|
|
June 29, 2001/Tamuz 8, 5761, Vol. 53, No.39
Poland, Ukraine outraged by 'stolen' murals
RUTH E. GRUBER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
ROME - An international controversy has erupted after officials from Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial secretly removed from Ukraine Holocaust-era wall paintings by a Polish Jewish artist.
After the officials removed the wall paintings by Bruno Schulz - which were discovered this winter in the Ukrainian village of Drohobych - Yad Vashem said it had acted to preserve the work of a Jewish artist who was a Holocaust survivor.
"The correct and most suitable place to commemorate the memory of the Jewish artist, Bruno Schulz - killed by an SS officer purely because he was a Jew - and the place to house the drawings he sketched during the Holocaust is Yad Vashem," Yad Vashem spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg said in a statement.
But the move triggered outrage in Poland and Ukraine, where Schulz's works are revered as national treasures - and where removal of art from the wartime period is strictly regulated by law.
Jews in both Ukraine and Poland expressed shock at the secret removal of the paintings and expressed concern that it could provoke an anti-Semitic backlash.
"I am very disturbed and ashamed," said a member of the board of the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland. "Only there, in their original place, can (the paintings) be fully meaningful. Money for their restoration was already found."
Because of its actions, Yad Vashem will now "be perceived with suspicion," he added. "What a shame."
The murals, scenes illustrating Grimm's fairy tales, were the last known works painted by Schulz, a Polish Jewish artist and writer who was shot down by an SS officer on a Drohobych street in 1942.
Schulz, who was from Drohobych - a Polish city that became part of Ukraine after World War II - was ordered to paint the murals for the bedroom of the child of the local Nazi commandant, Felix Landau.
They were discovered, under layers of surface paint, by German filmmaker Benjamin Geissler, who went to Drohobych in February to make a film about Schulz.
It was known that Schulz had painted the murals, but it was Geissler who located the house. He searched for the paintings with the cooperation of the current residents.
"The discovery of the previously unknown Schulz works caused a stir in Ukraine and Poland," a Jewish source in Warsaw said. "Discussions began about making a Schulz museum on the site, and apparently the German Krupp Foundation even offered substantial funding for its creation."
In mid-May, however, experts sent by Yad Vashem arrived in Drohobych and physically removed five large pieces of the murals from the walls and somehow smuggled them out of the country.
Soon after, Yad Vashem published a news release saying the paintings were in Jerusalem.
The statement said Yad Vashem had a letter from the Kalyuzhnyi family donating the paintings as a gift to Yad Vashem, in full agreement with local Drohobych authorities.
It said the murals are being restored and will be put on display at Yad Vashem's new historical museum in Jerusalem, slated to open in 2004.
Local authorities in Drohobych sharply deny any cooperation in the removal of the paintings.
The Polish Ministry of Culture issued a protest and said it expected the Ukrainian authorities to investigate.
The scandal has added fuel to fiery debates over the fate of Jewish property in post-Communist Europe.
In the United States, Professor Jack Kugelmass of Arizona State University noted that this is not a simple problem to solve. According to Kugelmass, local officials were somewhat dismissive of Schulz and his relevance to their national culture, whereas the murals will be valued in Jerusalem.
"We need to foster those engaging in this struggle, both Jews and non-Jews, and those drawings especially remaining in place helped serve that purpose. I'm not sorry that they're now in Israel," he said, "but I don't want to see the current and former regions of Poland further stripped of the remaining Jewish monuments."
|
