also features art by Jews who faced persecution directly — pieces made at the camps themselves or while in hiding. The haunting, delicate drawings of Jacob Barosin, who made them while fleeing to France and ultimately to the U.S., were moving. And the presence of “Battle on a Bridge,” a looted painting so revered by the Nazis that Hitler had earmarked it for his future personal Fuhrermuseum in Austria, was chilling. Its inventory number, 2207, is still visible on the back of the canvas.

 

The Room of the Martyrs - In the Archives du Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangère – La Courneuve 

 

But what was most captivating about the exhibit was how it helps the visitor imagine what Jewish cultural life was like before the Nazis came to power. I often have the impression that accounts of the Holocaust concentrate more on the horrors of the camps and less and on the individual lives and communities they destroyed. Here, I learned about Jewish gallerist Paul Rosenberg, whose impressive gallery the Nazis co-opted — after seizing his valuable art, of course — for the “Institute of the Study on the Jewish Question,” an antisemitic propaganda machine. I learned about his son Alexander, who, while liberating a train with the Free French Forces thought to be full of passengers, recovered some of his father’s art against all odds. I saw August Sander’s “Persecuted Jews” portrait series from late-’30s Germany, and looked into the faces of people forced to leave their homes. And I saw a huge collection of orphaned Judaica and ritual objects from Danzig (now Gdansk), Poland, where the Jewish community shipped two tons of their treasures to New York for safekeeping in 1939. If no safe free Jews remained in Danzig 15 years later, these items would be entrusted to the museum. None did.

 

75 years after the Second World War, Afterlives explores how surviving artworks and other precious objects were changed by those events, and how they have moved through time, bearing witness to profound historical ruptures while also acting as enduring carriers of individual expression, knowledge, and creativity. The exhibition follows the paths taken by works of art across national borders, through military depots, and in and out of networks of collectors, looters, ideologues, and restitution organizations. “Afterlives” also features art by Jews who faced persecution directly — pieces made at the camps themselves or while in hiding. The haunting, delicate drawings of Jacob Barosin, who made them while fleeing to France and ultimately to the U.S., were moving. And the presence of “Battle on a Bridge,” a looted painting so revered by the Nazis that Hitler had earmarked it for his future personal Fuhrermuseum in Austria, was chilling. Its inventory number, 2207, is still visible on the back of the canvas.

 

Dor Guez - “Letters from the Greater Maghreb” and “Belly of the Boat”, and Collages by Lisa Oppenheim

 

But what was most captivating about the exhibit was how it helps the visitor imagine what Jewish cultural life was like before the Nazis came to power. I often have the impression that accounts of the Holocaust concentrate more on the horrors of the camps and less and on the individual lives and communities they destroyed. Here, I learned about Jewish gallerist Paul Rosenberg, whose impressive gallery the Nazis co-opted — after seizing his valuable art, of course — for the “Institute of the Study on the Jewish Question,” an antisemitic propaganda machine. I learned about his son Alexander, who, while liberating a train with the Free French Forces thought to be full of passengers, recovered some of his father’s art against all odds. I saw August Sander’s “Persecuted Jews” portrait series from late-’30s Germany, and looked into the faces of people forced to leave their homes. And I saw a huge collection of orphaned Judaica and ritual objects from Danzig (now Gdansk), Poland, where the Jewish community shipped two tons of their treasures to New York for safekeeping in 1939. If no safe free Jews remained in Danzig 15 years later, these items would be entrusted to the museum. None did.

 

 

The exhibit also includes the work of four contemporary artists grappling with the contents of “Afterlives” and the era it evokes. Maria Eichhorn pulls from the art restitution work of Hannah Arendt. Hadar Gad uses her painstaking process to paint the disassembly of Danzig’s Great Synagogue. Lisa Oppenheim collages the only existing archival photograph of a lost still-life painting with Google Maps images of the clouds above the house where its Jewish owners lived. And Dor Guez, a Palestinian North African artist from Israel, created an installation from objects belonging to his paternal grandparents, who escaped concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Tunisia. They previously ran a theater company, and a manuscript written by his grandfather in his Tunisian Judeo-Arabic dialect was damaged in transit. Guez blew up the unfamiliar handwriting and ink blots into abstracted prints that hang on the wall. In Guez’s words, “the words are engulfed in abstract spots, and these become a metaphor for the harmonious conjunction between two Semitic languages, between one mother tongue and another, and between homeland and a new country.”

 

 

Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art is organized by Darsie Alexander, Susan and Elihu Rose Chief Curator, and Sam Sackeroff, Lerman-Neubauer Assistant Curator, The Jewish Museum. The exhibition is designed by Daniel Kershaw with graphic design by IN-FO.CO, Adam Michaels. Abigail Rapoport, Curator of Judaica, assisted in selecting ceremonial objects for the exhibition.

 

 

Rediscovering looted or supposedly lost art objects is one of the key objectives why Arthur Brand often goes undercover, endangering himself. As an art historian Arthur will be talking about his recent adventure in discovering lost Nazi art including the works that were ordered by and made for Hitler himself. For him, the most important thing is not punishing the people that do this but getting the art back. Arthur Brand is a specialist dealing with the art and antiquities trade. His company tracks down looted art and investigates forgeries. He is an expert about the shady side of the art business where even terrorists earn their money by selling looted art.

 

Poland’s WWII Museum Opened Amid Uncertain Future

 

Among the artifacts at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, at the site of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps of World War II, are 110,000 shoes, 3,800 suitcases, 246 tallits (Jewish prayer shawls), 8,000 letters from prisoners and reams of documents from the SS, Adolf Hitler’s terrifying paramilitary force.  5.5 million Poles were killed in WWII, over 5 million were civilians.

 

 

People look at piled up suitcases on January 29, 2017 as part of the permanent exhibition of Museum of Second World War opened for two days ahead of the official opening planned for the end of February in Gdansk, Poland. Conservative government cut funding, wants to change content to highlight country’s role in fighting Nazis

 

 

Suitcases of Jewish Victims of Holocaust and Picture of the Main entrance to KL Auschwitz Birkenau

as a part of the Exhibion in Museum of the Second World

 

This Photo of the Wall of Briefcases is a Direct Evidence of the Nazi Atrocities Against Jews During the Holocaust - Needs to be Preserved and Shared 

 

A new memorial site honoring Jews deported to concentration camps by the Nazis during the Holocaust was built squarely in front of Würzburg’s Central Station, with empty suitcases and luggage on display, as a symbol to the possessions abandoned by the more than 2,000 Jews who were deported to concentration camps from that very train station between 1941 and 1944, writes WJC Jewish Diplomatic Corps Member Micky Fuhrmann.

 

New Holocaust Memorial Unveiled in Germany

Abandoned Suitcases Filled with Empty Dreams 

 

The memorial was built squarely in front of Würzburg’s Central Station, with empty suitcases and luggage on display, as a symbol to the possessions abandoned by the more than 2,000 Jews who were deported to concentration camps from that very train station between 1941 and 1944.  Artist Matthias Braun, who conceived of these visuals, wanted to engage visitors with a modern approach by featuring QR codes on the suitcases that can be scanned on mobile devices to allow those observing the memorial to learn more about the history and the humanity of the Jewish families that once lived in the 109 Jewish communities that existed in the region prior to the war. The memorial is poignantly titled DenkOrt Deportationen 1941–1944, with the first word literally translated to mean “a place to think,” emphasizing the critical nature of reflecting on the history beyond its mere visual reception.  

  

The Nazis are counted as among the biggest art thieves in history. They confiscated from their own citizens, plundered galleries in occupied countries, and ended up looting over 20 percent of Europe’s artwork. Leading dealers were enlisted in a Nazi organisation known as the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, which was established to loot museum collections and ship the contents back to Germany. Some pieces remain missing, though most has been recovered thanks to organisations like the Commission for Looted Art in Europe.

 

The Ghent Altarpiece

 

The Ghent Altarpiece has been described as the most stolen and coveted piece of art in history. The early 15th century Flemish polyptych panel painted by Hubert and Jan van Eyck was one of the first created using oils rather than tempera. Napoleon took it to France and the Germans stole it during World War One. In 1934 panels were stolen that remain lost. Hitler wanted the altarpiece for the Führermuseum project in Linz and Goering for his Carinhall estate. Goering got his hands on it first, before Hitler had the altarpiece installed at Neuschwanstein in Bavaria then stored in the Altaussee Salt Mines in the Austrian Alps from where it was recovered by the Monuments Men.

 

Raphael, Portrait of a Young Man

 

The Portrait of a Young Man is believed to be a self-portrait by Raphael, finished in 1514. It was brought to Krakow by Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski in 1798 from Italy and placed in the Czartoryski Museum. Hidden at the start of the German invasion with the rest of the museum’s works, the Gestapo quickly discovered the stash and confiscated the Czartoryski collection. The Portrait ended up hanging in the office of Hans Frank, the Governor-General of Poland after being sent between Berlin ready for display in the Führermuseum and Frank’s office in Krakow repeatedly. In 1945 it was in Frank’s hands and is believed to have been with him as he fled the Soviets. But to this day the Portrait remains missing.

 

Vermeer, The Astronomer

 

One of the finest works of the great Dutch master Vermeer, The Astronomerhas been hanging peacefully in the Louvre since 1983. Before then it was owned by the French branch of the Rothschild family and was amongst the 19 crates of artworks seized by the ERR from the Rothschilds following the invasion of France. Sent to the Jeu de Paume in Paris used by the Nazis as a storage house before works were sent on to Goering or Hitler, The Astronomer ended up being stored in the Altaussee before it was restored to the Rothschilds at the end of the war. In total the Allies recovered over 6,600 paintings from the Salt Mines.

 

The Amber Room

 

The Amber Room was a Baroque chamber decorated with amber panels, gold leaf and mirrors and originally installed in the Berlin City Palace. It was gifted to the Tsars by the Prussian royal family in 1716 and set up in the Catherine Palace in St Petersburg. When the Germans took the city in 1941 it took them only 36 hours to disassemble the Room despite being hidden behind wallpaper. The Nazis took it to Königsberg Castle. After that things get a bit hazy. It’s possible the Room was destroyed in Allied bombing raids in 1944 or when the Soviets took the city in 1945. But there’s been speculation that the so-called Nazi gold train found in Poland in 2015 would hold the Amber Room.

 

Michelangelo, Madonna of Bruges

 

The Madonna of Bruges was the only work of Michelangelo to leave Italy during the lifetime of the artist. The sculpture of the Virgin and the infant Christ was made between 1501 and 1504 and brought to Bruges by leading merchants from the city. In September 1944 as the German forces were in retreat from Belgium and the Netherlands the sculpture was smuggled back to Germany in a Red Cross truck. It was found in the Altaussee in 1945 and restored to its place in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges by the Monuments Men.

 

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 

 

Klimt painted Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of the Austrian industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, twice. His first portrait, of 1907, was perhaps the finest example of Klimt’s golden period, a classic of the Viennese Jugendstil style. In 1938 with the Anschluss between Germany and Austria Ferdinand fled leaving behind his art collection. It was looted by the Nazis and the works sold off. The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was bought by the Austrian State Gallery, and recently was the subject of the 2015 film The Woman in Gold, following the attempts of the niece of Bloch-Bauer to regain the painting.

 

El Greco, Portrait of a Gentleman

 

This one was in the news earlier this year. The Commission for Looted Art in Europe recovered the El Greco and restored it to its owners, just one of the 3,500 works handed back since the establishment of the Commission in 1999. The Portrait was part of the collection of the Jewish industrialist Julius Priester seized by the Gestapo in 1944. After a 70 year search to find the collection the El Greco was handed back to the Priester family in 2015. It had turned up in New York in 1952 and went through the hands of several dealers before surfacing in New York again in 2014.

 

Van Gogh, Portrait on the Road to Tarascon

 

The details are a bit sketchy on van Gogh’s 1888 Portrait on the Road to Tarascon, a self-portrait of the artist on the road to the Provencal town with a strange shadow walking beside him. In the 1950s Francis Bacon took inspiration from the painting for a series of works, having only ever seen reproductions of the original. We know van Gogh’s work was confiscated by the Nazis and sent to be housed in Magdeburg where it’s believed to have been destroyed by an Allied bombing raid, but nothing is documented about the fate of the picture.

 

Max Liebermann, Two Riders on the Beach

 

The German-Jewish painter Max Liebermann painted two versions of Two Riders on the Beach, one of the finest of German Impressionist works. One version, the one pictured, went to a collection in New York. The other went to the Jewish industrialist David Friedmann from whom it was stolen following the Kristallnacht pogroms of 1938. It passed to the art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt who worked on the collection for the Führermuseum. The Allies allowed him to keep the painting after the war. In 2012 his son Cornelius Gurlitt was discovered to be have over 1,200 works in his Munich apartment including pictures by Chagall, Dix, Matisse and the Liebermann. It fetched £1.86 million at Sotheby’s in 2015.

 

Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine

 

The Nazis had their eyes on three pictures in particular when they took Poland. One of them was the Raphael mentioned above. The second was Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo painted in 1489 depicting Cecilia Gallerani, the mistress of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. Brought back from Italy by Adam Czartoryski in 1798, it was stolen in 1939 and was sent to Berlin then back to Hans Frank in Krakow. Unlike the Raphael, though, it was found in Frank’s Bavaria home where he had fled to escape the Soviets closing in on Krakow. The Allies restored it to the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow.

 

Rembrandt, Landscape with the Good Samaritan

 

The third picture the Nazis grabbed from the Czartoryski Museum, Rembrandt’s 1638 Landscape with the Good Samaritan was taken from Krakow following the German takeover of Poland. Despite the attempts to hide the paintings the Gestapo were so well-informed that they hoovered up the collection within two months of the invasion. The art dealer Kajetan Mühlmann was tasked with transporting the paintings in the tug of war between Hans Frank Krakow and Goering at Carinhall. The Rembrandt was picked up in Bavaria when Frank was arrested by the Allies.

 

Van Gogh, The Langlois Bridge at Arles

 

Van Gogh painted the Langlois Bridge at Arles four times. His 1888 version was taken by Goering for Carinhall. In September 2015 the full catalogue of Goering’s looted paintings was published documenting the 1,400 works that were brought to Carinhall. Every time a new work was brought in the artist and picture was noted and where it was hung. Along with works by Fragonard, Bonnard and Velasquez the Langlois Bridge was one of Goering’s favorite paintings. He also stole van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr Gachetfrom Frankfurt before selling it on in 1937.

 

Camille Pissarro, Le Boulevard Montmartre, Matinee de Printemps

 

The great Impressionist Pissarro painted Montmartre many times at various times of the year. The Matinee de Printemps version of 1897 was part of the collection of Max Silberberg, a Jewish businessman from Breslau whose collection included works by Manet, Cezanne and Monet and was seized by the Nazis. Silberberg died at Auschwitz, but his son and daughter-in-law escaped to Leicester in England. The Pissarro was restored to them in 2009, four years before Gerta Silberberg died at 99 years old. It was sold in 2014 at Sotheby’s for £19.7 million.

 

 

Poland’s WWII museum opens amid uncertain future