A Letter from Fern Smiley
Elizabeth Taylor
c/o Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation
P.O. Box 55995
Sherman Oaks, CA 91413-0995
To the Great Actress - Elizabeth Taylor - born in London in 1932:
You are the same age as my mother would have been (see May 9, 2007 Bat Annette posting) and there are some who have said that she held a remarkable resemblance to you (see picture at right). 
I also know that you are the daughter of an Art Dealer father of Scottish Descent who lived in Kansas City, Missouri and your mother was a Rosemond, also of American-Scottish descent.
In the thirties, your parents moved to England, where you were born. You and your mother left to Hollywood just on the verge of WWII. Your father, Francis, stayed behind.
Since your father was a professional Art Dealer, it may be possible that he purchased and sold art treasures previously owned by Jews. This would have been art that was sold at auctions in Germany under duress between 1933 and 1939. This art would have come into Britain any time after 1933, imported by Dealers who were known as reputable. I tend to believe, however, that they were tainted by persecution and desperation.
Even though he was in Britain, or perhaps Scotland, to trade, Francis A. Taylor would have been aware that the paintings and drawings streaming out of Europe were being sold at fire sale prices. Yet, they were likely legal to purchase, and extraordinary bargains at that; especially at the source in auction houses Germany and Austria, at least until Sept 1,1939 when Britain declared war.
But since Mr. Taylor did not return to the US at the start of the war in Europe, he was still present in that environment. And environment in which, overnight, purchasing goods originating from Germany became illegal under the trading with the Enemy Act. Every thing then becomes vulnerable in terms of legality… and worse in terms of morality. It is possible, then, that any purchases made by your father following Churchill’s declaration of war might have been under the radar, being deemed illegal in war time Britain?
Business first, paperless sales, no questions asked by buyers and subsequent Dealers might have erased any Jewish names from ownership records (sadly including Jewish Dealers as your lawsuit indicates). This was the basis of trade in the art market of post-1939 Britain with ‘refugee’ paintings from Germany (and soon Holland and France) trafficked through Switzerland and onto Britain.
For the record, the complete economic ruination of the Jews was a
policy that went alongside the racial genocidal plans of the Nazi
policy. One legal paper has termed the policy, theftocide. It is astounding that you articulate, knowing about the
holocaust, that disputed paintings with murky provenances lack ‘any shred of evidence that the painting ever fell into Nazi hands’, 
the very words from your recent, successful legal arguments regarding the van Gogh, View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy.
If he stayed in Britain longer than 1940, then your father was exposed to this market that was buoyed by new merchandise arriving (read smuggled) from Jewish homes in France and Holland. Prior to their genocide, the Jews must have frenetically been selling their art if it could have helped them escape persecution. I imagine Margaret Mauthner’s family doing the same.
Immediately preceding - or just after their round up and deportation, the Jewish families’ possessions were inventoried, confiscated, packed, and shipped. They were sent to places which allowed the Nazis to distribute the furnishings to their leadership (as in art and furnishings), their people (as in linen and kitchenware), and their soldiers (as in coats and boots). The theft was meticulously organized.
The leadership included art connoisseurs like Von Ribbentrop, Von Shirach, Goerring, and Hitler - each with a small crew of Art Dealers placed all over Europe. They proceeded to skim the finest art and trading lesser desirable art works with collaborationist Dealers. This took place in every city, inside and outside the Reich, including London, Glasgow, New York, and Buenos Aries.
The art trade in Britain was something that the British did not even examine until 1999, when the Holocaust Educational Trust in London, led by Lord Janner who commissioned an historical report on the issue. The report is in their file and although I have never read it, I was told that as a result of the report, the British government was asked to open its intelligence files. The records are sealed and I have yet to learn their contents.
Since that report - and the Washington Conference in 1998, the British have led the effort in uncovering pictures in their own museums which may have originated from Jewish owners in Europe. These were Jews who lost everything in the wake of the Holocaust.
One fact, though,is clearly in the public records: The staggering increase in fine art exports from 1940 to 1944 so alarmed the British that the House of Lords enacted legislation to stem the tide of fine art exports during the war.
Dame Taylor, I read that you feel that the claim the Mauthner extended family has brought forward is too late and too little documented. The court agrees with you. But it is my opinion that the Art Dealers in London in the thirties and during the War were involved with the trade that flourished at the expense of the persecuted Jewish families in Europe. I think you may wish to consider this, regarding your own father’s art business and the likelihood that even if he refrained from all dealings in wartime Britain, in 1963, when he bought you that painting at auction… he may well have known exactly what he was buying.
Sincerely,
Bat Annette
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