cardinals would literally prepare themselves for a meeting with the pope in their private chapel and pray to god to somehow see them through without the pope yelling at them are finding them wanting. the pope in reading some of these accounts of these meetings with the pope where the pope would turn purple with rage, pound on his desk and he's yelling at for example a foreign ambassador where he has been unhappy with something his country has done. but the pope also has a high sense of the dignity of the papal office. interesting today with pope francis making news in taking symbolic actions that seem to be peeling away some of that symbolic activity. for example pius the xi from the day he beat cam pope his brother

and sister whom he had been close to refer to him as napoleon nest. also for the 17 years he was pope he never allowed anyone to sit down at the table when he ate, not even a cardinal. and this by the way was different than some of his predecessors and a continuing tradition that all of his predecessors had obeyed. the pope's vision of the church and of the world was basically a medieval one in which there was only one true roman catholic church and all to his teachings and lines of authority. mussolini as i alluded to before was in many ways his opposite. the anti-cleric, the rabble-rouser, the person who valued violence but also had a notion of a new society. this is certainly not a medieval

vision but a new vision. mussolini before he came to power had been a radical socialist. he had been reading social meeting and it was the outbreak of world war i that he had the division with the socialist party or for the war and he wanted italy to enter the war. he founded the fascist movement and bloody it done in the fascist movement formally founded in 1919 he too was anticlerical so the first calling for confiscation of church property in separation of church and state. if we can go to the previous image please.

here he has got some sense of mussolini with the fierce character. the pope did not like to travel and did not appear at public rallies or anything like that. usually a pope is globetrotting and giving mass rallies. this is not anything that this pope did. in fact from 1871 italy conquered from remember italy only came about in 1878 and completed in 1871 italian troops stormed the walls of the city and the pope is defeated in the people's states are no more. the pope would preach to the vatican. from 1870 and so mussolini made peace with the church in 1929, 59 years no pope ever left the vatican, the tiny little groups of buildings in the vatican.

the okay, so to understand the impact that this relationship had, the steel that was made between the pope and mussolini you have to understand that long period of time where the position of the church was the italian state is a legitimate. the king is excommunicated. the prime minister is excommunicated. no good catholic is allowed to run for parliament and no good catholic should vote for parliament because that would be recognizing the state of the page -- that took the -- of the pope. when mussolini becomes to power the in spite that they pope had no dissolutions about mussolini, as the pope said to some of his associates god works in strange ways. god can choose as his instruments a person who doesn't

seem to be godly and in fact the pope would famously referred to the pope as anti-providence to restore the rightful central position of the church in italian society and in separation of church and state and freedom of religion and so forth. mussolini also shared with the pope a preference for authoritarian regimes. the pope had no love of democracy and in fact multi-parties were a problem. he didn't want to negotiate a deal with the prime minister and then find out the next year there was a new parliament. there were a whole set of reasons why it might be made. let me just talk a little bit about one important aspect of this period that is not well-known that now comes out. i should say the archives of the vatican were only recently opened through the papacy of

pius the xi in the 1920s and 30s. in 26 they were opened and we have the fascist archive but what we can now do is triangulate documents from the fascist secret police from mussolini's archives and the foreign minister's archives and from various vatican jesuits and church archives that are now easily available tdap we put these together we get a picture of the richness of understanding we never previously had. just to give you some idea before we get back to those last years how this relationship worked and if we can go back to the picture a head of a jesuit. this one, yes. this is an absolutely crucial figure in history who has never before been understood or even known about. hardly anything has been written about him yet he was absolute

essential. shortly after mussolini becomes to power the pope would mussolini agreed they needed private intermediary a private envoy -- envoy and in they choose a roman jesuit. venturi would meet one-on-one with mussolini over 100 times in these years. basically once a month. no one outside of the inner circle of the fascist party met that often with mussolini. before going to meet with mussolini he would go to the vatican and meet with the pope. what was he doing? he was asking new demands from the pope asking mussolini to use the oppressive apparatus of the state to benefit the church and an example to give you some idea go to the trivial example that the pope was concerned about things like modesty ed clothing, bathing suits, nightgowns that showed too much of the female

body and insisted that mussolini do something about this. this was not the kind of issue that mussolini had problems with actually as you may know. [laughter] buts to begin with the trivial example but there were other examples. for example ex-priest, there were a large number of priests who left the priesthood had been some would get married and some for the reasons. the only way they could support themselves would be tube get jobs in local schools. they often were the only literate people around and somewhere in rural villages. the pope, this was never allowed however when the popes were in power because it was regarded as a scandal to have an ex-priest seen in public. and so one of the constant demands the popes made were in cases where ex-priest were teaching and mussolini assured that they were fired. in fact the latter records includes as one of its articles testifying that no such

ex-priest could be allowed to teach in public schools in italy. another thing the pope was very concerned about for proselytizing. in fact he said in his one meeting with mussolini the first thing he wanted to talk to him about was what he regarded as the greatest problem in italy mainly proselytiproselyti zing italy so he was constantly calling on mussolini through venturi to stop those efforts to confiscate literature and so forth. one of the interesting things to me as i read through these archives is this irony that the pope is calling on the fascist dictatorship to take repressive action that actually mussolini doesn't want to take. but there there did come a time as i mentioned in my beginning scene where the pope began to have second thoughts about this collaboration. it probably begins with mussolini's decision to invade

ethiopia which some of you may remember happened in the fall of 1935. in late august, 1935 s. as mussolini as may be noise about intentions to invade the league of nations the pope in remarks to an audience who was an unrelated audience of a convention of nurses asked that for italy to invade ethiopia would be -- need to launch an unjust war and that would be terrible. the people around the pope, around pacelli as secretary of state were horrified. the pope's remarks were supposed to be public the next day in the vatican daily newspaper and they were convinced that this would antagonize mussolini who is trying to drum up public support for the idea of a war in ethiopia.

and the newly available vatican archives we have essentially the diary of the under secretary of state under pacelli who tells us what he did. he said that evening i took the transcript of the pope's remarks before they went to publication and he said he performed a quote surgical operation. now i'm quoting from his diary and accounts of what he did. the under secretary of state and the vatican quote here i cut a word in there i added another. here i modify a sentence, their sentence, dare i erase another unquote. as the text remarks that appear in the next day in the vatican newspaper have no reference to his opposition to the invasion of ethiopia. now it was in the years following the ethiopian campaign that mussolini began to embrace hitler. they had a very peculiar relationship and we can talk

about it more later. of course hitler sought mussolini as his role model in the 1920s. he kept it big bust of mussolini in his office in munich. it was modeled on the march on rome and so forth but after he comes up our mussolini views him him -- he is pleased. he is flattered by the fact that he is look up to buy the new chancellor of germany but he also thinks hitler is to be praised and has his doubts about hitler and even greater doubts about people around him as he referred to as the blogging in an insane asylum. now, the height of this drama comes as i mentioned before with the racial laws that come into effect in the late summer and early fall of 1938.

i think i have an image of what some of them are here. this is actually from a publication that again and was put out by the italian government as part of its racial anti-semitic campaign. it has a lot of illustrations because it is supposed to be a way to list popular italian support for the anti-semitic campaign and you probably can't read this here but you get some idea of the images. what the racial laws mean. some of you may have seen the film or read the book which portrays some of this. all the jewish children market out of school and all jewish teachers and professors were fired. jewish professionals could no longer practice their professions and jewish from the national honor society were thrown out and so on and so forth. this came as a shock to the community because fascism and mussolini had not and previously known to the anti-semantics and in fact none were fascists.

according to the most widely believed account today certainly in italy, the church fought heroically against the racial law as did the pope. yet as i show in my book this is in fact an accurate and the campaign if you read it, a large part it borrows from the church and the unofficial publication of the vatican the jesuit publication which the pages have to be approved by the vatican of and the secretary of state through this time are calling for withdrawing the equal rights in the 19th century. in the middle of august the daily newspaper of the vatican publishes an article saying there needs to be restrictions

on the pernicious influence of the jewish. this article is taken up by fascist publications throughout italy to justify the anti-semitic campaign. but this said the pope himself was uncomfortable with the racial laws for a variety of reasons. the pope was not concerned about any threat from the in italy. the italian jewish population was one tenth of 1%, about 35,000 people but also the public was concerned because it seemed like another sign that mussolini had decided to cast in a state with the nazis and with hitler. what i discovered is that however despite the public's reservations he was convinced to make a deal and this was not known until the recent openings of the archives and known by very few to make a secret deal.

that is the pope made a secret deal with mussolini having to do with the position before the racial laws anti-semitic laws were introduced. i think i have the text. just to give you an idea of what the sake of -- documents look like. this is actually the text of the deal in the jesuit envoy of the pope works out with mussolini and the deal has two parts. mussolini just to take a step back, knew how to put pressure on the pope. in fact people brag to hitler about this. i really know how to handle the pope and take lessons from me. one of the lessons he knew was that if there is one thing that is especially dear to the pope and important to the pope that was the catholic organization known as catholic action. this is the organization that is organized on a capillary based on the local parish whereby the

laity under control is involved in what the pope saw as the christianization of in italian society so that when someone wanted to put pressure on the pope he knew all he had to do was take action against catholic action. recently knowing that the pope was upset about these racial laws decided to announce that you could not be a member of the fascist party and a member of catholic action for example add began to use fascist publications to instill that catholic action was anti-fascist and this was rousing the anger of the loyal fascists sometimes to violent actions against the catholic action group. and sending them to make a deal about anti-semitism one thing i discovered soon in the recently available documents is that venturi had for years been

trying at his monthly meetings with mussolini than trying to convince him of the jewish threat. the pope had not but his envoy and the pope was not sending its envoy to make this argument with mussolini but using the opportunity. he would give him various anti-semitic materials. he would argue time and again that the jews are not only the enemy of christianity according to venturi of the church but they were enemies of fascism and mussolini needed to take steps against the jews. he began to make these arguments by the mid-1920s we now know. this was a man that the pope sent to make a deal with mussolini and i'm showing the first here. two and three were the quid pro quo. two and three said that if you go along with one we will take the pressure off catholic action. we will withdraw the idea that you can't be a good fascists in

the good member of catholic action and so forth. what is one? one as you see here has to do it says with the problems of racism and judaism. that is what the title is a basically sets up this agreement. the pope agrees that as long as the new anti-semitic rules are no worse than the restrictions on the jews when the pope was in charge in the ghetto in rome and so on that the pope will ensure that not only he will not speak out against the anti-semitic campaign but no priests will either. this document is a fairly explosive document as you can imagine and since it has been discovered and i have a copy of it, then some of the first -- there has been a strong reaction

by defenders of of this narrative that the church was an opponent of the racial laws and against anti-semitism and they basically tried to deny this is what it is. we not only have this document is all the documents of the meetings between the pope and tacchi-venturi and later interestingly we see the pope has doubts about this agreement and the people around him worked feverishly to prevent those doubts from interfering with the backing of the fascist regime by the church. i think i have a picture back to pacelli. we will come back to him. he is now secretary of state and before he becomes pope and he is certainly central to these efforts as well. let me just before concluding

give him one other clue as to is going on here. in the same time in august of mussolini drafting the anti-semitic racial laws and worrying about what the public position is going to be he asked his ambassador the ambassador to the holy seat and in addition to pacelli there is one man they thought would be particularly helpful and he is the world had of the jesuit order. he has been head of the jesuit order since 1915 and we know from the correspondence of the italian ambassador mussolini's ambassador, he went to visit this man. he said i went to see him because i knew of his quote implacable loathing for the jews and goes on to say that jesuit

blames the jews for all of your problems. they had a meeting in early august 1938 where with the superior general of the jesuit order tells mussolini's ambassador, you know we are working and doing all they can to prevent the pope from their breaking away from party lines speaking out against the racial laws and speaking out against anti-semitism. he said hle and i the secretary of state and i are at wits end. we don't know what to do because the pope keeps excluding his bond and he doesn't know what he is saying anymore. he is putting the church at risk everything we have built up in his alliance with the fascist regime has all been put into jeopardy. so this is briefly a little bit of flavor of the stories we cannot tell with the newly available archival evidence.

i would just conclude by saying i think ties the 11th is a tragic figure myself. he was not prepared for the job he ended up having to do which no one of course could foresee the advent of fascism in europe and the medieval conception of authority and that medieval conception of the way the world should operate did not prepare him for where the various accommodations with these authoritarian regimes might lead and he is also a tragic figure for the reason that i mentioned that the people around him were working day and night to thwart him from what he felt was his prophetic mission, to seek out against this. for the most part mussolini was never comfortable around priests or churches. he would not allow pictures of himself with nuns or monks to be

published for instance. their relationship which was strong in a certain way for years even though they were so different and even though they only had one meeting in all that time face-to-face, would not end the pope who had hailed mussolini as the man sent by providence to save the church in italy ended up as we have seen having a very different view of the dictator. mussolini was no happier. in the last month kept complaining not only to his mistress but the fascist party that pope pius the xi was -- thank you. [applause] i am happy to take your questions. i think you are supposed to come

to the mic so everybody can hear. thank you. >> that was very interesting presentation. i would like to ask, you alluded to it earlier on but you made it explicit toward the end that a lot of the pressure to the pope was from jesuits and some of the anti-jewish propaganda was in jesuit newspapers and may be was acting of his own volition and not instructed by the pope. was there particularly strong strain of anti-semitism in jesuit to tell you in jesuit orders throughout the 30s? and to what extent was that influential? >> here there was for example jesuits in the united states and in italy. in the u.s. there was an

important component of the jesuits who were progressive for example fighting for racial justice in this period period in the 1930s and the pope one thing i didn't mention in some of you may have heard about the secret encyclical. after hitler visits in 1938 in june arranges a secret meeting with an american jesuit he heard quintessentially happens to be in a rome father john lafarge and father lafarge has been an important advocate for racial harmony and racial justice and in fact in united states he had a book called racial justice. the pope without telling cardinal pacelli arranges to meet father lafarge the american jesuit and asked him to drafted encyclical denouncing racism and anti-semitism. that to complicates the story but that too was on the desk, the draft of it was on the desk of the pope when he died and

that was too buried by pacelli. to give you another illustration of this during the ethiopian war at the catholic clergy were big supporters of it but in the jesuit american magazine called america which still exists in many of you may know it, the publication, an article appeared being critical of mussolini and the ethiopian war. he sends ambassador to meet with the superior general of the jesuit order and says you've got to do something. immediately he fires the longtime editor of american replaces him with a pro-fascist editor. this is what is going on. the jesuit journal is highly influential and seen as -- put out by a group of italian jesuits the unofficial voice of the pope and from the beginning of modern anti-semitism in the 1880s it had scores and scores of anti-semitic material some of

which is basically picked up by the nazis as well. so i think it is not a very pleasant story of what was going on with the italian jesuits at the time. >> did it survive? >> yes, well the difference between a novel and nonfiction. now after 2006 we have gotten to see it. as i mentioned all copies of the printed version were destroyed on the orders of pacelli at the request of mussolini but the original handwritten pages, he did not destroy those. it was only after his death pope pius xii death that pope john xxiii leaves part of the text

and from the archives in 2006 we have the full text. what we would like is to be a ringing did not see asian of the types of mussolini feared, the real break with fascism. it is not bad. it's a speech however the mussolini certainly would not have liked to hear. it warns the vicious of italy against the fact that there are fascists everywhere and they have to watch what they say. he complains about racial nazi idealism. it was not quite as dramatic and certainly not as dramatic as it appeared. >> one question david -- what question david generates the most curiosity for you right now? what would you like to know? what would you like to explore and what would you like answered? >> that's a good question.

you know i think we have learned a lot. i feel i have a good understanding now of what was going on but there are aspects that still are somewhat obscure. i think understanding, understanding for example his view of the sub five how could he have agreed even though somewhat reluctantly to the deal he made a mid-august 1938 to go along with the racial laws as long as we have got this favorable treatment of catholic action. there is some conflict there that we don't quite understand. we know how the various people around him every time he would try to turn against it would convince them not to but i don't fully understand that. that would require conversation with him and i don't think there

are documents that we have seen that existed. one thing however along the lines of the question is pacelli kept a diary of his daily meetings with the various for nonvoice to the holy city. when i found out about this when the archives were opened in 2006 the first thing i want to look for was his diary for this period were so much was happening with the imposition of these laws in various deals. although you have full record for an early birth period all of a sudden there are very few. nothing for three months and then another entry and nothing for a couple of months. what to make of this. there are three possibilities.

one is for whatever reason he didn't keep a diary then. the other is that pacelli who we know was one to be sensitive about these documents when he became pope had this removed knowing that it was not something he would ever want seen and when the pope john paul ii ordered that these archives be ready would take four years. they have been working on cataloging and so forth. at that point some of the documents were embarrassing because the cause of making pius pius xii a saint was the cause of the wing of the catholic church in anything that might diminish that possibility is seen with great trepidation. that would probably be the one thing i would most want to know. see was the secret encyclical similar, do we have that and if

we do was a similar to the so-so speech or was it different? >> there is actually a book you should read called the hidden encyclical. it came out a number of years ago. a very good book which tells the story and it too just to give you a little more background so you understand why, the pope had a problem. give pointed this american jesuit without letting pacelli now and without letting anyone the secretary of state office no but he had to inform the head of his order because of the jesuit discipline. the day after or couple of days after he met with father lafarge he called in the jesuit superior general and tells him what he has done. we know from the correspondence the polish head of the jesuit

order, his correspondence with his colleagues that he thought the pope was mad. in fact to use the wittingly english mad when he heard about this project and he insisted, he said among other things this american jesuit is quite developed art and insisted that more expert jesuits be added to the project. two were french and german. the german came from a more traditional show we say european jesuit perspective on the jews and he would have some influence so they go to work and they grab this thing. we only have seen in recent years and it is in some ways disappointing. it certainly is a direct criticism of nazi racial ideology area and racial supremacy but in terms of the jews it's certainly a document that would be embarrassing to the church today or the vatican

council and i should say and i didn't say this but it's important to say that with the second vatican council in the early 1960s this already great changes. the church rejects its previous demonization of the jews and takes the position of respect for other religions and religious dialogue and so forth, all things that were being rejected before. basically the answer of the question is encyclical as the good parts but others that we would regard as offensive to jews. >> is it conquered factual if pius had lived for 10 more years how much difference would it have made? with things up in a much different? is a basically institutional or would it have mattered? >> will the nazi ambassador to the german ambassador wrote at

the time shortly after his death that had he lived there would have never been a nazi germany. he didn't say anything about mussolini. it's a little hard to know. it was getting late. i think -- this is the important thing. the debate had been somewhat misphrased in the past. there has been a lot of attention as you'd know to what influence the pope could have had on hitler. hitler was catholic after all by birth but if you think about the relationship of the pope with mussolini is very different. the pope had a huge impact in italy. first of all 99% of the italians were catholic and only one third of the germans were catholic. the pope is italian so the potential influence the pope had and announcing and especially in

here's the real rub. mussolini ascended good spot. he wants to make an alliance with nazi germany but the italians hate the germans. they had just gone to war with them and they had hundreds of thousands of dead at the hands of the germans not long before but hitler is not a sympathetic figure to the italians. he is announcing aryan supremacy and the italians have a pretty good idea but that does not include them. so mussolini tried to convince the italians to get onboard with this alliance with nazi germany. he had to challenge and that is why if the pope had clearly spoken out against this said that no good catholic could embrace hitler. i don't know what impact it would sure many but i think it

would have been a big impact on his lead. if the pope were younger and more vigorous nod in the position to have his will thwarted i think the fate of italy would have been different. that might be going too far. >> to ask question. i understand that the italian government didn't send the jews halfway and the catholic government was very much pour jews. the government was for jews? is that what you said versus narrative and there was church

opposition to racial laws. if there is one aspect of the racial laws. one of the racial laws said a converted issue had become catholic would be treated as jewish and not catholic and could not marry legally a catholic. the pope was irate at this for a couple of reasons. one it went against church doctrine that if you were baptized as catholic one of the major provisions had given the church to write to decide at a church wedding what a legitimate wedding was which will be automatically registered with the state. went directly against the agreement in 1929. the complaint to the fascist he's in the vatican archives

were entirely about this one issue. there was never any vatican opposition to throwing the jewish children out of the schools and firing the jewish teachers and so forth and until the papal states were defeated in the 1970s. that i think was the picture. >> pius xii during world war ii with what go to verso figure and emblematic almost but it sounds as if your research has now shed some new light on what it might have brought to the papacy what baggage did you give us some sense of how you would view world war ii in light of what you know berm research please? >> i would say many of you are aware there was a lot of pressure on of the same

pius xii. it they became such a controversy about the failure to protest. he knew what was happening. this was a very controversial issue. one thing i would say i think the research i was able to do in the 1930s when pacelli becomes secretary of state give us more insight than we will get that looking at those archives. there's there is little evidence of your thinking and when you issue proclamations and so forth but before then for their same crucial dramatic years before the war pacelli is keeping a diary and he is a huge correspondence which we have access to so i think we really have previous insight into them. pacelli is someone who thought

of themselves as the victor of the institutional church. i think of is a little bit like some of the more recent difficulties the catholic churches have run into and where we see behavior that seems to be first and foremost in situations in the church and perhaps other moral issues but this is certainly the way of pacelli thought at the time. the notorious book hitler's pope about pacelli, he was not hitler's pope. nazism certainly oppose his idea of christianity and catholicism but as i show in my book the germans worked for his election the german and nazi ambassador to rome worked for his election and was relieved that he was elected and certainly the fascist people were working furiously to get him elected

pope because again not because they saw him as a fascist or much less as a nazi but saw him as accommodative. he was someone who would make a deal that as long as the rights and prerogatives of the church were protected you was not going to get involved and in fact he assured the german ambassador shortly after he became pope the first meeting he would have after becoming pope after being selected would be with the ambassador and wanted to ensure him that the regime -- amity would return to the relationship between the vatican and the third reich and what he said was and i'm paraphrasing i take a position that is not the role of the pope to make a decision about the right form of government. it's a secular matter and i'm not going to take any position

with respect to that. .. a discussion of "the

monuments men" by the author

robert edsall. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> robert second book is entitled the monuments men. and we will discuss tonight those allied heroes come in off the thieves and the greatest treasure hunt in history. with the ambassador eisenstadt on the panel, we will also touch on some of the more contemporary efforts by the united states government to address the loss

and the return of what we began to call holocaust era assets. in a way what has been done to 1990s is following in the steps of "the monuments men." using this as our guide to the past and to help turn history into justice, an expression that is all from the ambassador and have used freely without attribution. and we have access partner and monetary gold, real property, movable property. intellectual property. communal and religious property. they also took cultural property

in numbers that stagger the imagination. they even took gold fillings from their victim. and it was often in direct as we learned in the 1990s as witnessed by what happened to jewish accounts and swiss banks and insurance policies issued to the jews by italian and insurance companies. he was greatly involved in these issues beginning in the 1990s and perhaps you can tell us a little bit about this swiss bank and insurance issues and whether there has been any resolution of those issues. >> thank you, greg. thank you for hosting this, david. as greg said, the holocaust was not only the greatest genocide in history but the greatest

theft in history. it was a war within a war in which not see germany diverted enormous resources down to the very last days of the war to strip them of a recently had an allies. the theft of art and other properties going back to the conquest of jerusalem by the romans and the insignia that we see in rome and the mona lisa in the loop taken on one of napoleons ventures. what established it was a sufficiency and organization. with respect to artwork, it is estimated that 600,000 pieces of art were stolen and 8000 of which are personally selected by

adolf hitler for a museum that he planned after the war in his hometown. but artwork was only a part of it. so for example homes and businesses, jewelry, insurance policies and bank accounts. let me just mention these and we will come back to these a little bit later it will be found for an article in "the wall street journal" is a front page article and it said that there were doormen swifts bank accounts that had been set up during a war primarily by jews trying to show their money in the safest thing system in europe by the on lot of the third reich. and that after the war those who

survived and if they didn't, their families who tried to recoup those bank accounts were told that they couldn't be found. in fact what happened was the accounts were drawn down month after month by charges over 50 years and taken into the profits of the bank. so i got permission from the state department to go to switzerland. i gave them a copy of this wall street journal article and i said, is this true? and i said yes, it is to an extent we have had this and we have found that there are 732 dormant bank accounts what should've been returned and were not. so if we put that up to the days values, that'll be $32 million they got major account

information there were 54,000 possible accounts and 21,000 certain accounts and a somewhat was reached $1.25 billion in respect to insurance, companies like this and many others do the following. there were insurance policies on the lives of individuals and what happened after the war is the families of those who were killed, their life insurance policies try to recruit and they were told that the policies have lost because the premiums were not paid while people were poor in auschwitz and so this is something that was part of the insurance claims under the

former secretary of state in a consensual way after we got everyone together red so the dimensions of this were like peeling back the layers of an onion bread and one thing led to another. slave labor ended up getting almost a billion dollars and this includes german private companies and for slavery. the majority of that were from non-jewish laborers and it ended up in a million and a half people are compensation as a result of that. so was an extensive effort this was a piece but only a piece. >> thank you. >> speaking about art and going back before entering world war

ii, can you tell us what the poppies chuck and what do they do with what they took me back. >> it's interesting that we use the term moxy looting. it gives you a wanton act that people break into this and what we are talking about was much more systemic and beer? and it was from the leadership down and it was targeting certain categories of individuals and countries and it was enacted by various bureaucratic arms of the not the regime and they vary from country to country and it was

much more for the taxation offices when they were lost half they had to pay certain taxes it is those working in poland and holland and they were working with the banks that were taking over jewish assets and i think the most well-known organization and that is one that is originally to be confiscated as something that do not these were trying to subdue. it was turned into confiscating this and you can use the term to try to keep in your mind that it is really a bureaucratic effort from the top down.

as we all knew that hitler had planned to have the greatest examine the role because he was going to on all of europe. another knotty party leaders were collecting because they thought that it showed to be part of this as well. but like many regimes, the nazis really used it to their advantage. >> debate so are to support the war effort. >> as it was to support the war effort, but it was an interesting thing where they would see the currency. so is used particularly in this

fashion. to having an extensive knowledge of the nazi that's the goal art and other properties, in january of 1943 the allies that issued the london declaration declared their intentions to stop nazis from looting and also warning that they deserve the right to not recognize sales property made under duress. at the same time they became increasingly concerned about the damage and the destruction of cultural property. this concern manifested all in a twofold manner. first was the protection of artistic and historic monuments in war times. for short it is called the roberts commission because it

was part of this was in the military establishment to deal with cultural property. so robert, can you tell us about the roberts commission and the creation of "the monuments men"? >> yes. >> it is actually a little bit morning because we have some very long name that you have heard. as well as some acronyms. but essentially it really began 34 years earlier. there's a man named george stout the pioneer and the conservation of works of art and we work at the museum at harvard and he had

the vision in between the wars and in the ad then that were causing fires and a conviction due to correspondence that he had with friends that worked in german museums and many of them are having to flee germany and go to england to try to get away from the bad times they foresaw. and he was convinced that there is going to be second world war. so matching that with the event he was observing in spain, he saw disaster on the horizon that the united states might become engaged in this war in the process, destroying so much of western civilization that it would be a permanent stain on the american military in the united states area so even before the japanese sneak attack in 1941, he was preparing these

templates during and before we were engaged in a war. and following december 7, very much like following september 11 of 2001, there would be an invasion or bombing of the east coast by the japanese and american museum director was asked to convene about the third week in december to discuss initially the protection of the works of art at our main museums including the national gallery of art which largely evacuated some of this in nashville, north carolina. as happened, it became clear quickly that what had happened

is all that would happen in the short-term in focus shifted as to how to protect things in this country and how do we help with mankind's greatest achievement. so they propose this concept of cultural preservation officers. one charged with saving rather than destroying. and they had envisioned a more elaborate setup of secretaries and vehicles by the time this unfolded and he was very suspicious of museum directors and he was convinced that by the time they got a hold of these ideas they would muck it up so much that it wouldn't end up going anywhere. so within the next year or so he kind of gave up on the idea which in the military was the

camouflaging of aircraft. but his great supporter was paul sacks introducing this in the united states known as the museums studies course and it was a farm club for museum directors, curators and the cultural country that we know today. there were some 20 babies that became monuments officers. for those of you who are old enough to see that mission impossible tv series, peter graves would sit down and flipped through his dossier of experts to decide which ones he wanted to have to deal with the challenges of the mission. he on this working for the roberts commission. starting with all the students who graduated since 1920. there were some 20 students

there were architects, linguists, most had been educated in europe. and the key factor was who was already in the military because they quickly realized it was going to be much easier to transfer someone in the military than it was to get someone in the wasn't already enough. so this is where this idea comes from. late 1942, the idea comes from a lot of different groups, people at the fray. a lot of those in the roberts commission. but it is the idea of george stout that is largely represented in the represents in late 1942 and in april of 1943. he says pretty simply makes a lot of sense to me, that idea in their often running getting the formalities that up with election of officers don't

really began until the summer of 1943, and of course the invasion of sicily at our to have it at this stage. >> that is the interesting exhalation rather than the complicated version. >> it's interesting that this was called monuments and archives. many felt like third class citizens. compared to the fine arts and in any event. besides establishing these monuments men and the roberts commission, part and parcel of this program was intelligence gathering and you have to know what is actually gathering in

europe and much of this was accomplished by american diplomats and service operatives in spain and portugal as well as government in exile in london. also gathering intelligence about what the non-jews were doing in terms of alluding this. played by kate blanchet in the movie and robert, can you tell us a little bit about her enact. >> by my way of thinking she was one of the great heroines of world war ii. for all of you that have put up with the guys are driving you to ovies, this is your film and you have a heroine in this film achieves a remarkable woman. it's hard to believe that she

could transform herself in this way, but she doesn't quite sicily. jesus woman part of the dominated and if any of you have been to paris, you have walked past this building and so it became the central headquarters for the nazi looting operation in particular. with tens of thousands of work stolen from the great collectors and friends. someone also dealer families that were brought in and they were often times photographed

and this was a particularly evil or pernicious individuals. so rothschild is an example and they were the letter r and then they would have a number. and there could be a 6000 number. many at the officers usually found, which they have done a great job writing about this, a jewelry chest that might have hundreds of objects in them and this includes one who referred to eight-point collection and there were 10,000-point in it. so the numbers get to be pretty staggering very quickly rated roses there with the responsibility and the germans

know that they need her there to make sure that the lights are working great but she understands german and they don't notice. her boss is another hero, he is a director of the ranch museum including the louvre, has placed her there and so she is making secret notes and is they are each of the 20 times they make these exhibits and stewart referenced things. if there is any value to it, there would be champagne and they would have a regard in any one of his 20 michael jackson alfred, whether it is or not. it's amazing the number of photographs that we have,

knowing that some of these things were part of what they wanted to have themselves. sometimes she wrote that she was looking for photo negatives and over the course of four years she noticed largely the number of works that have come through and she recognizes me because they are so famous. she knows the location of many that have been taken. it's not really a diary, but an album with all of these different notes and scraps of paper that have been put together we're they are in one place. so at the end of the liberation, she survives this and she's considered a collaborator and

she doesn't turn over all the information she had to her boss on her advice because no one knows who to trust. and her loyalties are over and above and she is encouraged to work with an officer who at the time as the curator of the cloister museum goes on to be the next director of the mat after the war. and they did is over six months is to be a dance of courtship. trying to see if he can be trusted with this information. there are two people destiny each holding half of the same key. and she persists with this until 1981 when she dies and never gives up on and becomes a pain

in the side to many people that just want this to go away. and so on the other hand he realizes he can play a role in recovering the works of art stolen from france. he is transportation but he doesn't know where to go. so this is the dynamic between the two of them, back and forth and will he really return these things to france. it's a fascinating dynamic and i think it is one of the great parts of the film that the actors have really teased out of the story. >> you mention sicily. in 1943 the allies invaded

sicily. and there were very few monuments men and they had some successes and barriers and all of this is a lane and roberts third book, saving italy. but robert, could you briefly talk about this? do they have transportation and do they have mass? >> it was really a pathetic getting. it was president roosevelt that realized they needed to buy time for the army of bureaucracy to be overcome to get some of these guys over there. on his orders, a man -- let me show a number by you showing

your hands who has been to harvard -- okay. so from the 1920s to the 1990s when he died with it action of the end he knew that he was that fad so he arrives three weeks after the american invasion and he is flown to all algeria thinking that he is to be in north africa. and then he says i really don't know anything about that area. and he didn't. but he gets there. there's no vehicles or operation. they are just winging it. but the monuments officers at the beginning of combat are

about 40 years old and i have really accomplished careers. many have kids. so they were pretty clever and resourceful and trying to figure out how to do things. while they didn't help any, they didn't pay attention to him either. to the extent that they could come up with solutions, they were pretty effective area to the operation on its face over and over again the point that general marshall wrote his protége, general marshall and said you need to be very careful because people here are reading horrible newspaper accounts and damaging italy by by the allies. and they were at the civil

affairs division. they had the ability to pay attention. the monuments officers will post the buildings out of bounds american british troops couldn't live in them, damage them, taking. in the army officers of the troops just ignored it. so by the time of november and is number one the operation was clearly failing, the general, general eisenhower changes the face of the war and he issues the directive december 29, 1943. albeit six months after the war and italy have gone. and so if it comes down to the lives of our men or object, the lives of our men count more. however, that will not be

tolerated. in this was the change. because the monuments officers never got more help than that. and the senior monuments officer said it was the first solid ground under our feet. and they show this directive and they had currency with them. and by the time of the normandy landings, that same order similarly worded was issued two weeks before the normandy landings. >> we are way behind schedule. so i ask my colleagues to keep their answers short.

but once they landed in france, in june of 1944, the germans began hiding their own cultural property in the property that they have looted, primarily in southern germany in salt mines, monasteries, castles, air raid bunkers. some germans at this point, especially in 1944 late in the year, they believe that they would lose the war. the smartest thing to do was to get all this to a safe haven outside of germany. and the united states government initiated something called operation safe haven. to be the intelligence gathering capability of the treasury department, economic administration, to find out where these assets were going.

in 1997 and 1998, he oversaw the production of two government report about operation safe haven and monetary gold and victim gold. and these reports were quickly produced and were not well received. so can you tell us what prompted the clinton administration to be produced and what was the outcome of these reports? >> robert has done an enormous service. but i want to try to put it in a broader german context. that is a great tribute to the united states army and the

united states of america. contrasting this enormous effort to get it to return to its rightful owners with this coming from the east to berlin. so they were intent on doing just the opposite. stripping germany and its museums of everything that they could do was taking it back to russia as were compensation for their enormous lawsuits. so here we are doing exactly the opposite, trying to preserve it and get it back to its original owners, while they are trying to compensate themselves for the losses in with respect to the reports, we have had lawsuits that were being brought against the hispanics. and we realized that there was a

broader story than the amounts put in swiss banks by victims. in that broader story is how did the germans finance a war effort for 12 years? when their currency, the right mark, was not accepted as international currency. and the historian came to me and that we should look into that. we have interagency studies. more than a dozen agencies and the eia and others. and we did a landmark study on what happened to the goal that was dashed gold that was looted by the germans. not private banks. but as the german swept through europe and they stole this out from the jews and primarily in larger amounts from the central

banks of the government that they occupy. in order to get this to finance the war, they took the gold to the central bank of switzerland. which is exactly what the german central bank did. and they converted that old into swiss francs which the germans used to finance the war effort. and so we disclose this in a report. it caused explosion in switzerland and then we did a follow-up report of what other countries, spain and turkey had done to facilitate a war effort. but to switzerland great credit they ended up taking our report and with anything improving on a committee appointed the

professor to do their own report in his report is a landmark in self-examination. as a result of our report we ended up getting 20 countries to set up their own historical commissions to look at their gold during the war. >> we are really running behind at this point. and i knew that every single question would be a one day answer, one book answer. >> we have cut it down. [laughter] >> select skip over -- and you can read this in robert hooks, skip over the whole movement in 1944 and 1945 the greatest treasure hunt in history. we can see the condensed version in the movie. but it was dangerous and hard work and to monuments men

officers were killed. and a british major gulf and sos always putting their lives on the line and in some cases some were killed trying to rescue those in harmharms way. the treasure hunt came from all of these different sources. but as the war was ending there were still a lot of questions like where is all the loot and who is involved in taking the loot. things that we know now and at the time we did in. the latter part of the war, the officers of your teaching services created something like the art investigation unit. and it was stopped by monuments men. so michael, can you tell us

about this investigation unit and what they did and what they produced? >> i will try it not to do it in a day or a book. [laughter] >> it's interesting as to what is gold to a small group. a professor of williams college and others, and their task was to try to identify with his vast network of hidden asset was on cultural materials, art, archives and libraries. so there was a lot of concern that this material would become fodder for sale and a black and and finance the not the resistance. there was a lot of concern that there would be a knotty

resistance after the inevitable defeat. and so during the war the vast counterintelligence effort of the allies -- there are about 2000 individuals that had been marked as people who were involved him how in the market. so they have names and they had an idea of who were the players. from the spring of 1945 onward they went into germany and austria and they basically two things. they did an enormous amount of archival research because they were looking at that and records that were found in munich and they also interrogate the key individuals who are the players in this market. so i think these three were very disappointed. because while rosenberg and others were held accountable,

the second-tier actually got away without any indictments or sentences may start a business again. nonetheless they were able to map out where all of this material was and save an enormous amount of time in these materials from being looted by others and being lost. they produced a detailed interrogation report on 12 individuals. also specials of these on the projects of hitler's and on the personal collection and rosenbergs organization. so this very small group of investigators did an enormously critical job at the end of the world. >> identifying what it was, this ended up being part of this and

these were operated by monuments men. trying to put humpty dumpty back together again. while i was writing my dissertation, michael had a great sense to write about what were the policies and procedures for returning it. and so michael, can you tell us they handled this giving it back to the rightful owners? [inaudible] >> he had the notion of creating central collection point. about 1300 repositories and most of it in the u.s. zone of occupation. you just can't operate around 1300 apiece. so they set up these operations

and the architect was the chief of the monuments activity and operations on the ground and it is amazing that these monuments officers could create this. they don't have a lot of support from the army. but using this collection point with art and much of what needed to be rested tooted land, in two weeks time in the middle of june of 1945, the whole thing is refurbished and the securities to another school for feet, which is absolutely critical. so millions of items float in. they had mostly art from the oppression museums and offenbach was the site for looted jewish possessions, items and libraries

and this was critical to ultimate restitution. >> thank you. >> robert reminds us that the issue of this is unfinished. and indeed as the ambassador and others will tell you that the mission is unfinished. one important thing to fill this mission of "the monuments men", the 1998 holocaust conference, that adopted what is called the washington principles. each of you should have a copy of these principles, which were adopted in 1998 and then reaffirmed again in lithuania in 2000 and five and 2009. so how this comes about with various countries are filling

this. it's really important to understand there was a huge thing in the basic principle was that the art would be returned to the countries from which it was taken. rather than trying to go through something impossible of finding the individual owners. and so the art was returned, for example, to france and to many other countries on the theory that they would set up their own claims processes to allow claimants to recover this and that did not happen in part because there were no families. but in part because they simply wanted to keep the art themselves. the yemen our collection, for example, in france. then a major activity added to this. all the attention that have been

described focused on this collection and restitution which was properly focus on the new soviet threat. and so from the end of the war, essentially until 1990 evan -- there was almost no attention to this issue. there were a number of scholars and others and michael who wrote about the. they elevated the issue and then what really brought it to the attention was the catalyst that no one would have expected. there was an exchange, a typical exchange that occurred with the museum and ostrich to the u.s. the museum of modern art.

and they have forgotten remarkably to go through the very simple process of filling out the form for the state department, which protects these from being seized. and they didn't. and they were claimed by a holocaust family. and a manhattan attorney then subpoenaed this and it sent a shockwave through the american museum community. and that resulted in this under pressure creating a series of guidelines for researching art and publishing potential moxy looted art. and so what we did is we came behind that and we continued with 44 countries. and we were able to get them to

agree to a set of principles which was to research to see if any were suspect. establish mechanisms and claims processes and make sure the you establish alternative dispute processes that are based upon decisions on merit and not technical defenses. and there was a great burst of activity in the american community. national gallery returned a piece of art that they found, chicago art institute and others traded but then what happened is after a terrific momentum silly claim it wouldn't have to go to 100 different museums in the united states, they could file when it would go to all 100 museums and all this was done. establish and still have

full-time employees look for any such backed and i would say in any given year. it is a shame. is it the momentum was lost in the leadership of the u.s. showed began to be a part of this. in the museum overtimes out of two is dirt technical defenses when claims were made. for example the statue of limitations. they even preemptively and filed his claims before they were made. and so there was no objective measure of that. so then we ended up ironically having started this whole process and falling behind in finding that the dutch and the germans and the austrians and the burnish establish their own commissions and were functioning better than we were.

now, for sure those commissions are much criticized. at least they exist. we do not have a commission. partly it is because we have private museums in europe that are public museums. but we can do what was suggested. that we set up the service with no u.s. government money at all so that these disputes could be done without these technical defenses. some sad day and after this passage of 50 years where we then revived it through the principles, that we have really fallen back and stagnated and we really need to get back to the filling what the monuments men dead. that would be attribute. to get back to where we were

then. >> what i would like to do now is have nancy talk about what is the community doing and could you make it short. [applause] >> i respectfully disagree. we need a commission in the united states. the commissions are set up or a totally different category of objects that were recovered after the war. known to have some kind of issue and in the custody of those countries. and they need to deal with those. so many are hereby happenstance. what the american museum community has done since 1998 conference which was so instrumental, is to adopt these guidelines or research publications. they are misleadingly simple guidelines. the research, for example, research has always been something in american museums. at this pacific research and

world war ii using these records are here at the national archives are very complicated and very different from anything that traditional historians have done. some proud to say that the american museum community has partnered with them many times to do multiple training sessions for curators around the country on how to access these materials. we've done two major conferences in college park. an international conference in 2007 and we did two years ago a two-day international conference on accessing his remarkable resources that are here in our national archives. so coming up in june we have another ownership coming. so i would say that we are trying as hard as we can to research our collections and we are open to anyone with any questions and no american museum wants to have anything on their

walls that doesn't belong to them. >> so we need to let the decisions we made and second, josh has adjusted and having the to and trade commission would be a good way of trying to get these out of the courts and out of litigation, getting the lawyers out of the picture and getting technical defenses out of making decisions on this and i agree with him. >> i does have a view questions for robert [inaudible] >> is not my typical role, but we will try it out. i was to ask you how you got interest at. but that is easy enough to find. but did you actually enjoy doing this research and writing?

>> it won't come as a surprise interview. i'm guilty as charged. i like to see things happen and make things happen and yet this is a big asterisk. when i'm with one of these veterans and they have a chance that usually only takes me part of this. they will talk for hours and hours and i will feel like i have the greatest dog in the world having the chance to listen to what their experiences. so oftentimes in many cases spouses. some of them we have found and in one particular case the woman who got married. we had no idea how to find her.

it's a joyous process that has allowed us to tell the story in a way that i don't think a. we're sitting here talking about works of art and this is important. when we say this, library books, jewelry, kasper sees a trend it's a whole spectrum of the other. so why did these women walk away from the established careers and their families and kids and go risk their lives in combat to do something that wasn't necessarily going to benefit the united states at benefits of ordination. we haven't seen anyone do that or. that is the change that we have never done anything like that runs from top to bottom.

so it's very important to point out in our military today. those that have the best of intentions. but what we had in world war ii that made it work doing only what leaders could do and that is leading. president roosevelt decided that was an important idea. general eisenhower empowered his men and women to go do their jobs. and we haven't had any leaders do not since world war ii on a public basis and that is what is happening today. so i submit and i agree with things that stewart said and nancy hess said and i think that museums can become easy scapegoats. i spoke to the american association of directors earlier this year. i made the comment that it's not okay to have a 40 or 50 million-dollar easy and

budget and then not be able to afford everything oz. on the other hand it's easy to pick on museums and say why haven't you done it faster. the research work is very complicated and there are not millions of workers floating around. many are questions we'll have to debate today that becomes more complicated when you have statute of limitations in various countries that are going to need to be revisited. i submit that the best place to adjudicate this is the court of public opinion. and i can't unless the public opinion with you all know the story. and i am not a trained art historian or writer or anything. but i've been passionate about this for some 15 or 16 years. so i have the chance to know

these stories in knowing why they did what they did. why does all important to the treasures that we have today. .. you want to know when you buy your home that you own the clear title to your home.

that is what providence is and the work of stewart and his team at the state department and others that has been trying to bring worldwide visibility to this through legislative and the former judicial system but i submit the people that have been left out of the discussion are people like me that don't have any academic training about the history of this said about the legal terms. we just like art and we like great stories and we believe that no passage of time should change the character. something was stolen and we can identify it we should give it back. [applause] >> yes i said before we could spend days talking about the past, present and future of this topic but i would like to thank the panelists for coming out tonight and i would also like to

thank our boss the archivist for not only his presence by presenting the records of the monuments men and the work of the monuments men. we are like you to have the interest in something we have an interest in. now i guess i would direct you to the microphones on either side if you have questions. >> yes, you brought out we knew after the second world war murder was a great atrocity of the germans. the first major trial that everybody saw in the world what happens in the nuremberg trials. did anyone discuss these issues at the nuremberg trial aside from the murders? there were people there who certainly gearing and other

stole and was that brought out of the world? >> yes it was. the work of investigation unit was critical. actually theater russo-did the buying of gearing's work and interrogated gearing while he was at nuremberg and so a lot of the documents entered into evidence a norm berg related to the art theft and so forth come from the work of this unit and it came from their researches they went through the german files and located documents and have them verified by the various interrogations that they did and they actually even brought some of these second-tier nazis to nuremberg to give testimony about rosenberg and gearing. >> what was most effective was taking the 39 er are albums these photographic albums showing what they had taken and

really putting them in front of each of the eight judges and saying here's the evidence. >> it comes from the national archives and you can watch this absolutely riveting. it's all on line. you can have access to it. we have it at the foundation too rated. >> thank you. >> do we have current monuments made for the wars that have gone recently like afghan -- iraq and afghanistan. >> we have well intended people in the archaeological community that have advised the state department and defense department and they did so prior to the american invasion of iraq in 2003 but for a variety of reasons and in my opinion the principle one being that the other half of this diad has to work which is the leadership from the top and in our country it's the ceo. it's the president of the united states and well-intended and i say this a politically. i don't care who the president or the secretary of defense is

but there was a monument by edith stanton who in 1947 said it's not enough that we be virtuous. we must also appear so and she understood that power of appearance. first appearances matter so we didn't have these monuments there because the prioritization of protecting cultural treasures wasn't there. we protected the oil installations and that was a smart thing to do. we protected the electrical grids but we didn't protect the museum and the national archives in iraq the national library which the jobs over there trying to destroy flood, damage and whose problems is that he come? it becomes the american army. i think what we have got to have today we certainly need to be training people and we are doing that and people like karen wegner and lori russia and others do a tremendous job and in the absence of a the president of the united states

restating my opinion the words of roosevelt and general eisenhower that the united states will of expects the cultural treasures of other countries and if he comes down to the lives of our men and women in the lives of our men and women count more but if that doesn't happen the best efforts are going to work their way through the bureaucracy had at some point stall and fail. we had people that went over there in 2004 to fix the problems and they did a tremendous job. but what does everybody remember? they remember what happened in 2003 not what we did in 2004 because first impressions matter so the rob him in the challenge here before us and is a huge part again of our effort the monuments foundation that we make sure all the voters around the country know about this. i dare say no political leader is going to go into combat again and not say a do we have monuments officer's?

>> i was out of office because of the work i had done. when we bombed the defense ministry in damascus, excuse me in baghdad. i would you -- i wish it would have been in damascus. [laughter] when we did that the pipes burst and when our troops came in they found jewish treasures, archival treasures going back hundreds and hundreds of years and they called me and said given your experience what should we do and i said three things. get it out of the water, get it to the national archives where it can be curated properly and never returned it. two of the three things were done. an agreement was reached with the iraqi government to return this jewish cultural property which itself was looted in my opinion from the jewish community that left in the 50s

after the formation of israel. what robert has exposed is very much a current issue. >> i would like to point out that my wife doris hamburg went over there and helped bring the stuff back and have overseen it ever since. mary lynn is my wife's mother. i would say compared to the beltway she is probably safer there than here. yes maam. >> ambassador's you know in germany is considering changing their 30-year stature in light of the case of the man with a priceless art from his father and it looks like he will be able to legally keep it but there may be a change. do you think 69 years after the end of the war that there will be a way for these countries

that have these statutes of limitations to end those statutes of limitations? >> that's a great question let me just say this. first of all the disagreement about whether there should be a commissioned the amount of looted nazi art in units sites is -- united states is minimum. the greater amounts are in europe germany in particular and russia which has the greatest treasure trove of looted nazi art. they passed a law after the washington principle which said we are going to keep our so-called trophy art to pay for and effects the war loss contrary to our policy but we are willing with the washington principles to return that art which the red army took and in turn which have been taken by the nazis.

they have never implemented it so the real focus is to be on europe. on the question you asked on the girl in case it's an incredible case. here a guy goes from switzerland to munich, comes to the border. he is asked if he has anything to declare. he said well i have 9500 euros in cash and i say where did you get 9500 euros in cash? he said i sold a piece of art. they look in his apartment and there are 1200 pieces of art with some having empty cases that indicated he had sold it in to make a long story short it turns out that a lot of it was in fact nazi art. so initially the germans were treating it as a tax evasion case. the guy sold it and didn't report it to taxes. we the state department intervened based on the washington principles based again on what you have done as well and what michael has done

and what nancy has done and we said no this is not just a tax evasion case. look at the washington principles and publish the art which initially they wouldn't do but now to their great credit about 450 pieces have been published on the internet so claims can be made. then the issue is the question is of the statute of limitations. i can't guarantee this is going to happen but we urge again the technical defense not be used and that is why i feel so strongly and they are seriously considering an effect creating of a new law that would waive the statute of limitations as to the art that is in the curling department. whether they will do it or not remains to be seen but they publicly indicated they are looking at it and it would certainly be a wonderful thing and it would be consonant with the washington principles. this story just never ends. it never ends. >> let me say about this. i hate to predict the future. its apparel is thing to do but i

believe we will see changes and i believe that the principle reason is that the public, the court of public opinion is now going to know what the heck everybody's talking about. it's been stuck with legislators and lawyers debating this thing and using fancy terms like providence and the general public doesn't know what they're talking about. you have something like the case and is the front page of the newspapers around the world and there are a william pictures found. there is a billion and half euros assigned to this value. no one has a list of the works of art get somebody has defined 1.5 will you in euros. i'm happy because everyone in the world is paying attention for a moment and is it worth hundreds of millions? probably that we don't have the information to determine what the values are. it's a complicated case. it's a hairball of the case but i think this.

i think people around the world at least in the western -- are governed bylaws and for the most part people i think feel what i said earlier. no passage of time makes it okay for somebody to keep something including german museums if it was stolen and we can identify who it belongs to. if we can massage this process by making sure that legislators in germany and others send when we were at the berlin film festival last week we were with a german cultural minister for 30 minutes. we were her favorite people and especially monuments -- if they realize the voting public now understands the story that is not just a big discovery but it's the whole theft unfolding in slow motion and if you get google alerts like we all do there are discoveries like this in the paper every single day. not that dramatic but they are out there but it's all the same story. they read this case an

80-year-old guy, it's complicated, tax evasion etc.. the film is now going to reach a worldwide audience in a way that the audience can never get out there and tell. are there adjustments to the story? yes but other principles of what to lace accurate? now people love a chance to look at the case and understand this doesn't seem right that we in berlin have made efforts to discuss and be open about all the things that happened in nazi germany. everywhere you go there is a museum built to discuss it. as a sign of something that's going to be built and yet that same transparency hasn't been evident in how the museums and how the countries approached discussing these works of art. if the public that goes to these museums and elects these politicians now knows about this and all the politicians see the movies too now the game has changed. now everybody can participate in this discussion and now instead of having legislatures legislate these statues of limitations the

public can discuss their view and people around the world people of good will feel it's not okay to keep things just because there has been a passage of time we will see the laws change because it's just the right thing to do. >> the father will was given art back to take to switzerland and other neutral countries and he obviously kept some for himself. but what is fascinating is after the war he convince the allies that he was a victim of the nazis and not a nazi himself and he allowed subjects to get out selling their art and this is now his son who kept this 1200 pieces in a dusty room in munich with trash and everything around it. it's an incredible story. >> we have five people to ask questions and we have four minutes. please be my guest. >> we have discussed your pelot.

was a similar action taken to preserve art in asia? >> yes, there were a handful of monuments officers and of course the problem well there are british monuments through the u.k. we should say monuments officers that work in southeast asia but we are talking about maybe five or less and then about five or six i would say michael that work in japan. of course they can get there until after the war is over so it comes a very different kind of operation whereas the american british effort in western europe is about trying to preserve works of art and effective repairs in japan the whole effort has to be skipped as a result of the dropping of the two atomic bombs. >> yes maam. >> awad to raise the question of robins with