A French committee in charge of evaluating the overall spoliation suffered by Jews during World War Two in France released its final report on April 18th 2000 showing that the overall plundering of Jewish-owned properties totalled $ 1,3 billion. This final figure includes seizures of properties and businesses, frozen bank deposits, shares, other assets and life insurance accounts as well of stolen works of art.
Over 100,000 art pieces were seized from Jews during the war. However 61 233 were returned to France, including 45 441 to their owners after 1945. Some 15 500 were not claimed will 40 000 others were not localised.
The report recommended an international Cupertino in the direction of Russia, Austria and Germany to find these 40 000 art pieces.
Out of the 15 500 unclaimed works of art, 13 500 were sold as public property in 1954 in France. The rest, which remained under the care of French museums, will be kept by these institutions in the absence of identified heirs of Jewish victims of the Holocaust while some will be deposited in the Art Museum of Jerusalem as a sign of testimony.
As soon as the Germans invaded France and occupied Paris they created the Einsatztab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) group to plunder Jewish-owned art pieces.
Collectors and gallery-owners were robbed of their works of art and most pieces were regrouped in the rooms of the Musée du Jeu de Paume where these were sorted before being sent to Germany to various museums or to personal collection of Marshall Goering.
The report lashed at the French Administration of the time, which helped the Germans in their operation and did not prevent the sales at auction of many pieces during the war and also in 1954. The 1953-54 sale by the French State notably totalled $ 44,12 million.
The report stressed that between 1954 and 1996, the French State took no haste in trying to find the owners of pieces that were under the care of French museums.
Whereas between 1945 and 1950 French museums actively sought to identify the owners of some 45 000 art pieces recovered from the Germans, they did not continue their researches afterwards concerning the 2 000 art works they were keeping, the report noted.
It was only in 1996 that museums started to get preoccupied about the fate of these pieces, it added.
This coincided with the publishing of «The Missing Museum» (Le Musée Disparu), a book by American journalist Hector Feliciano who recalled the importance of the German plundering and denounced the attitude of French museums.
Museum officials had a clumsy reaction at first, and their denials provoked heated polemics until an exhibition of the works deposited in various institutions was held in 1998 and shown on a Website. Since then thirty works have been returned to their owners after they were identified.
The restitution of works was made possible thanks to the activities of a working group from the Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs while many heirs of Jewish victims of the Holocaust have now been involved in intense research works.
The report suggested that works recovered from the Germans in 1945 but not considered as stolen from Jews, meaning that they were mostly acquired on the French market by the Nazis during the war, should be finally given to French museums. This proposal did not take into account that many people facing persecution and exile were forced to dispose of their belongings under threat for ridiculous amounts of money while French dealers and auctioneers were quite prosperous in 1942 and 1943 in Paris thanks to a massive flow of German currency.
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