I was really excited to meet Madeleine Albright at the Prague Conference. I don’t usually get star struck, especially since I live in London and see famous people all the time. Heck, even our DOG walks with dogs of famous actors and fashion designers. As a puppy, he met Margaret Thatcher who told me that he was full of beans.

But there was something about seeing Madeleine Albright in the flesh. As a young woman starting out my career when she became the first female Secretary of State, I was dazzled by her accomplishment. She was the most powerful woman in the world and helped to shatter the notion of the glass ceiling.

Madeleine has had a varied and interesting career. She was born in Prague, moved to the USA at a young age and earned her BA at Wellesley. (Not my alma matter Smith, but a seven sisters college nonetheless, and she did give a fantastic speech as the 2003 commencement speaker at Smith).  She worked as a journalist, a lecturer at Georgetown and held several public policy advisory roles before being appointed as US Ambassador to the UN. In these days, no one stays in the same job for more than a few years, but during Madeleine’s time, women rarely worked much less had a succession of careers. She was a trailblazer from her early days.

During her tenure as Secretary of State, she found out that she was Jewish. There was a lot of controversy over this. Many people didn’t believe that she did not know her family was Jewish. When I first heard the news, I was surprised because I always assumed she was Jewish. I’m not sure if I buy that she didn’t know she was Jewish, especially given her family’s history.

Anyway, I welcome her to the tribe. She gave a very eloquent speech at the Prague Conference where she mentioned her Jewish relatives that were killed in the Holocaust, and I’d like to believe that she embraced her Judaism. She is also a strong advocate of WWII restitution issues. She can be controversial as well, but she always stands her ground.

This is why I got so excited to hear her speak at one of the social events in Prague.  During her brief talk, she commended everyone for their hard work and talked about how important the subject was. I felt like I was given an official seal of approval.

I debated whether or not to try to get a picture with her, but a couple of people from the US State Department (and several glasses of champagne) cheered me on, so I pushed my way into the crowd, shook her hand and told her what an inspiration she was to me. I asked her if I could get a picture of us and she said yes. My friend John snapped the picture, and I moved out of the way to let others take their photo opportunity.

I came very close to telling how much I loved her on the Gilmore Girls, but my better senses prevailed. I’m sure if I had a couple more glasses of champagne, it would have come out. My friends who are big Gilmore Girls fans kept saying I should have mentioned it and she probably would’ve appreciated it. What I liked most about her appearance on one of my favourite TV shows is that she doesn’t take herself too seriously.

Anyway, thank you Madeleine, for teaching me to be diplomatic when required, tenacious when needed, and to always keep my sense of humour.

“The Nazis stole not only the wealth from the wealthy, but the poverty from the poor”

- Elie Wiesel at the opening ceremony at the Prague Conference on Holocaust Era Assets

There was a lot of pomp and circumstance at the Prague Conference. Plenty of important dignitaries made grand statements, and the internal politicking and rivalries among different parties were typical of all conferences. What made this different from other looted art conferences that I attended was the massive scale and location of the conference. From the Jewish cemetery with headstones piled so close together that they were practically on top of each other, to the US Ambassador’s residence, which belonged to a wealthy Jewish family, but was taken from them during the war.

There was nothing revolutionary at the looted art sessions, but they were interesting nonetheless. A lot of the same things were said, but a couple of talks stood out. The most memorable session was on restitution. Lynn Nicholas, the author of The Rape of Europa,  which is seminal reading for this subject, made some astute suggestions such as getting experts to explain legal restrictions in layman’s terms and not relying on the media to do so, and creating tribunals that include historians and economists. However, the most notable part of this session was at the end, when a lawyer discussed a case he was working on and the obstacles that he encountered. He did this in a way that was not exactly diplomatic, some may even call it unnecessarily aggressive, and the atmosphere started to turn nasty – especially during the Q&A period. I really wanted to shout “We’re all on the same side!”

The other session that stood out was the final session on provenance research. Jacques Lust, who is from the Belgian Science Policy and a veteran on restitution issues, discussed his observations and noted that there’s too much duplication of efforts and that masterpieces grab the headlines, but 90% of looted items are not masterpieces.

Sophie Lillie, the author of Was Einmal War closed the session with a talk that refuted former Royal Academy director Normal Rosenthal’s argument that artworks looted from victims of the Nazis should stay in museums. When I first read Rosenthal’s piece in The Art Newspaper, I saw him as being naïve and controversial for the sake of being controversial. Sophie’s talk was brilliant and concluded with the statement that museums become beacons of humanity for returning looted art, not by holding on to it. The only problem was that she was preaching to the converted. I hope that a wider audience gets to read her paper.

After the expert sessions came a day of plenary sessions, where dignitaries from each country made a statement about how their country is dealing with Holocaust Era Assets. There were grand statements, some of which were true, but it still seemed like a lot of talk and little action to me.

Finally came the signing of the Terezin Declaration.  I was on the Looted Art Working Group and we spent several months having e-discussions about what we should recommend and met in Paris in April to hammer out our suggestions. We worked very hard and we came up with a set of came up with a set of recommendations that everyone seemed happy with. We gave our final draft to the politicians, and in subsequent versions of the Declaration, it seemed that most of the substance from our recommendations had disappeared. I was told that there weren’t enough diplomats at the Working Group meeting and what we wrote would never get signed off by the 48 countries, and even though this Declaration is non-binding, it needed to be watered down to get an international consensus.

The Declaration is much longer than the Washington Conference Principles on Holocaust Era Assets but the final statement includes sections on Judaica, immovable property and education. These are all extremely important and oftentimes get overlooked because looted art grabs the headlines. The Declaration also mentions establishing a Terezin Institute which would further the work of the conference.

Although I feel that the text of the Declaration could be improved, it is a step in the right direction. I’m glad that this conference took place. It shows the world that even 64 years after the war, this is still an unresolved issue. The Holocaust is still a part of living memory and recovery needs to take place while that memory is still alive.

I’m apprehensive about signing the final declaration in Terezin. This is the site of a former Terezinstat Concentration Camp. It’s going to be very painful for me to remember what happened there and not have a complete breakdown.

I cried for almost two hours after I visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. I never expected to have such an emotional reaction to seeing her house, but read the book as a child and felt like I could really identify with her. While walking on the same floors that Anne walked on, an overwhelming sense of sadness overtook me. I had to flee the house and try to gain my composure while strolling along the quaint Dutch canals. It took me the rest of the day to finally feel like I could be a tourist again.

This is why I’m worried about visiting Terezin. I really don’t know what kind of emotions will overtake me. I understand the historical significance of the location, but the weight of the horrors that occurred will leave me with a heavy heart and it will difficult to concentrate on the matters at hand.

There will be some survivors who will be attending the conference and making the trek out to Terezin. Of course I think that if they can do this, I should be able to do this. Why am I being such a wimp about this?

I’m two generations away from the atrocities of the Holocaust, but it’s still very painful to think of all the relatives I lost to Hitler. My grandmother used to tell me ‘Hitler murdered them.’ I couldn’t fully comprehend what she was saying when I was a child, but I now understand that she wanted this message to stay with me.

When helping families to find precious items that were looted from them during the Nazi regime, I learned to develop a thick skin. Their stories of escape and survival are all unique and fascinating. If I took everything to heart, I wouldn’t be able to do this job. I remember explaining to a colleague that during ‘Jew Auctions’ in Austria, Nazi officials would sell off the contents of wealthy families houses. They would start with expensive artworks and furniture, and work their way down to underwear and eyeglasses. He turned green while I explained this to him, and I realized that I’ve dealt with this for so long, that I put the terrible plight of the families to the back of my mind. If I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t be able to cope with all the horrors that they had to endure.

Instead I concentrate on retribution. I’m hoping that by helping families get back part of what they lost that somehow I can right some of the wrongs that occurred in the past. Most of my accomplishments seem small, but I hope they add up to something significant. Progress can be slow, but conferences like this are important because they remind us of how important it is not to forget.

I sent them a copy of the photograph that my client has, and the experts at the Dorotheum agreed that this was the same painting.

Here’s the image that the Dorotheum has:	Here’s a copy of the picture my client has:

The Dorotheum pulled the painting from the sale so that we could determine the best course of action. We very quickly came to an agreement between my clients and the consignors and were able to put the watercolour back up for sale at the auction, along with a new provenance to show that it belonged to my client. You should be able to view the link to the Pennacchini page on the Dorotheum website.

I was really impressed by how cooperative the Dorotheum was. What could have been a complicated mess turned out to be very simple and straightforward. This was due to the willingness of  the consignor, the Dorotheum, and my clients to work together to come up with a resolution that would make everyone happy.

The sale took place on 25 May, but the painting didn’t sell. The Dorotheum is putting it in their gallery to display before they offer it up for sale again in the Autumn.

This marks 25th restitution in the USA since the issue of Nazi looted art gained international recognition 10 years ago. 25 doesn’t seem like a very high number since the Dutch have settled approximately three times as many cases. However, in the UK, there have only been a handful of cases that have been settled.

Given the size of America, it would be logical to think that more cases would have been resolved by now. This could be due to a number of factors: cases take time to resolve, not many heirs have come forward, and the current owners could be reluctant to give them back. Instead of lising looted objects on websites, the USA could be more active in trying to find families and their heirs.

There are other reasons I’d like to keep a weblog as well. This is a fascinating field because it encompasses so many disciplines - history, art history, genealogy, politics and the law. As I work on cases and projects, these different areas will each play a role and I’d like to discuss them. I’d also like to share my journey in helping people and organisations try to find items that were looted from. This can be a long and frustrating process which is mostly done in isolation and I’d like to share what I’m going through.

I’m also going to get experts in the field to write about their experiences. These could be lawyers, art historians, policy makers and provenance researchers. Every person working in this field has a unique experience and we can learn a lot from different points of view.

Hopefully readers and other people in the field will comment on the posts and we can create some sort of community. The people working in restitution need a forum since there is a great deal of disparate work being done throughout the world and not everyone knows what’s going on. There are also times when people or organisations duplicate efforts, but with increased communication, perhaps we can eliminate this. My big hope is to help increase communication and build a community, but we’ll see where the blog goes and how it evolves.