Library Plunder in Belgium by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg: Six ERR Seizure Lists of Priority Confiscations

DRAFT version Last revised 14 May 2019 Library Plunder in Belgium by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg: Six ERR Seizure Lists of Priority Confiscations Michel Vermote and Patricia Kennedy Grimsted PRELIMINARY UNEDITED WORKING COPY: FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY!! COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS ARE STILL WELCOME ABSTRACT Here we present six key original German NS lists covering a total of 150 ERR confiscations in Belgium, mainly private library materials (some containing considerable archives and art), with an accompanying chart combining the data. We initially review earlier assessments, before briefly describing the organization and operations of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in Belgium, its relationship with rival German agencies, and interplay with Rosenberg’s Möbel-Aktion under his Ministry for Occupied Eastern Territories (RMbO) for book and art receipts. Brief coverage extends to postwar restitution efforts, and newly available archival sources. Earlier government estimates suggest little more than 10% of the books seized in Belgium during occupation have been returned. The six seizure lists described at the end, and displayed in facsimile on this website, were prepared during occupation by the ERR, the most important agency of cultural plunder in Belgium. An accompanying Excel chart combines data from the six lists with names of names of the 150 ERR priority seizure victims through March 1943, with dates of seizure and shipment, materials seized, and related ERR documents available. Appendices detail specific issues and more sources. This combined presentation will be crucial to research, should identify specific victims and their losses of document help restitution claims for of books and archives still at large. 2 ASSESSING WARTIME CULTURAL SEIZURES IN BELGIUM During the Second World War German agencies looted cultural valuables on a massive scale in Belgium, similar to plunder in other occupied European countries, in what one renowned study entitles the Rape of Europa.1 The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), led by Adolf Hitler’s ideological spokesman Alfred Rosenberg, was the Nazi Party (NSDAP) agency organized specifically for plunder, focused on the systematic confiscation of private library and archival collections from designated “enemies of the Reich.” Rosenberg’s justification: the Nazi elite need to study and understand their enemies in order to overcome their ideologies. In Belgium, victims included Masons, Jews, and socialists – individuals and organizations, as well as prominent political leaders and Roman Catholic institutions linked to France, such as the exiled Jesuit Order. The original six working ERR seizure lists we now launch online name and provide data about some 150 ERR numbered priority confiscations. An accompanying Excel chart combines data from the six lists, noting contents, quantity, shipping dates and related references to additional documentation. May these 150 ERR Belgian seizures serve as blatant examples of premeditated Nazi brutality to the Belgian cultural legacy and a tribute to those private individuals and organizations named. While our focus here is on library materials, often including archives and personal papers, the posted ERR seizure lists also reveal works of art seized from the same homes. The full extent of Belgian private art losses during the war, to which these lists may contribute additional data, is still inadequately researched. While the few looted private collections seized that went to the Jeu de Paume in Paris are well known, no adequate compendium of Belgian losses is available, and database efforts started in Belgium were never completed. In 1948, the main Belgian government agency handling postwar retrieval and restitution, the Office for Economic Recovery (DER/ORE), issued a repertory of works of art seized during the war (only recently launched on the Internet). Listing only 285 paintings, 2 sculptures, 4 tapestries, and 2 pieces of antique furniture, it did not begin to cover the extensive private losses.2 When in the early 1990s the Belgian government initiated a more extensive compendium of still lost works of art, an intended third volume covering private collections never appeared.3 More details regarding art from private collections and dealers were provided by Jacques Lust in the Buysse Commission 2001 report, still the most extensive survey to date, as will be discussed below.4 1 Lynn Nicholas, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Cultural Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York: Knoff, 1994). 2 Office de Récupération économique, Répertoire d’oeuvres d’art dont la Belgique a été spoliée durant la guerre 1939–1945 (Brussels: ORE, 1948) ; initially issued for limited circulation, but recently available online at: https://issuu.com/hesiod/docs/r_pertoire_d_oeuvres_d_art_dont_la_belgique_a__t__. Retrieval and restitution was handled under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (Ministère des Affaires économiques, MAE), by the Office de Récupération économique (ORE) / Ministerie Economische Zaken (MEZ), Dienst Economische Recuperatie (DER). 3 Only coverage of works of art in the public domain or state collections appeared: The Missing Art Works of Belgium, 2 vols. (Brussels: Office Belge de l’Economie et de l’agriculture, [20 June 1994]), vol. 1: Public Domain Art Works; vol. 2: Belgian State. An original archival copy is held in the in the Archives générales du Royaume (AGR2) / Algemeen Rijksarchief (ARA2) – Dépôt Joseph Cuvelier (hereafter ARA2), within the records of the ORE/DER in the fond of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MAE/MEZ), Inventory 21, nos 407 and 408, but files regarding the intended coverage of private collections are not available. 4 [Jacques Lust], “Les biens culturels et les oeuvres d’art,” in the Buysse Commission Report, especially pp. 132–38. 2 3 For Belgian archives plundered but not returned, it was not until the early 1990s that serious research and publications started, when specialists first learned about the many twice- seized Belgian archives, finally revealed in Moscow. Long-hidden since Soviet postwar capture in the top-secret Central State Special Archive of the USSR (TsGOA SSSR), they were opened to the public in 1992.5 Containing as they did major groups of military and other high-level government records, along with trade-union records, to say nothing of important Jewish and Masonic files and personal papers of key political leaders and newspaper editors, it became a high-level state priority to bring them home.6 Following ten years of costly, time-consuming negotiations, in 2002, some 40 fonds of Belgian provenance returned from Moscow. Twelve out of the 32 non-governmental Belgian fonds (several comprising miscellaneous collections) returned to Belgium contained files belonging to individuals and organizations named on the six ERR seizure lists, but others were seized by other Nazi agencies. For example, two intermixed collections of Masonic files (totaling 2,300 files) from many of the lodges the ERR plundered, as did several collections of Jewish provenance; some from political or miscellaneous sources were probably also seized by the ERR.7 Five years later the Belgian chapter in the volume, Returned from Russia, surveyed German wartime archival seizures, the search for missing archives during their interim migration, with a detailed list of the fonds returned and official legal transfer documents.8 Wartime library losses have never generated as much government or public interest, while fewer details have been available about the identity and fate of the extensive library seizures from individual Belgian citizens and important non-governmental organizations. A fourth volume in the 1994 ORE/DER art series mentioned above, planned to cover looted libraries, was never issued, and only meagre sources gathered remain in ORE/DER records today.9 Continuing revelations with the collapse of the Soviet Union aroused public interest in cultural valuables still missing or displaced from the Second World War, but identification in 5 Wouter Steenhaut, Dirk Martin, José Gotovitch and Michel Vermote, “Mission to Moscow. Belgische socialistische archieven in Rusland,” in Amsab-Tijdingen, vol. 11, no. 16 (1992), extra n°, pp. 1–24. The former Central State Special (Osobyi) Archive (TsGOA SSSR) in Moscow, was the top-secret repository in Moscow where the Soviet captured records were centralized. From 1992–1999 it was rebaptized as TsKhIDK (Center for Preservation of Historico-Documentary Collections); in March 1999, its holdings became part of the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA). 6 See the pamphlet with an annotated list of 35 fonds of Belgian provenance, prepared in cooperation with Belgian archivists, issued by the Russian Archival Administration (Rosarkhiv): Mukhamedjanov M. (ed.), Fondy bel’giiskogo proiskhozhdeniia: Annotirovannyi ukazatel’ (Moscow: Rosarkhiv, 1995); and the expanded Dutch version: Michel Vermote et al. (comp. and eds). Fondsen van Belgische herkomst: verklarende index (Ghent, 1997). 7 See chart of the archives returned, compiled by Michel Vermote, “Belgian Archival Fonds Returned from Russia (2002),” in Returned from Russia, pp. 231–39. 8 See the Belgian chapter by Jacques Lust and Michel Vermote, “Papieren Bitte! The Confiscation and Restitution of Belgian Archives and Libraries (1940–2003)”, in Returned from Russia: Nazi Archival Plunder in Western Europe and Recent Restitution Issues, ed. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, F.J. Hoogewoud, and Eric Ketelaar

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