By Fern Smiley

Right after watching the Toronto premiere of the brilliant The Rape of Europa, I felt that it may be long, too long for ordinary moviegoers. To my surprise, it was either the power of this film or these very interested viewers but I soon realized - by their exuberant applause - that this movie wholly enthralled the entire audience right until the very last scene.
Admittedly, I was riveted; having read the book The Rape of Europa, over 9 years ago, upon which this documentary was based. It is the story of the fate of Europe’s treasures during the Second World War.

The film starts and ends with the most spectacular story of art theft of the Nazi Era namely, the recently restituted Gustav Klimt paintings to the heirs of the Bloch Bauer family of Vienna. Finally, after all these years in the news, how nice to see their representative, Maria Altman, aristocratic and gracious, admonishing the Austrian government for persisting in the claim of ownership of her family’s art treasure. She was also eloquent in her way of reprimanding Austria for their mythical justification for their actions as being victims of Nazi occupation. It was a loud and clear message: These paintings deserve to be in the public view, in museums, just not in Austria.
Much of the film uses original footage and Experts interviews to document the losses and recoveries endured by Europe’s institutions. Specifically there was the focus on Hitler’s philosophy of Aryan culture which denuded the German museums from precious art – 17,000 pieces that he considered to be ‘degenerate,’. Loosely, this meant all impressionist and modern art - and anything done by a Jewish hand. Occupied countries’ museums were purged of any painting on the wish list made for Hitler’s new planned Germanic museum in Linz or for Goerring’s desire. Polish and Soviet museums, castles, monasteries, and monuments experienced extreme, complete devastation as loathing prevailed over their culture. A culture which was deemed sub-human by the Nazi racial policy.
The film’s considerable photo montages of destroyed Warsaw, Florence, Pisa and the empty Louvre did not elicit the rising emotion of despair - as a slave labourer Parisian Jew recounts his job in a warehouse at the train tracks in Paris. After losing his four brothers and parents to the Nazis, he works sorting objects and comes face-to-face with his possessions. These included photos of his own family amidst the sorting process in the warehouse. His slavery’s toil distributed the valuable (furnishings) and even the mundane (linens) possessions of the deported Jews of France to families in Germany.
The idea here is that the Holocaust was linked to economic plunder. It’s an idea that targets the Jews for their possessions and collections and that the theft was organized, systematic, efficient, and documented both by the Nazis - as well as bystanders. These were people like Rose Valland in Paris who secretly kept the roll call of the paintings from Jewish collectors in the Jeu de Paume in Paris.
Finally, The Rape of Europa exposes the role of the Monuments Men - creative types attached to the US military, who, in 1944, entered the theatre of operations to help secure and protect the cultural treasures of Italy. The film recalls the recovery process in 1944-1952 and the collection points where officials received the contents back from the purged museums and collectors of Europe. As Lynn Nicholas said, “it was like a film in rewind”. The treasures shipments this time going backwards – in the trains, with the packing, and documenting… all over again.

What was a disappointment for me was the lack of updated research since Nicholas’s (shown at right) original book release. She, of course, has gone on to new projects, but the opening of NARA classified X2 files in 2001 and thereafter for the IWG contain information that affect the recovery process.
The Russian promise to produce a database of trophy paintings from its collection that may have belonged to Jews in Germany is still waiting completion. The movie quotes the Hermitage Director (shown at left) who shamelessly ignores the agreement by withholding the information to this day.