July 07, 2009
“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.
