Professional Looter. On the looting activity of Pieter Nicolaas Menten (1899–1987)
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 11 (2015), pages: 173-206
Publication date: 2015-12-01
Abstract
The Nazi looting of works of art and cultural goods during 1933–1945 is usually divided into organised and unauthorised. The former was conducted by special organisations and authorities, while the former, widespread mostly in the east, amounted to private looting conducted by many Germans on their own account. The author suggests introducing a separate category of qualified looting encompassing those who engaged in looting with premeditation – on their own account and/or on commission – and whose competence included evaluation of the sought artistic goods and knowledge of where and in whose possession they could be found. In the Reich and in occupied France and Holland there were many such qualified robbers, while in Poland their number remained small after the initial wave of official confiscations, with the exception of the Dutchman, Pieter Nicolaas Menten (1899–1987), who after the war was one of the wealthiest citizens of Holland and owner of a collection of works of art unavailable to the public. The scope, character, and methods of the looting conducted by Menten for his private use in Cracow and Lvov during the German occupation between early 1940 and the end of 1942 make him an exceptional case in the history of Nazi looting. These aspects are analysed on the basis of extensive archival materials and evidence collected in Holland and Poland during the investigations and trials against Menten (the first one took place in 1948 and was followed by next ones in the late 1970s), who was accused, for instance, of collaboration with the Germans and the massacre of Jewish inhabitants of the Galician villages of Urycz and Podhorodce in the summer of 1941. Menten was never sentenced for the looting of works of art in Cracow, where he was an appointed administrator of four Jewish artistic salons, and in Lvov, where he appropriated the collections from the homes of several Lvov professors murdered on 4 July 1941. He was never found guilty even though when in January 1943 he left the General Government and went to Holland he took – with Himmler’s special permission – four wagons of works of art, gold ware and silverware, antique furniture, and Oriental rugs. The collection of works of art in his possession has become dispersed.
Keywords
looting of works of art in the General Government, Jewish antique shops and artistic salons in Cracow after 1939, occupation-period trade in works of art, murder of professors in Lvov, Schöngarth’s Einsatzgruppe zur besonderen Verwendung, Dutch Nazi, corruption in the German party apparatus and in the Security Police in the General Government, pursuit of Nazi criminals, post-war trials of perpetrators
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