There has been much in the news in recent years regarding Nazi looted art from Europe during the Holocaust. It is also the subject of my thriller, DEAD DROP, published by Linen Press in October 2022. You can find out more in a conversation and Q&A with my publisher. Over 600,000 pieces were stollen from Jewish families, collectors and museums in countries that were occupied. It began in 1933 in Germany with the seizure of Jewish property and belongings and continued on during the Anschluss, where Austria was annexed by the Nazis in 1938. Around twenty percent of the art in Europe was looted by Nazi soldiers and, today, more than 100,000 pieces are still missing and have not been returned to their owners, or families. Efforts to recover paintings and other items have been stepped up through new art restitution laws.
Last night, the BBC aired the 2015 film, Woman in Gold, which follows the true story of Maria Altman, the niece of Adele Block-Bauer, who is the subject of Gustav Klimt’s portrait, Woman in Gold, which hung in the Belvedere Palace Gallery in Vienna, Austria. Altman fled to America with her husband, forced to leaving her parents behind, and the film depicts flashbacks to the arrival of Nazi soldiers in Vienna and the looting of art and property. The details, like her father playing the cello and the memory of Maria being given her aunt’s favourite necklace (also worn in the portrait), makes the film all the more poignant. Maria and her young lawyer fight for ten years for the paining to be returned, taking their case to the Supreme Court in America.
F C MALBY 