#Jews attack Yad Vashem Smuggling.......
David Goldman
never of major concern - just business.
(14:30) Report: Yad Vashem
conducts 'criminal acts' in
Poland
By The Associated Press
In a secret operation, Jerusalem's Yad Vashem
Holocaust memorial has smuggled out of
Ukraine fragments of murals by Polish-Jewish
artist Bruno Schulz, sparking an international
controversy.
Yad Vashem maintains it was merely
exercising its right to preserve the works of a
prominent Jewish writer, artist and Holocaust
victim, but Ukrainian and Polish officials say
their removal was a crime.
Drohobych, a Polish town that became part of
Ukraine after World War II, shows few
outward signs of the tempers flaring around its
most famous son, who was slain by the Nazis
in 1942.
On Shevchenko Street, where Schulz was shot
to death by an SS officer, children play and
housewives walk, carrying shopping bags.
There is no monument to the shy art teacher
who immortalized their town in eloquent,
mystical prose.
Alfred Schreyer, a former Schulz pupil, recalls
how he and German filmmaker Benjamin
Geissler discovered the murals in a tiny pantry
of a three-story house that once belonged to the
town's chief Gestapo officer, Felix Landau.
On the dirty walls, under layers of beige paint,
they detected traces of the wall paintings,
illustrations of Grimm fairy tales that Schulz
created to decorate the nursery of Landau's
young son.
"I was stunned. To see them... " Schreyer said,
his voice filled with emotion. "There was a
princess, a king on high heels, a clown, a jester
and on the other wall a coach driver,
illustrating Grimm fairy tales."
"This is his last work. This man was painting
while people were being killed and dying
outside and maybe he wanted to make his last
message," said Geissler, who is preparing a
documentary on Schulz.
Schulz was known to have painted several
murals at Nazi orders. Some were destroyed
and attempts to find those at the Landau villa
had proved futile - until last winter.
In mid-February, a group of Ukrainian and
Polish art experts came to the villa - which
today houses five families - and pronounced
the murals Schulz originals.
"The experts were not even needed. There
could be no mistake," said Schreyer. "Always,
everywhere, Schulz put in his (own) triangular
face. The coach driver had the face of Schulz."
What happened next resembles a spy novel.
Yad Vashem official Mark Shraberman arrived
in Drohobych in March, telling authorities he
was there to research Holocaust history in the
town where nearly 15,000 Jews were
slaughtered by the Nazis.
"They spoke of research involving World War
II victims. I could not suspect anything," said
Drohobych Mayor Oleksiy Radzievskyi, who
denies Yad Vashem suggestions he cooperated
with Shraberman.
On May 25, Ukrainian authorities learned
fragments of the murals had disappeared.
Working in secret, Shraberman and his
assistants had removed segments of the mural
from the pantry wall, located in an apartment
now occupied by a former communist
bureaucrat, Mykola Kalyuzhnyi, and his wife.
Gluing cloth to the outer layer of paint, they cut
the fragments off, along with the entire paint
coating down to the brick walls, then mounted
it on plywood sheets, Drohobych officials said.
Shraberman had a certificate from the
Kalyuzhnyi family giving him permission to
remove the fragments, but Ukrainian officials
say it has no judicial power. Ukrainian law
bars any pre-1945 cultural objects, art works
or antiquities to be removed from the country
without a special permit.
No one knows how and where Shraberman
smuggled the fragments - the largest measured
8,100 square centimeters - across the Ukrainian
border.
A Ukrainian-Polish commission appointed to
assess the damage said more than 70 percent of
the murals were removed.
In Poland, the removal sparked a public outcry.
The government issued official protests and
intellectuals voiced dismay.
For Geissler, it amounts to "new violence
against Schulz."
"It could never even cross my mind that the
generally respected Yad Vashem institution
could be capable of such a criminal act," said
Jerzy Ficowski, a Polish poet and the country's
leading expert on Schulz.
"This is an unprecedented, scandalous
violation of all moral grounds. Imagine that I
would come to Jerusalem and cut off a piece of
the Wailing Wall," said culture department
official Roman Lubkivskyi.
There are plans to remove the remaining
murals and store them in a museum until Yad
Vashem returns the rest - which Yad Vashem
says it has no intention of doing.
Yad Vashem spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg
says Drohobych authorities agreed the house
owners could donate the murals, which she
said were "in a most neglected condition."
"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," Rosenberg said in a
statement.
Shreyer, the Schulz pupil and one of a handful
of Drohobych-born Jews still living in the
town, says the murals must come back.
"An outrage has occurred. First of all, I blame
Yad Vashem," he said. "The only place for
them is Drohobych."