Trophies of War Page 10

  “Look at it,” Veselovsky said, shaking his head as he surveyed the damage of the building in front of them. “It’s ruined. But … perhaps there is hope. Zharova, what do you think?”

  Zharova looked at the formless heap of twisted iron, charred wood and stone. While parts of the building were still standing, it was impossible that anything inside had survived—it was all gone.

  “It’s ruined,” she said. “But yes, perhaps there is hope.” Hope that you will fall in a hole and never come back out.

  “Yes! Just as I said! Hope!” he replied. “Let us look inside.”

  Zharova didn’t know what “inside” could possibly mean with a building flattened by bombs, but she followed Veselovsky onto the pile of rubble with the others close behind. After a few precarious steps on the loose stones and broken beams, they all stopped and went no further. Zharova looked beneath her feet at yet another smashed monument to European culture.

  The rubble she was standing on was all that was left of the famous Dresden Gallery, a museum that had been built more than a hundred years ago to display the collected works of the Electors of Saxony, including Raphael’s masterpiece, the Sistine Madonna. It was the Gallery, along with the Sistine Madonna, Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Man in a Hat with Pearls, Velázquez’s Old Man, Courbet’s The Stone Breakers and others, that she and her brigade had been sent to Dresden to find.

  They were the 37th Trophy Brigade, charged by the Extraordinary State Commission with finding every valuable artwork in German territory and sending it back to Moscow. Stalin himself had ordered the Commission to draw up a list of objects known to be in German museums or private collections, with the intent that the trophy brigades would collect them all as the Red Army swept across the Reich.

  What had begun as an attempt to seek restitution for the terrible damage Germany had done to the Soviet Union had turned into eye-for-an-eye vengeance. The Nazis had sought to eradicate the Slavic people and their culture from the earth, killing people by the millions and destroying the cultural objects that symbolized their heritage. Churches, palaces, synagogues, museums, libraries, municipal archives were all destroyed, once the ‘Aryan’ works had been looted by organizations such as the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. Now the Soviets were visiting retribution upon their enemies.

  Every artwork that was lost from a Soviet museum was to be replaced by one of equal value from Germany. The special brigades, made up of museum officials, art historians, artists and restorers, were sent to ensure the identification, seizure and transportation of these works, along with every other work that could be had, from whatever source. The Trophy Brigades didn’t stop with art. Every intact factory would have its equipment and raw materials stripped by similar specialized teams and sent on a train to Moscow. Libraries, archives, churches—nothing of material or cultural value would be left untouched.

  Now Veselovsky was faced with the prospect of reporting to Moscow that he didn’t know where the Dresden Gallery collection was. Zharova relished the brief look of panic that passed over his face.

  “I will go back to Neustadt!” he exclaimed and scrambled down off the pile. He ran off on his own, looking for someone who could drive him back to headquarters.

  The other three men from their brigade—Gubanov, Ukhtomsky, and Tokarev—shared a brief look and went off in different directions, none of them acknowledging Zharova. She sighed as they climbed back down to the street. Children.

  They were supposed to be working together, but each wanted to be the one who could report back to Moscow that he had been the one who ‘rescued’ the Dresden Gallery. Each of the men, anyway. Zharova couldn’t have cared less. As an artist, she wanted to see the works safe, but she found the politics of it all tiring and pointless. And so they each went their separate ways.

  Remembering her own time living in the basement of the Hermitage, Zharova walked around the edge of the Dresden Gallery’s ruins, looking at the base of the building and at the piles of rubble. The only sounds were the Red Army soldiers roaming the city, with the occasional thump of a grenade or rattling of a submachine gun. Just as in Leningrad and throughout her entire time at the front, there were no birds, except for a solitary vulture soaring high above. She walked slowly, careful not to make any noise, and scanned the rubble.

  There.

  A missing section of the museum wall opened up to a hole in the floor inside. Zharova was looking right into the basement of the Gallery, where several scared, dirty faces were staring back at her. They looked like they were hoping she would pass by, but when they saw that she was a woman and that she was alone, they seemed to relax. One of their number, a short stout man who was dressed for a day at the office, smiled and hailed Zharova.

  “Good afternoon, Fraulein!” he said as he clambered up and over the wreckage, one hand on his homburg hat. “Please allow me to introduce myself.”

  Zharova’s German was good enough to understand what he was saying, but not enough to ask all of the questions she wanted answered. She made no motion towards him and didn’t return his friendly greeting. Out of the basement, he stepped over some broken stones and lifted his hat.

  “My name is Hermann Voss. I am the director of the Dresden Gallery.” He waved his hat in a sweeping motion as if he was presenting the grandeur of the museum as it was.

  She understood his name and the word Kunstsammlungen—gallery.

  “Do you speak Russian?” she asked.

  He smiled and didn’t respond.

  “Parle français?”

  “Mais oui,” he replied.

  “What is your connection to this museum?” she asked in French.

  “I am the Director,” he replied in that language with a bow. “I am at your service.”

  “Where is the art?” she demanded. “Was it destroyed in the bombing?

  Voss adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses and affected an indignant look.

  “Certainly not!” he replied. “Every piece is safe. I personally supervised their careful packing and evacuation to a local quarry. They are in perfect condition!”

  “Where?”

  “Thirty or so kilometers from here in a village called Cotta, near Pirna. It is a sandstone quarry with many tunnels deep in the rock. The artworks are safely stored there. You have a special interest in art? In the museum?”

  “Yes,” Zharova replied. “I am part of a special unit sent to … protect art. To rescue it from danger or poor conditions.”

  “In that case, do you have transport? May I escort you there? Surely you are not operating alone?”

  “No. I have a battalion supporting me and we will need their assistance. You will come with me to our headquarters in Neustadt so we may collect them. Then we will see about your tunnels.”

  “Certainly! Please, lead the way!”

  Without a word, Zharova turned and headed back to find the truck that waited for her. The men, women and children sheltering in the basement of the museum watched her go, their hope of rescue or relief visibly fading as Voss ignored them and scurried after Zharova.

  She suppressed a smile at the thought of showing up at headquarters with the location of the Dresden Gallery artworks.

  Oh, how wonderful, she thought. The look on Veselovsky’s face will be far more glorious than actually finding the paintings, even if this sycophantic German is telling the truth.

  Neustadt, a section of Dresden, lay on the northern bank of the Elbe. Escaping much of the February bombing, it was an ideal site for Marshal Konev’s headquarters now that the Red Army had taken the city. With Voss trailing behind her, Zharova wandered the halls of the perfectly preserved building, searching for the battalion of men that supported the 37th Trophy Brigade. The men and vehicles assigned to their brigade gave them all the manpower and equipment they needed to carry out their mission. If the German was telling the truth.

  Given the importance of finding the Dresden Gallery, one additional unit was assigned by Stalin to assist them: SMERSH. This milita
ry counter-intelligence service—its name an acronym for ‘Death to Spies’—was part of the Special Sections of the dreaded NKVD, the Soviet state’s secret police. SMERSH officers roamed the front lines, looking for soldiers who committed the crimes of cowardice or disloyalty. They were either sent to the gulag or shot after being forced to dig their own graves. Now SMERSH had turned their attention to the work of the Trophy Brigades.

  Zharova always did her best to ignore SMERSH, but now they would be unavoidable. It would be more trouble to visit the quarry without them than to inform them of her discovery and deal with the consequences. But first, she had to find the men who would guard the artworks while the rest of the troops loaded them into trucks on their way to a Moscow-bound train.

  In a large room with tall windows overlooking the Elbe River, she found the trophy battalion lounging at a long wooden table, drinking. She was about to order them to accompany her when she saw Veselovsky sitting at the head of the table. He sat in the sunlight, laughing and downing his vodka ration.

  “The war is not over,” Veselovsky was saying. “We have defeated Hitler but not fascism. Fascism exists all over the world, especially in America. America is now the primary enemy. We have destroyed the base of fascism. Now we must destroy the base of capitalism: America!”

  The rest of the brigade agreed. They toasted Veselovsky and pledged to deny the Americans the use of art or treasures to finance imperialism and capitalism.

  Zharova stopped, and then decided to come back when Veselovsky was gone. Her momentary hesitation was enough for her nemesis to see her and the German clutching his hat.

  “Zharova!” he exclaimed, slamming his empty bottle down on the table. “Who have you brought to me?”

  Zharova was trapped. She had to tell him something, and there was no story that she could invent that would explain why she had a well-dressed German civilian in tow. She had only one choice: tell Veselovsky about Voss. The best that she could hope for was that the German was lying to save his own skin and that Veselovsky would rush off to the quarry expecting glory only to find nothing.

  She told him everything.

  Veselovsky teared up at the news and leaped out of his chair.

  “We must tell SMERSH! Comrades! To… what was the name of this place?”

  “Cotta,” Zharova replied, doing her best to hid her disgust.

  “To Cotta!”

  She found herself hoping that the priceless treasures of the Dresden Gallery were lost forever.

  12

  US National Archives

  College Park, Maryland

  “Okay … that’s bad,” Lyon said. “What you’re saying is that even if we find the records we’re looking for, it might all be moot because the Russians could have snatched up my mother’s painting in Germany.”

  Beth thought for a moment. “Well, the Trophy Brigades took everything they could find in German museums and private collections, some of which may have been art that the Nazis looted from someone else.”

  Lyon groaned and threw up his hands. “Forget it. I’m going home.”

  “Well, hold on a second,” she replied. “This is actually the project I’m working on now—researching the Trophy Brigades. The piece I’m writing is about the work being done to understand what was taken and where it all is now.”

  “And where is it?”

  “Some of it is hanging on the walls of Russian museums, some of it is stored in the basements of those museums, and some of it … no one knows.”

  “So … how does that help me?” Lyon asked. “Or are you trying to tell me to give up?”

  “I’m trying to tell you that if we strike out here, there’s still another place to look.” Beth patted him on the arm. “Don’t be such a baby.”

  Rushing to finish before the Archives closed for the day, they scanned the microfilm until they found the records of Goering’s collection.

  “Here we go,” Beth said. “Goering was captured on May 9th, 1945, the day after the Germans surrendered. He had a whole train full of art hidden in a tunnel in Berchtesgaden, the Nazi retreat in the Bavarian Alps. Here’s the list of what was on that train.”

  They read through the list that took up several pages of small print. Beth looked down at her written notes.

  “Remember we found the crate ‘G46’ in the Jeu de Paume shipping records? The one your mother’s painting was packed in?” She pointed to the screen. “Look… here are several crates noted with a ‘G’ prefix. G32 … G19 … G41 … do you see a G46 anywhere?”

  Lyon scanned the list. “No.”

  “Hmmm. I don’t either,” Beth said. “And there is no Manet listed among the works found on that train, or any of the other paintings that were supposed to be in that G46 crate. So where did they go?”

  “I don’t know,” Lyon said. “But I do know I’m tired of looking at microfilm and I’m hungry. Why don’t we pack it in for the day and go get some dinner?”

  Beth frowned and cocked her head.

  “Are you asking me on a date?”

  Lyon was stunned for a moment and didn’t know what to say.

  “I … uh … no, I was just thinking … ”

  Beth punched him in the arm again, hitting the same spot as before.

  “Relax. That was a joke,” she said, laughing.

  Lyon grimaced at the pain and the ‘joke.’ He hadn’t been thinking of dinner as a date, it just seemed logical to get something to eat. He watched Beth as she packed up her things, noticing the line of her hip as she reached to turn off the microfilm reader.

  Not that I would mind it being a date.

  Feeling self-conscious now, Lyon had selected the least romantic-looking restaurant he could find on his phone: a strip-mall Indian place just off the Beltway in Silver Spring. Sitting in a green vinyl booth by the window, they were the only customers. They didn’t serve liquor, so Lyon had to settle for a bottle of Kingfisher beer as they shared a basket of papadum. He quickly drained the bottle and ordered another.

  “Rough day?” Beth asked.

  “Just thirsty,” he replied. “So, how come I haven’t heard about this whole Russian art-looting operation before?”

  Beth dipped a piece of papadum in the hot chutney and popped it in her mouth.

  “You may recall that the Soviets were big on secrecy,” she said, munching on the cracker. “Not that the Nazis weren’t, but once the war was over, there was an enormous paper trail of what the Germans had done, and of course the Nuremberg trials. There’s not much we don’t know about them. The Russians, on the other hand, even after the fall of the Soviet Union, aren’t too keen on people poking around. In the mid-Nineties, when the Soviet archives were opening up, two Russians—an art historian and a museum curator—found that Russian museums still had thousands of artworks in secret depositories. The museum community and the Russian government were not happy with them. The Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Pushkin in Moscow eventually admitted this and put on special exhibitions of works the art world had thought were lost in the war—paintings by Corot, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec and many others. The Pushkin even had the nerve to name their exhibition ‘Twice Saved’—as if the Trophy Brigades were ‘saving’ art by stripping German collections and sending them to Moscow.”

  “Wasn’t there an uproar?” Lyon asked. “People have been trying to track down their family’s property since the war ended and the Russians may have had it all this time?”

  The waiter showed up and placed several covered plates on the table. Lyon finished his beer and waggled the empty bottle. The waiter nodded and took it.

  “Yes, I would say there’s been an uproar,” Beth replied, uncovering a dish of lamb vindaloo. “There were numerous lawsuits, conferences and articles about it in the first few years after the revelation. But then—either from old Cold War fault lines reappearing or Russian nationalism—there was a backlash. One Duma member said that these artworks were ‘the last fruits of victory, the only ones not yet lost.’ Anot
her said that ‘even symbolic restitution was like spitting on the graves of the war dead.’ It got ugly.”

  “Jesus, the war had been over for fifty years by that point.”

  Beth nodded. “To Americans, fifty years sounds like a long time, but Russians have long memories.”

  “I guess … ,” Lyon said. “But I bet none of them fought in the war—they were probably kids at the time or not even born yet! So, what’s happened since then?”

  “In 1997 the Russian Duma passed a law nationalizing all trophy art.”

  “You’re kidding,” Lyon said. “They just took it?”

  “Yes and no. They did compile an inventory of everything in their possession. They gave people eighteen months after that to file a claim. Unfortunately, the claims process was a joke. While the inventory was posted on line, for the longest time the list was only in Russian and wasn’t searchable. And, if by some miracle, you did find your family heirloom on that list, you basically had to pay them the full market replacement value to get it back. Otherwise, after the eighteen months were up, it was all nationalized.”

  The waiter brought another Kingfisher and Lyon took a pull from the green bottle.

  “That’s bullshit,” he said.

  “Indeed,” Beth replied, spooning some rice onto her plate. “As we lawyers like to say, it illustrates the difference between legal and legalistic. They gave it the appearance of a legal process, but the result was never in doubt.”

  “It sounds like this is a done deal,” Lyon said. “Does that mean we’re at a dead end? The Monuments Men trail seems to have petered out and if the Russians have my mother’s painting, it sounds like I’m screwed.”