Accidental Blogger

(Portraits of Gypsies by Dina Gottliebova displayed at the Memorial Museum in Auschwitz-Birkenau)

Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, like all artists, wants to have a say in determining where her art work should hang. But she has been told that it is not up to her to make that decision because the art in question is the product of slave labor and as such, she has no proprietorial claim.

Seven of Babbitt's paintings are part of the Holocaust Memorial-Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau and she would like them back. Babbitt painted those pictures to save her life – literally. A concentration camp prisoner during WWII in Auschwitz, Babbitt (then Gottliebova) was a trained artist and her artistic skills were discovered when she painted a mural for the children in the camp. Subsequently, she was commissioned to paint portraits of Gypsy prisoners by Joseph Mengele, the Nazi doctor who conducted notorious racial experiments on Jewish and Gypsy prisoners. Mengele wanted color portraits of the Gypsy subjects for his study because they captured "the skin tone" better than his photographs. Babbitt agreed and in return for the favor was able to save her own and her mother's life. To her amazement, the artist, now living in Northern California, learnt in 1973 that some of those portraits had survived and were part of the the museum in Auschwitz. She wanted her art back saying that as the artist, she has the right to decide where the paintings should be displayed and she did not want them in Auschwitz.  The officials at the Auschwitz Memorial have declined to return Babbitt's works, claiming that the paintings belong in the museum as documents of history and Babbitt cannot claim ownership because she made the paintings as part of prison labor and not as a voluntary artistic endeavor.

"FELTON, CALIF. — The little wooden house surrounded by redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains is more than 6,000 miles and 60 years away from the horrors of Auschwitz. But on an easel in the sunny living room is a small portrait that Dina Gottliebova Babbitt recently painted of a fellow prisoner in that Nazi death camp. The picture is a modified copy of one she was forced to paint in 1944 as part of Josef Mengele's murderous theorizing about racial differences. Mengele had plucked Babbitt, a Czech Jew, from a group headed to the gas chambers and ordered the artist to produce portraits of doomed Gypsies that would capture skin tone better than his photographs did.

"I painted what I saw, very definitely," recalls Babbitt, now 83 and a retired Hollywood animator. "And what I saw was despair and sadness."

In 1973, Babbitt was stunned to learn that seven of those nine watercolors had survived and were in the museum at the former concentration camp in Poland. Since then, she has been trying to retrieve them — a quest that raises painful questions about ownership of the products of slave labor as well as the artworks' role in documenting Holocaust history.

Babbitt's supporters say she has moral and legal rights to the art. But Auschwitz museum officials disagree, and leaders in the American Jewish community describe the issues as more complex than in many instances of art looted by Nazis.

For Babbitt and her mother, the art truly was a lifesaver. The work afforded them extra bread amid starvation and time to keep death at bay. She wants the paintings now, not to sell, she says, but to briefly hold and then lend to a museum of her choice.

"I wouldn't be alive if it hadn't been for those paintings, and my kids wouldn't be here. And they know that," said Babbitt, who has two daughters and three grandchildren. "This is something that belongs to our family more than anything else I can possibly think of."

The officials at Museum-Memorial at Auschwitz-Birkenau hold a different view on the matter of the ownership of the portraits. Auschwitz, they claim, is not a garden variety art museum. It is the site most closely associated with Nazi atrocities in the minds of most people.  As such, it is the vital   archive that bears witness to a crucial piece of human history that must be preserved scrupulously. The following statement from the museum explains why the paintings should remain in Auschwitz.  According to this view, much of the extensive body of documents and artifacts (including the gate leading to the camp), currently preserved there are in one way or the other, products of prison slave labor employed by the Nazis. Returning them to those who produced them, would result in the dismantling of the museum.

"In the light of law, the rightful owner of the seven Gypsy portraits is the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. In what regards the author property rights, they belong to Ms. Gottliebova. The Museum being the rightful owner, but without the property rights, is allowed to use them within the limits of permissible public use of protected artifacts, determined in regulation regarding author rights and relative rights.

The Museum fully understands the emotional attitude of Ms. Gottliebova to the works made in the past in conditions which undoubtedly influenced her life. However, realizing its statutory tasks the Museum is profoundly convinced that the water-colors should remain in Oświęcim. From the moment of its establishment, this institution has been – with great effort – collecting and preserving most various post-camp remains, doing everything for them to survive and certify about the crimes committed by the Nazis in the place they are most closely connected with. Both death certificates, prisoner cards, etc., produced in large number by scrupulous Nazi camp bureaucracy and works of art created in the camp, either made by prisoners on orders of the SS or illegally, are a unique document and piece of evidence, having the biggest meaning, significance and impact in the place of their creation.

Seven water-colors painted by Ms. Gottliebova is only a small fraction of the rich collections of the Museum. There are a few thousand artifacts – works of art – in the Museum’s Collections Department. About two thousand of them were made in the camp by the prisoners.

It should be also stressed that our institution is not just a "regular" museum. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is unique of its kind. Every square yard of it is covered with blood of the victims of the Nazis: Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Russians and other people murdered here. The main objective of this site is to make it available to hundreds of thousands of pilgrims as well as researchers, and to document as widely as possible the crimes committed here.

The latter activity obliges us morally to preserve all evidence dating back to the wartime and related with the Auschwitz concentration and death camp and to prevent this evidence from being dispersed in any way. Once again we want to stress: every single loss of even the smallest part of the documentation will be an irreparable loss and a shadow on the memory of Auschwitz Concentration Camp victims." 

My question:  Does Babbitt have the right of ownership to the artwork she had produced at Joseph  Mengele's behest or does it rightfully belong to the museum as part of Holocaust history?