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Reviews
| The Rape of Europa, directed by Bonnie Cohen, Richard Berge, and Nicole Newnham. 117 minutes. Menemsha Films, 2006, video. $29.95, DVD.
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| Towards the end of this terrific documentary, Mikhail Piotrovsky, the Director of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, says that "art belongs to humanity ... Art is, it's what makes us human." The Nazi effort to steal or destroy Western art was, therefore, part of the larger process of dehumanization during the war, and this film casts deserved attention upon it. Bookending this central story is what the narrator, Joan Allen, describes as "the unfinished business" of World War II: namely, the ongoing efforts to find and restore art stolen or damaged during the war. |
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In many ways, The Rape of Europa is a straight-forward tale of a conspiracy to carry out one of the largest art heists of all time. Based on the 1995 book of the same name by Lynn H. Nicholas, the directors Bonnie Cohen, Richard Berge, and Nicole Newnham weave together archival footage with interviews of survivors and historians to create a suspenseful account of the Nazis' attempt to loot Europe. The filmmakers juxtapose Hitler's fascist conceptions of what constituted "good" art, and his vainglorious efforts to create a monumental "Führer Museum" in his hometown of Linz, with the venal desires of Hermann Göring and others to plunder great collections for their own personal enrichment. Art deemed "Aryan," such as the Veit Stoss altar from Krakow, could be stolen, while art deemed "degenerate" was consigned to the flames. |
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Yet in contrast to these more familiar villains, the film introduces a set of heroic individuals who risked their lives to save Europe's treasures. These include Rose Valland, the French art historian and member of the resistance who secretly recorded the fate of the over 20,000 pieces of art stolen from Jewish collectors and French museums that passed through the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris before being shipped off to Nazi collection centers. Much of the latter half of the film deals with the so-called "Monuments Men," mostly American G.I.s who were art historians or museum personnel, who tried to safeguard Europe's art and architecture in war areas. In some cases, such as in Florence, they succeeded in organizing precision Allied bombing raids that avoided cultural treasures; in other cases, such as at the monastery at Monte Cassino or the Camposanto in Pisa, they could only watch as historic art and structures were destroyed during the intense fighting. |
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At the same time, the documentary also highlights aspects of the war too often ignored. These include the wholesale destruction of Slavic art, architecture, and cultural objects during the Nazi invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union. The film depicts the dynamiting of the Warsaw royal castle, and the systematic block-by-block destruction of the city in retribution for the Warsaw Rising of 1944. In addition to the shelling of the Hermitage and the death of many of its staff from starvation during the Siege of Leningrad, the Nazis looted or vandalized various Tsarist palaces and the historic homes of Tchaikovsky, Pushkin, and Tolstoy, scattering original manuscripts to the winds. |
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The nearly two-hour DVD is helpfully divided into twelve separate chapters, facilitating easy use in the classroom. Early sections can be used to illustrate the connections between Hitler's artistic ambitions and his racist imperial dreams. The section on the "Furniture Operation"—the Paris-based counterpart to the "Kanada" commando at Auschwitz-Birkenau that sorted through the belongings of the murdered for shipment back to Germany—can be used in a discussion of the Holocaust to highlight the strong element of greed behind the Nazi extermination plans. Later sections of the film can be used to spark interesting class discussions on whether soldiers' lives should be sacrificed in order to spare historic art. |
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The only significant flaw in the film is the absence of almost any discussion of the Nazi effort to eradicate all Jewish art and architecture in Europe. This began with the purging of German libraries and museums in the 1930s, accelerated with the burning of German synagogues during Kristallnacht, and expanded with the conquest of Europe. All of Poland's famous wooden synagogues were burned to the ground; not one survived. Those non-wooden synagogues which were not destroyed were vandalized, and only traces of the elaborate polychromatic frescoes that adorned them can be seen today. Only the fate of the many Jewish ritual objects seized by the Nazis is discussed in the film. It is with this "unfinished business" of the war, the effort to return stolen art to the descendents of those robbed and murdered, that this worthy documentary concludes. |
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| California State University, Long Beach |
Jeffrey Blutinger |
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