NYJFF: The Rape of Europa

The second film I saw in the New York Jewish Film Festival was
The Rape of Europa. This is a documentary on what happened to the art treasures in Europe during World War II. Based on Lynn H. Nicholas' book of the same name, the film covers a great many facets of what the Nazis, Soviets, French, Italians and Americans did before, during and after the hostilities. It also covers looted Judaica, and even touches upon the ordinary houshold goods the Nazis confiscated from the Jews of Paris.

Some of this was familiar to me, at least in general. I knew that the Nazis, Hermann Goering in particular, grabbed whatever they could get their hands on. I didn't know that the Nazi officials were just emulating Hitler in amassing their art collections. I knew they suppressed the work of Jewish artists, though I did not realize they were also opposed to all non-representational art. I knew Hitler was a failed artist, though I had never heard the story of how he was rejected by an art school in Vienna, by a board with a number of Jews on it. And I had never seen examples of his work, which are shown in the film. I did not know of the museum he planned to build to hold his art collection in Linz, his birthplace and intended final resting place.

But the main thing new to me was the existence of the American and other nationality "Monuments Men"--a small group of art historians assigned to protect any monuments and artwork that were recaptured. Their stories were the most compelling part of the film, along with an interview of a French Jew who was assigned to a slave-labor camp, whose task was to process the property confiscated from deported Jewish homes. Eventually, he had to work on his own family's goods!

The Rape of Europa also spent a good bit of time on the restitution of stolen artworks to their rightful owners, or at least to their families. This is a continuing process. The film opens with a depiction of the attempts to regain Gustav Klimt's "The Gold Portrait" of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Bloch-Bauer's niece, who is interviewed. The Austrian government claimed it and several other Klimt works had been left to them in Bloch-Bauer's 1923 will, and it was exhibited in the Austrian Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. The film ends with the niece's success--after a seven year legal battle it was ruled that the will was negated by the theft by the Nazis and their Austrian allies. The portrait was then purchased by Ronald Lauder (the son of Estee Lauder) for a reported $135 million. He bought it for his Neue Galerie--which is a block from where I'm sitting now!

The film tried to cover a huge amount of ground--too much, in my opinion. Some things were covered in great detail--others were just touched upon, such as why the Nazis never tried to grab any of the Louvre's holdings, which the French evacuated to the south. There was no mention of the fate of the French spy in the Nazis' Paris art looting operation--she managed to record the rightful owners and destinations of all of the art treasures looted from the Jews of France.

The screening, which I saw at the Jewish Museum, was followed by a Q&A with a couple of the film's directors, and Lynn H. Nicholas. They did tie up a few of the loose ends. But the film itself is over-ambitious, and because of that fails to give the full story of several of its topics.