The Rape of Europa

"There are a hundred thousand men born to live and die who will not be as valuable to the world as one canvas." Sherwood Anderson

The Nazis disposed of more than 6 million Jews; we may never know how many works of art they plundered from the great museums and private residences of Europe, but it's safe to estimate those works in the millions as well. The estimable documentary Rape of Europa gives a sometimes beautiful account of the loss at the hands of Adolph Hitler, a failed artist with a dream of building a world-class monument in his Austrian hometown of Linz, and his sybaritic lieutenant, Hermann Goering.

The atrocities are counterbalanced by the heroic efforts of Europeans and American Monuments Men to save the works, the former spiriting the art away to alpine hideouts and the latter helping allied bombers avoid museums and scrupulously cataloging the returning pieces. The transportation of the fragile Winged Victory from the Louvre to the countryside is more exciting than any modern CGI masterpiece.

Almost as an afterthought, the film shows the incomprehensible destruction of churches and homes whose ancient architectures are cultural museums themselves. I had forgotten the extent of the damage inflicted by both the Germans and the Allies on medieval cities.

In a tone of reverence, a bit like the understatement of Night and Fog, narrator Joan Allen recounts the horror of Nazis carelessly trucking away priceless masterpieces during invasions and bombing bridges and museums vindictively as they retreat. Meanwhile an obscure clerk is heroically marking down the transactions so that 60 years later works can be returned to their rightful owners.

Gustav Klimt's "Gold Portrait of Frau Bloch-Bauer," which opens the documentary, eventually is returned to its rightful owners and later fetches $135 million at auction. Such a transaction is a crass vindication of the atrocities, but such symbolism is all we may have left to remind us, as this documentary so incisively does, that demons roamed the earth stealing the soul out of whole civilizations.

Greetings again from the darkness. Watching the 2014 release of The Monuments Men inspired me to re-watch this fascinating documentary on the same subject. Thanks to the interviews of real life Monuments Men like Harry Ettlinger, Kenneth Lindsay, Charles Parkhurst and Bernard Taper, we better understand the overwhelming mission these folks were on, and how even today, some battles wage on over the rightful owners of artwork.

To drive home the point that there is more at stake than just pride, the case of Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" is studied. Adele's niece continued her litigation against Austria until a court finally awarded her the painting (and 3 others). She sold "Adele" for $135 million to a collector. So clearly the cause is not just for mother country. Economics play a huge role. Regardless, the more interesting portion of the story is the relentless pursuit of stolen artwork, artifacts, furniture and collectibles, and the attempts to return them to the rightful owners. That, combined with the devastating architecture destruction brought on by WWII, really make it a bittersweet story.

The breathtaking photographs and archival film footage provide a clear understanding of the breadth of destruction. Seeing the before and after of the Monte Cassino monastery is just crushing. Gaining perspective on the damaged frescoes, some dating to 1360, when Pisa's Camposanto was bombed drives home the significance of culture and history. Seeing the aftermath of the bombing of Florence's iconic bridges brings tears to the eyes. The most impressive piece is that so much of Europe has been rebuilt in the past 7 decades. Maybe that goes to answer the question of whether a human life is worth protecting art. People survive and find a way ... even if Rafael's "Portrait of a Young Man" is still missing.

This is based on the book by the Lynn Nicholas, and the film does a terrific job of presenting how the war impacted Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Austria and Poland. It's also tough to reconcile, as one of the Monuments Men attempts, the idea that the Nazis were so careful with the stolen artwork while simultaneously exterminating so many Jewish people. Maybe things would have been different if a young Adolph Hitler had been accepted to art school.

The Rape of Europa is a fascinating documentary that tells of the story of the theft, destruction, and in some cases saving of art during World War II. Narrated by Joan Allen the film takes you through the Nazi plundering of paintings in Poland, France and other countries (especially by Nazi art collectors like Hitler and Goering) to the efforts by citizenry to save museum pieces in Paris and Leningrad, to the unfortunate destruction of Renaissance architectural wonders during allied bombings in Italy and the German army demolishing various important Russian structures in the east. It also goes into efforts that are still going on to track down pieces since missing, and tells of the work to give back personal effects to families of Jews, items the Nazis stole without thinking twice from people they considered inhuman.

All this is told with a delicate balancing act, reminding the viewer of the far greater tragedy of the war: the tens of millions of lives lost, most of them civilians. The misfortune of art during the war is not even close to that level of tragedy, but that doesn't mean it should be ignored. Art is part of one's culture and means a lot to great number of people. This is a story that deserves to be told, and though maybe this documentary goes in a few too many directions I found it quite interesting to see this perspective of the War that people rarely talk about.

I have just returned from this film and am another satisfied customer. It always feels a bit strange going to the cinema to see a documentary, but docs always turn out to be so much better and more fulfilling than the blockbusters. A real whirlwind of emotions, the Rape of Europa is something in which everyone living in the western world has a stake. The destructive force of war on human beings and those things which are crucial to our humanity, our art, is put into a perspective that is about as balanced as we can hope to get. Many positive things I would say have already been said, so I will offer one criticism: the city of Dresden, once called the "Florence on the Elbe," was not mentioned in the film. As perhaps the worst bombed city of the war, and a city which had no military value whatsoever but was of incalculable worth culturally, I felt this was a major omission. Of course, the film covered an amazing amount of ground, and the Dresden bombing remains a touchy subject for many, so I can comprehend the constraints of time and the need to avoid charged tangents. However, as someone who has lived in that city (many parts of which remained ruins until only recently), I still would have liked to have heard it mentioned. That said, the film was wonderful on a whole. If only everything they showed in the cinemas were half as good.

European museums are filled with antiquities from all over the world. Did the Louvre hide those treasures, or were they forgotten by the German Army – or by these film makers in the editing room?

The truth is that "war-booty" is a common European cultural heritage. Change the subject to the art and artifacts of conquests and murders in the past and the debate is very different. The New World Peoples have their religious artifacts strewn throughout European museums. When will they be returned? That's not the subject of the film some would say. Wrong! That's exactly the subject of the film, but we see only the part of the debate the film makers want to show us, as if the German army invented "war-booty," as if European "art" were the only valuables in the subject museums.

Where is the concern about the "plundered" antiquities in Iraq? The film makers look at the past and make no comment about the "plundering" occurring today? These film makers believe the entire world is blind and in doing so show their own blindness. Return all antiquities/art to the countries from which they were removed.