Volume 41, Number 19 · November 17, 1994
Loot
By Gordon A. Craig
The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War
by Lynn H. Nicholas
Knopf, 498 pp., $27.50
The Spoils of World War II: The American Military's Role in the Stealing of Europe's Treasures
by Kenneth D. Alford
Birch Lane, 292 pp., $19.95
Among the greatest treasures of the Polish nation are the Jagellonian tapestries, 136 magnificent hangings from Arras depicting animal and biblical scenes that were commissioned by King Sigismund Augustus in 1571. In September 1939, when German troops crossed the Polish borders, the tapestries were in Wawel Castle in Cracow. The curator had them packed in seventy tin boxes and bundles sewn in cloth and shipped down the Vistula on a barge to Kazimiersz near Lublin, where the barge was bombed. The cargo was transferred to trucks that were requisitioned in the neighborhood and driven all the way to Romania. From there the tapestries traveled by ship to Italy, and, when the Vatican declined for political reasons to give them shelter, went on to France, where they remained until the capitulation of 1940. That might have been the end of them, but Polish exiles helped load them on to a tramp steamer bound for England, where they were taken in charge by the Polish government in exile. Finally, in July 1940, they secured passage on the Polish ship Batory and escaped to Canada.
Review, 4676 words
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