Yad Vashem are cowards and THIEVES!
RPP
Israeli memorial incites anger by smuggling murals out of Ukraine
By SERGEI SHARGORODSKY, Associated Press
DROHOBYCH, Ukraine (June 20, 1:30 p.m. ADT) - In a clandestine
operation, Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial have successfully
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 1,262 square inches - 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."
EDITOR'S NOTE: Monika Scislowska in Warsaw contributed to this
report.