The Rape of Europa Read online

  In the meantime, the unfortunate Dr. Grundmann had rushed off to check as many repositories as he could, and direct westward any cars still unloaded. On January 26 he was given the sort of order and overwhelming responsibility which would become all too familiar to curators in the disintegrating Reich. A summary of his later testimony speaks for itself:

  On the 26th of January Grundmann received the following wire: S. Berlin, F., 25 Jan. 1945, 1730 hours “Request urgently with Wehrmacht assistance the removal to Central Germany of the most important moveable objects and the oldest archival material. From Reichsminister of Education Hiecke.” This started off a series of hurried trips to as many repositories in the battle area as could be reached. … At Warmbrunn he learned for the first time that Polish art treasures were stored in Muhrau. On that occasion Secretary of State Boble asked Grundmann to fetch from Muhrau the Czartoryzki Rembrandt and Leonardo. (He did not mention the Raphael.) At the end of January, Grundmann tried to reach Metkau to where the files of his office had been evacuated. Because of tire trouble, Metkau was never reached, but since Muhrau was only twenty kilometers distant, and night was falling, he walked there on foot. On arriving in Muhrau he found that… the building was occupied by a Tank formation. The commander, Major Dr. Fuchs, informed Grundmann immediately that most valuable art objects from Poland were in the castle, that the Russians were expected within two or three days at the latest, and that the place would be defended. [Fuchs] placed at G.’s disposal two trucks with which to take some of the objects to Warmbrunn, about fifty kilometers further west. In spite of his exhaustion, G. immediately set about packing the most important pieces such as the altar of Suess von Kulmbach, the Cranachs, Dutch paintings and the Warsaw Castle Canalettos, and continued throughout the night. To protect the pieces, he wrapped them in rugs and in three Gobelin tapestries. Half the items had to be abandoned as there was no room for them on the trucks. Nor was there time to take an inventory of the objects taken or left behind, for already the rumbling of the guns could be plainly heard. By noon of the next day the packing was finished and at 1700 the trucks set out for Warmbrunn.33

  From Warmbrunn the objects would be moved two more times under similar conditions, until they came to rest in a large garage at Callenberg Castle near Coburg.

  On March 17, as U.S. forces were entering Koblenz, the new offices of the Generalgouvernement received an unexpected visit from Professor Buchner, general director of the Bavarian State Museums. The Führer had informed him that a number of valuable works of art from Poland that were to be found in this “temporary location” should be stored with the Linz collections in a remote and secret repository. Buchner said he would make the necessary arrangements and after taking tea with Frau Frank returned to Munich.34 But the Führer’s days of total control were over, and no one ever came. Frank managed to keep the Lady with the Ermine until the last. She and eight other pictures—but not the Raphael, which has never been found—were with him when he was arrested by the Americans.

  IV

  LIVES AND PROPERTY

  Invasion of the West;

  The Nazi Art Machine in Holland

  ARTICLE 46

  The honor and rights of families, the lives and private property of citizens, as well as religious convictions and practices will be respected. Private property will not be confiscated.

  —Rules of Land Warfare

  The Hague Convention, 1907

  After the lightning attack on Poland came a strange limbo period in the West. It has names too: phony war, drôle de guerre, sitzkrieg. Mobilized armies sat facing each other while thousands of ordinary citizens, already displaced once, or fearing the coming conflict, agonized over how best to survive. On October 6, 1939, Hitler spoke to the Reichstag. The Allies, he proclaimed, should give up in Poland, and there would be peace. Four days later he secretly ordered immediate preparations for the invasion of France and the neutral nations of Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, an idea he had first proposed to his reluctant generals in late September. The date he had in mind was November 12. Above all else Hitler wanted to defeat and stabilize the nations of the West so that he could turn on Stalin before the latter turned on him. The November invasion was called off only hours before it was to begin. Thirteen more times during the course of the winter, the German armies would be ordered to the brink of attack, only to be held back at the last minute.

  From our perspective the situation of the Western European countries is much like a bad silent movie: the maiden walks innocently along, not noticing the obvious monster behind the fence. We would like to shout a warning at her. It is unbearable. Finally the monster bursts forth and she runs, but it is too late, and she is trapped at the edge of a precipice, her back to the sea. To some who had escaped the monster elsewhere or lived through earlier wars, the danger was clear, and they continued to search for ways to get to England, Switzerland, and the Americas.

  The Dutch drawings collector Frits Lugt and his wife moved from Paris to Switzerland in September 1939, taking little with them. Once there, they simply had the most important works in their collection sent to them in some sixty registered letters. In May 1940 they moved on again to the United States, where Lugt took a post as a lecturer at Oberlin College.1 Walter Feilchenfeldt, having left Berlin for Amsterdam in 1933, did not hesitate now either; even before the German armies had crossed into Poland, he sent his Cézannes to London, and “instinctively” took his family to Switzerland for their summer vacation, where they managed to stay for the duration of the war. The Cézannes went on by sea to New York, uninsured, along with the collection of the writer Erich Maria Remarque, who sent the Feilchenfeldts a one-word cable—“Congratulations”—to announce the safe arrival of the pictures.2 Such early action was wise, for the nations of refuge, having already taken in a certain number and fearing a huge influx, were becoming less and less generous with their visas.

  For many the effort of removal to Holland or France had seemed sufficient, and difficult enough, and they had begun new lives with whatever possessions and assets they had been able to bring, smuggle, or launder out of the Reich. For those who were citizens of the soon-to-be-occupied nations, it was, even as they helped refugees move on or establish themselves, much harder to contemplate departure. Despite events in Poland, the image of World War I prevailed. It was beyond the comprehension of most that Nazi conquest, should it come, would not simply be territorial, but that the New Order would be applied in every aspect to their countries.

  Nonetheless, as consciousness of the potential situation grew, certain precautions were taken in the Jewish community in Holland, by those who could afford it. Aaron Vecht, owner of a business established in Amsterdam for generations, closed his shop and sent much of his stock to the United States and England—but stayed in Holland with his family.3 Siegfried Kramarsky, resident in Holland since 1922, and director of the Lisser-Rosencrantz Bank, also sent paintings and other assets to the United States. They included van Gogh’s famous Dr. Gachet and two other pictures purged from Berlin’s Nationalgalerie, which Goering had sold to Franz Koenigs, who in turn had had to relinquish them to Kramarsky to settle a debt. Kramarsky then booked passage to the East Indies on the only boat from a Dutch port which still had spaces. Departure was scheduled for the following spring. But on November 11, 1939, he was called by a friend in Germany, privy to Hitler’s invasion plan for the next day, who casually remarked that “it is going to rain tonight.” The invasion was cancelled but the banker left with his family on the next train to Lisbon, whence they and hundreds of others crossed to New York on a privately chartered steamer. They finally ended their travels in Canada, having been denied an American visa.4

  Not everyone had this sort of courage. Jacques Goudstikker, the most flamboyant dealer in Amsterdam, went with his young wife to London for a few days in May 1939, taking with him a few minor paintings which he stored there. He deposited $50,000 in an account in New York, and gave his lawyer the authority to take over the ninety-
four-year-old Goudstikker firm in his absence. Passage to America was booked for the fall on the steamer Simón Bolívar, and two precious American immigration visas, valid until May 10, 1940, were stamped in their passports. But Goudstikker’s heart was, understandably, not in this plan. He had taken over the small family firm in 1919 and transformed it into a flourishing international operation with customers of the ilk of William Randolph Hearst. At Castle Nyenrode, his art-filled property outside Amsterdam, spectacular entertainments took place. For one such evening, in 1937, Goudstikker had engaged the entire Concertgebouw Orchestra. With them as soloist came the Austrian soprano Desirée Halban, whom he would marry a few months later. When the time came to sail on the Simón Bolívar, Goudstikker could not bring himself to leave. In the cold mid-Atlantic the Simón Bolívar was torpedoed and all on board perished. Goudstikker took this to be an omen that he should stay in Holland.5

  German forces crossed the Dutch border at dawn on Friday, May 10, 1940. Urgent warnings from the Dutch military attaché in Berlin were not taken seriously, the poor man having given so many previous warnings of each of Hitler’s cancelled invasions. The Führer’s techniques of deception by propaganda and infiltration and his magnificent timing and detailed planning had reached their zenith on this glorious Whitsun holiday weekend: so successful was his strategy of disinformation that the French remained convinced that he was about to attack the Balkans.

  As the gallant Dutch Army (which had last fought a battle in 1830) desperately blew up bridges and opened floodgates, panic and confusion reigned and those who had lingered a bit too long, or had been trapped in transit, tried to escape. The director of the Belgian museums, Dr. Leo van Puyvelde, in Amsterdam with his wife to open a show of Belgian art, was awakened before dawn by a call from Brussels advising him to get back to Belgium. Van Puyvelde found a taxi willing to try. He invited the Goudstikkers to join him, but they still hesitated. Their lawyer had died in a bicycle accident the day before, leaving no one properly authorized to take over the enormous Goudstikker interests in Holland, and Goudstikker’s widowed mother could not be persuaded to leave. Van Puyvelde set off, but was forced to return within a few hours: all land routes to Belgium were blocked by the fighting. The only way out was by sea. Goudstikker meanwhile had attempted to reach the U.S. consulate in Rotterdam in order to renew his immigration visa, which had expired that very day. He did not succeed. By May 14 escape seemed hopeless, but the van Puyveldes persuaded the Goudstikkers to go with them to the port of IJmuiden. Thousands were headed toward the coast, but, aided by the diplomatic papers of van Puyvelde, both couples managed to get aboard the SS Bodengraven, which was scheduled to stop in Dover en route to South America.6 They were very lucky: the dealer Vecht and his family, attempting the same escape route, were never even able to get through to the harbor.

  On the crossing to Dover the ship was attacked by dive bombers. When they arrived only the van Puyveldes, who had diplomatic passports, were allowed to land. The rest had to go on to Liverpool. Before the ship sailed again all the men on board were ordered into the teeming hold to make room for women in the cabins. Desirée, with her new baby, insisted on accompanying her husband. In this dreadful place tragedy struck:

  I sat with the baby held to me, and Jacques said, “I have to have some fresh air,” and he never came back. I went from cabin to cabin like a madwoman, until they found him in the depths of the boat.

  On the blacked-out deck Goudstikker had missed his footing and fallen to his death through an uncovered hatch.7 His body was taken ashore at Falmouth, but his wife was not allowed to stay there either. After making the necessary funeral arrangements under guard in the harbor master’s office, she was put back on the ship, which continued to Liverpool.8

  As the holder of an Austrian passport, she was arrested as an enemy alien when she disembarked, and was locked into a room in a nursing home until the former Austrian ambassador and other London friends could arrange her release. Dutch insurance companies refused to honor Goudstikker’s life insurance on the grounds that he had undoubtedly committed suicide, and despite the intervention of the widow of erstwhile Goudstikker customer Hearst and an interview with Joseph Kennedy himself, the American embassy refused to renew her expired visa, the excuse being that she now came under the German rather than the Dutch quota, and the former was “filled for twenty years.”

  Kennedy finally told her she could get a visa “in ten minutes from Canada House.” This done, Desi Goudstikker and her child, life jackets on night and day, took to the seas again. This trip was no less harrowing than the first: there were constant lifeboat drills, and the ship was damaged by torpedoes en route. But it did arrive. She was met at the dock by the Kramarskys, with whom she was to stay for some months. In this wise the lucky ones got to America.

  In the first weeks of May the German armies swept on through Luxembourg and the “impenetrable” Ardennes, around the great fortifications of the Maginot line, and back up toward Dunkirk, trapping thousands of British, French, and Belgian troops in their famous Sichelschnitt (scythe maneuver). Behind them a far smaller German force engaged the French and British in the center of Belgium, once again destroying the library of the University of Louvain, recently restored after having been destroyed in World War I.

  Brussels fell on May 18, but the Belgian Army held out for another week, thereby allowing nearly four hundred thousand French and British troops to be rescued off the beaches of Dunkirk, and three trucks loaded with Belgium’s most precious movable paintings, including the Ghent altarpiece, to be sent off to drive the thousand-plus miles to Rome, where they were to be entrusted to the Vatican. At Péronne, just over the French border, the little convoy ran head-on into the lines of the legendary Panzer divisions commanded by General Guderian, speeding toward the Channel coast. This encounter, as the official record tells us with maddening understatement, was resolved “fortunately without hurt,” but by the time they could start off again, the Italians too had entered the war. The Belgian treasures were detoured to shelter in the Château of Pau at the foot of the Pyrenees, still an impressive drive in the best of circumstances.9

  In France, a belligerent nine months since, much work had gone into defensive preparations for this invasion. The only problem was that they had been concentrated in the wrong places, and that the mind-set of World War I would prove an insuperable barrier to the flexibility of response that was needed. Nothing had been learned from the defeat of Poland, regarded by the French as a “weak” nation. Nor could the psychological state of readiness which had flowered in September 1939 be sustained through the exceptionally cold winter, fraught as it was with major crises within the French government and with false alarms, and given the natural tendency of a nation not bent on conquest to want to return to life as usual. Troops at the front, forbidden to fire at the enemy, which they could see quite clearly, chafed at their dreary living conditions and took to drink and long weekends. Their officers, billeted in nice hotels, settled into a comfortable existence.

  Louvain Library, 1940

  In Paris, life was affected only slightly. It was noticed that diamonds, easily portable, were selling well. Fancy ladies involved in war work, including the Duchess of Windsor, still lunched with one another, now dressed in the snappy uniforms of the Red Cross and other such organizations. Concerts, exhibitions, and horse races went on. During the rare airraid alerts, the chic concierges served coffee and soup in their shelters, though few could compete with that of the Ritz, which is said to have been furnished with Hermès sleeping bags.10

  Art dealers were open, but trade was slow, and stocks of contemporary works diminished as younger artists were drafted along with everyone else. From the journal Beaux Arts, which had a column devoted to the whereabouts of artists, curators, and dealers, it could be learned that the brothers Durand-Ruel, Pierre and Charles, were serving as pilot and interpreter, respectively, that Bonnard was in Cannes, and Louvre curator Gerald van der Kemp was in a telegraph unit.


  An amazing number of artists, anxious to sell, still remained in Paris. This worked greatly to the advantage of any collector who was on the scene, and especially of the American Peggy Guggenheim, who had come to Paris determined to “buy a picture a day” for her projected modern gallery. Indeed, the artists flocked to her, some desperate to accumulate enough money to leave France. “People even brought me paintings in the morning to bed, before I rose,” she reported.11 In no time she had works by Tanguy, Pevsner, Dali, Giacometti, Man Ray, and Léger. So optimistic was she that, even as the Germans invaded Norway on April 9, she rented a large apartment in the place Vendôme in which to hang her new acquisitions, and began to remodel it. After May 10 her circle rapidly diminished, but Peggy stayed until the last, buying Brancusi’s famous Bird in Space on June 3 as German planes bombed the suburbs. Brancusi, who hated to sell anything, wept as she took it away.12