Finding Art
The Nazis Stole

Author followed a trail of looted art through
Switzerland and around the world.

HARRY KIRSBAUM

Staff'Writer

E

arly in the investigation,
Hector Feliciano found
himself facing two lawyers
in a small back room of a
French state museum.
Feliciano, then a Paris-based writer
for the Washington Post, was curious
about a group of paintings in the muse-
um that he suspected had been looted
by the Germans in World War II and
unclaimed by the rightful owners.

Harry Kirsbaum can be reached at
(248) 354-6060 ext 244, or by e-mail
at: hkirsbaum@thejewishnews.com .

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10 Detroit Jewish News

was piqued when someone told him,
The museum staff said they were too
matter-of-factly, that many paintings
busy to help him and referred him to the
from private art collections confiscated
lawyers. As he asked them questions —
by the Nazis were still missing.
rather innocuous ones, I thought" — he
Trying to understand what he said
heard the lawyers replying exactly as the
was a fact commonly known in the
staff had and he noticed them glancing
European art
nervously and
fearfully at
Above: just a small sample of the art looted by the world sent
him on a
each other.
Nazis during World War II. Stolen art included
seven-year
"I thought
works by Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse and Pierre
journey into
`What s going Auguste Renoir among countless others.
the dusty
on here? What
back rooms of
are these guys
museums and galleries on two conti-
hiding?'" he said in an interview here
nents. The search for truth caused him
last week. "That's when I decided I
to quit his job and nearly bankrupted
was onto something."
him. But it also produced a book, The
While Feliciano was covering the art
Lost Museum, that exposed the way
world for the Post in 1989, his interest

"

looted art was smuggled through
Switzerland and sold acrossthe globe.
Feliciano, in town for a Jewish
Federation of Metropolitan Detroit din-
ner, concentrated on several large collec-
tions for his book — among them the
Rothschild, Schloss, Rosenberg and
Bernheim-Jeunem collections — to
show how and why they were looted.
"The subject is so enormous I did
not want to make a directory," he said.
About 100,000 works of art from 203
private art collections were looted in
France from Jews, freemasons and polit-
ical opponents during the war, he said.
He learned that the families had
stopped looking for their lost art
many years ago, and no one had ever

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