As if you couldn’t hate Hitler enough, here comes a lesser known story of more silent victims of the Nazis- famous art.
The Rape of Europa documents the Nazi’s massive, calculated thievery of artworks, furniture, and historical objects throughout Europe. Hitler and his forces traveled across Europe, stealing from art dealers, art collectors, and museums. What he didn’t take, Hitler burned and destroyed because he considered it unworthy of the new “supreme” nation he was building.
The images in this film of Nazis casually walking off with beautiful masterworks in their ornate frames is surreal.
Many museums prepared for his looting by evacuating all the artwork and shipping it off to the countryside. The Nazis were then greeted with empty hallways.
Hundreds of paintings are still missing. The Utah Museum of Fine Arts actually had a stolen painting in it’s possesion without knowing it! Thankfully (but sadly), they returned the painting to the original owners. Experts believe some of these missing paintings will remain missing for generations until all of the Nazi generation is gone.
Watch the movie. It’s so worth it.
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My son is a huge WWII buff, and this is a movie we haven’t seen yet. Thanks for the tip!
Though it’s rarely mentioned, our own GI’s were quite notorius for looting during WWII. In fact, a couple of years ago there was a settlement where our government agreed to pay 25 million to a group of Hungarian Jews for items looted by our soldiers.