Note: In this post, I discuss the two periods of Fascist Italy’s occupation of southeastern France during the Second World War. While not philanthropic towards Jews, Mussolini did not share Hitler’s views on the “Jewish problem,” possibly influenced by his Jewish mistress. Many French Jews flocked to the Italian-occupied part of France providing some enough time to survive until the area was liberated by the Allies in August 1944. Among the survivors were members of my family.
Over the years I’ve come across references that the southeastern part of France was occupied by the Italians during the Second World War. This is a topic that’s always fascinated me because it includes Nice along France’s Côte d’Azur, a city with close connections to both sides of my family. It’s been an enduring mystery how a few of my Jewish relatives survived there when the Nazi onslaught exterminated or scattered most of them elsewhere in Europe.
Nice is where my parents met, and where my mother lived with her mother following her parents’ divorce. Also, my father’s aunt Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck, and two of her three children lived permanently or temporarily in Nice during the war. (Figure 1) After leaving Germany in early 1938, Nice is where my father went trying unsuccessfully to obtain a permit to work in France as a dentist. Following my father’s two-and-a-half years of military service in the Royal Pioneer Corps after five years in the French Foreign Legion, he returned to Nice to resume his dental career. (Figure 2) Here is where he was arrested for practicing illegally as a “stateless” person before decamping to America, sadly never again to practice dentistry. Nice is where my parents would regularly vacation, and where my maternal grandmother lived and where I spent multiple summers as a child. It’s a place that holds bittersweet memories for me and my family.
Two of Hedwig’s children, Fédor and Heinz Löwenstein, have been the subject of multiple earlier posts. To remind readers, Fédor Löwenstein (1901-1946) was my father’s first cousin; he was the artist of the three paintings that were confiscated by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940 that I retrieved in September 2025 from the French Ministry of Culture after an eleven-year legal tussle. (see Post 189) Nice is where Fedor returned to from Paris and Mirmande after becoming sick with a then-undiagnosed disease. He died there at 45 years of age of Hodgkin lymphoma and was buried in the Cimetière de Caucade in Nice. And I’ve often written about Fédor’s younger brother, Heinz Löwenstein, because of his fascinating wartime escapades. The third sibling, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein, is the cousin with whom my father was closest to and advised my father to join the French Foreign Legion in 1938, following my father’s flight from Germany. After emigrating with her mother and siblings from the Free City of Danzig in what I estimate was the early 1930s, Hansi settled in Nice and lived there for the remainder of her life.
Because none of my Jewish relatives were deported from Nice during the war, I researched the history of the Italian occupation of France seeking an answer. Like many things that took place during the Second World War, the explanation is often rooted in historical events that took place before the war, sometimes many years before.
During the Second World War, southeastern France experienced two distinct periods of occupation by Fascist Italy. (Figure 3) The first occurred when Benito Mussolini invaded France on June 10, 1940. This incursion followed closely on the heels of the invasion of France by Italy’s Axis ally Germany on May 10, 1940, initiating the “Battle of France.” Using blietzkrieg tactics, German forces broke through Allied lines, captured Paris on June 14, 1940, and forced an armistice on France on June 22, 1940, effectively defeating them in just over six weeks.
Italy’s June 1940 invasion had limited success even though their occupational army of 700,000 troops significantly outnumbered the French. The Italians faced numerous challenges, including inadequately light tanks, a lack of artillery and motor transport, and ill-preparedness for the cold Alpine climate. The French had established substantial fortifications along the Alpine Line, referred to as the “Little Maginot.” Nonetheless, following France’s rout at the hands of the Germans and their surrender, the French were forced to sign the Franco-Italian Armistice on June 24, 1940, two days after the cessation of hostilities, agreeing upon an Italian zone of occupation.
As a result of this armistice with the Italians, the French relinquished 831 square kilometers (321 square miles) in southeastern France. (Figures 3-4) This Italian-controlled zone, which included between 28,000 and 30,000 French citizens, was officially annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. The largest town contained within the initial Italian zone of occupation was Menton. The main cities inside the larger “demilitarized zone” of 50km (31 miles) from the border with the Italian Alpine Wall were Nice and Grenoble, although, unlike Menton, neither was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy though that was the plan had the Axis powers won the Second World War.
The second Italian occupation of southeastern France took place in November 1942 in conjunction with Case Anton, the German occupation of Vichy France. To remind readers, Vichy France was the so-called puppet and collaborationist government in southern France in the “zone libre” (free zone) that had between created by the June 1940 armistice between Germany and France.
Readers may wonder, as I did, what suddenly precipitated the German occupation of Vichy France in November 1942. Case Anton was primarily triggered by the Allied invasion of North Africa during Operation Torch on November 8, 1942. Hitler ordered the occupation of the “zone libre” to prevent an Allied landing in southern France and to secure Mediterranean coastal defenses. Basically, the successful Allied landings in French North Africa convinced Hitler that the Vichy regime could no longer protect its territory, forcing Germany to take direct control of the “zone libre.” A critical part of German motivation to occupy Vichy was also to seize the French Navy fleet anchored in Toulon. To prevent this, the French soldiers successfully scuttled most of their ships on November 27, 1942, rendering them useless to the Axis powers.
The November 1942 German occupation of Vichy France resulted in an expansion of Italy’s occupation zone in southeastern France. (see Figure 4) Italian forces took control of Toulon and all of Provence up to the river Rhone; the island of Corsica was claimed by the so-called Italian irredentists (more on this below). Nice and Corsica were to be annexed to Italy in accordance with the aspirations of these Italian irredentists, an action that never took place because of the Italian armistice in September 1943, following Italy’s defeat at the hands of the Allied forces.
Let me briefly explain Italian irredentism. The term originated from Italia irredenta (“unredeemed Italy”), referring to lands with Italian populations left outside the Kingdom of Italy following its unification between 1860 and 1870. Irredentism was the movement to annex territory considered culturally or historically Italian, such as Istria and Dalmatia. Istria is the largest peninsula in the northern Adriatic Sea, the majority of which now belongs to Croatia. (Figure 5) It also includes the historic region of Dalmatia, also primarily within modern-day Croatia, with a small portion of Montenegro, located on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. Significantly, for the purposes of this post and its impact on Jewish people during the Second World War, Italia irredenta included Nice. Italian irredentism in Nice was the political movement supporting the annexation of the County of Nice to the Kingdom of Italy.
Readers are likely wondering what gave rise to Italian irredentism and the aspirations of their supporters that they were entitled to annex Nice. As I alluded to above, some events that took place during the Second World War have their roots earlier in history. During the Italian unification, in 1860, the House of Savoy, a noble and royal dynasty between France and Italy, allowed the Second French Empire, the government of France from 1852 to 1870, to annex Nice from the Kingdom of Sardinia in exchange for French support of its quest to unify Italy. As a result, the Nicois were excluded from the Italian unification movement, and the region has since become primarily French-speaking.
Discontent over annexation to France led to the emigration of a large part of the Italophile population; more than 10,000 people, a quarter of the population in Nice, voluntarily left for Italy. This emigration of Nicard Italians to Italy took the name of the “Nicard exodus.” Many Italians from Nizza moved to towns in Liguria, a crescent-shaped region in nearby northwestern Italy, known as the Italian Riviera. This gave rise to a local branch of the movement of Italian irredentists which considered the reacquisition of Nice to be one of their nationalist goals.
In support of the Italian irredentists, Benito Mussolini considered the annexation of Nice to be one of his main targets. Following the armistice between Italy and France in June 1940, the County of Nice was occupied by the Italian army and the newspaper Il Nizzardo (“The Nicard”) was restored there. It was directed by Ezio Garibaldi, the grandson of Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882). For those unfamiliar with the elder Garibaldi, he was a charismatic Italian general, patriot, and revolutionary, who played a crucial role in unifying Italy. Born in Nice, he was vehemently opposed to the cession of his hometown to France.
Having strayed some to explain the geopolitical basis for Italy’s historic connection to Nice, let me share one intriguing thing I learned while researching the extent of Italian occupation of southeastern France following German’s occupation of the “zone libre.” This is personally intriguing because I’ve been a philatelist, a stamp collector, much of my life. As I noted above, following Case Anton Italian forces took control of Toulon and all of Provence up to the Rhône River as well as the island of Corsica. I quote from an entry on Wikipedia on the “Italian Occupation of France”:
“The area of southeast France actually occupied by the Italians has been disputed. A study of the postal history of the region has cast new light on the part of France controlled by the Italians and Germans (Trapnell, 2014). By studying mail that had been censored by the occupying power, this study showed that the Italians occupied the eastern part up to a ‘line’ joining Toulon-Gap-Grenoble-Chambery-Annecy-Geneva. Places occupied by the Italians west of this were few or transitory.”
Thus, the line connecting these cities marks the boundary that separated the Italian-occupied eastern zone from the German-occupied western area. The line roughly follows a north-south axis through the French Alps and Provence, extending from the Italian border westward to the Rhône Valley corridor. Figure 6 (Figure) indicates the Italian-occupied part of France between November 1942 and September 1943 extended all the way to the Rhone River, although philatelic evidence suggests otherwise, namely, that the line was further to the east. (see the red line on Figure 6)
So much for the background. Let me move now to the question of how the Italian occupation of southeastern France affected Jews.
The Italian occupation government was far less severe than that of Vichy France. After France’s fall in June 1940, Nice was in the “demilitarized zone” of France which as mentioned above extended 50km from the Italian Alpine Wall. It provided a safe haven for Jewish refugees from Vichy’s anti-Jewish laws. Also, as mentioned, after the Allies invaded North Africa in 1942, the Germans invaded the “zone libre” of southern France in November 1942. This caused many thousands of Jews to seek refuge in the Italian-occupied zone of France between November 1942 and September 1943, as Italian authorities refused to deport them and often shielded them from Nazi. Exact numbers vary but it is estimated that nearly 80 percent of the remaining 300,000 French Jews took refuge in the Italian-occupied zone, saving many thousands from deportation.
Though Mussolini was far from altruistic, he refrained from collaborating with Vichy and refused to persecute Jews or enforce yellow star badges. Mussolini did not share Hitler’s views on the “Jewish problem,” possibly influenced by his Jewish mistress, Margherita Sarfatti.
Apparently, an Italian Jewish banker named Angelo Donati also played a vital role in convincing Italian civil and military authorities to protect Jews from French persecution in Nice. Curious about this, I happened upon a 2014 Bachelor’s Degree Thesis written by a Ms. Maria Teresa Nisticò from LUISS Guido Carli, a private university in Rome, explaining Angelo Donati’s role.
Quoting: “Jewish are coming to Nice from everywhere: they know they have different perspective (sic) over there. In particular they have an important man, the Italian banker Angelo Donati, that devoted its (sic) life to realize the objective of saving all the Jewish that were living in Nice. He organized a committee that welcomed the Jewish arriving in Nice and helped them when Vichy officials were trying to arrest them. The main activity of such a committee was to create fake documents for the persecuted; documents where at least the word Jewish was absent. Donati was a (sic) honoured man: he played a decisive role in connecting the French and the Italian army during the First World War and he obtained the ‘Legion d’Honneur’ in France. Being smart, full of energy, without a Jewish surname and prestigious, neither Vichy nor Berlin were aware of its (sic) activity.”
Once again, this speaks to the strength of individual courage and ingenuity in times of unspeakable horror.
In any case, thanks to the fearlessness of people such as Angelo Donati, in January 1943, the Italians refused to cooperate with the Nazis in rounding up Jews in their occupied territory and even prevented German deportations from their zone in March. Although the Italians did not cooperate in deportations, they did intern some Jews in camps to keep them under surveillance; this had the effect of keeping many safe at least until the Italian surrender to the Allies in September 1943. This led the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop complaining to Mussolini about Italian military circles’ insufficient understanding of the “Jewish question.”
However, shortly after Italy signed the Armistice of Cassibile with the Allies on September 3, 1943, Nazi forces seized control of the Italian zone. The SS official responsible for Jewish affairs, Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s top aide, established his headquarters at the Hotel Excelsior several days later. This marked the start of a frightful crackdown on the Jewish population. SS officers systematically patrolled the city, arresting anyone who appeared Jewish, including those in mixed marriages, of certain nationalities, children, elderly, and invalid individuals. These individuals were interrogated at the Excelsior Hotel and subsequently deported to death camps from a nearby train station. The plaque today posted outside the hotel reads as follows:
“During the German occupation of Nice from September 1943 to August 1944, more than 3,000 Jews including 264 children were arrested in the Alpes-Maritimes, Basses-Alpes and the principality of Monaco and deported by the Gestapo in application of Nazi anti-Semitic ideology.
Before being transferred by rail to the Drancy camp near Paris from where they were sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp, the victims had been interned in the Excelsior hotel, which became an annex to the Drancy camp and was requisitioned by the Germans because of its proximity to Nice station.”
As a related side note, Alois Brunner, who it is estimated orchestrated the deportation of 23,500 Jews from France to death camps, remained one of the top Nazis who evaded capture after the war. He lived freely and reportedly passed away in Damascus around 2010.
So much for the lengthy discussion on the geopolitical situation in southeastern France during the periods of Italian occupation of the area during the Second World War.
Nice was liberated from Nazi occupation on August 28, 1944, meaning that from roughly September 3, 1943, signing date of the “Armistice of Cassibile,” onwards until almost the end of August 1944, Nice and other previously Italian-occupied parts of France were controlled by the Nazis. How my Jewish relatives survived in Nice under Nazi rule for almost a year remains an enduring mystery.
Let me briefly talk about my father’s beloved sister, Suzanne Müller, née Bruck (1904-1942), who did not survive the Holocaust. She and her husband, Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945), were caught up in the expulsion of non-Italian Jews from Italy in September-October 1938. My aunt’s husband, 33 years older than her had two children from his first marriage. His married daughter, roughly the same age as my aunt, had a brother-in-law who owned a fruit farm in a small town in Fayence, France in the Var Department. When my aunt and uncle left Fiesole, Italy in 1938, they immigrated there. My aunt and the owner of fruit farm were arrested by the Vichy French on August 24, 1942, and murdered in Auschwitz. While I’m always hesitant to engage in “what ifs,” I wonder whether they might have survived had they relocated to Nice in the Italian-occupied part of France, roughly 42 miles east? (Figure 7)
One final thing before I conclude this post. My wife and I just returned from Paris where the three surviving artworks painted by Fedor Loewenstein, my father’s first cousin, confiscated by the Nazis in December 1940, that are now in my possession are on display at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme (MAHJ) to whom I’ve loaned them. In connection with interpretive materials developed for this exhibit, I learned about the so-called Vel’ d’Hiv roundup. This was a mass arrest of more than 13,000 Jews that took place in Paris on 16-17 July 1942, by the Vichy French police at the behest of the German occupational authorities. This was roughly a month before my aunt Suzanne was arrested in the “zone libre” of France also by the Vichy French. While I can pretend to understand how the Vichy French would collaborate in the area they had administrative control over, I was flummoxed to learn they would also assist the Nazis in areas they did not administratively control.
This speaks to the true extent of French collaboration with the Nazis in the extermination of Jewish people during the Second World War. On a more personal level, it speaks to the complex relationship my family has with France, a legacy that transcends the tragedy that befell my own aunt. In a few years after I’m done loaning the three Fédor Löwenstein paintings now in my possession to various French museums, I will be forced to confront this dark history in deciding what to do with the artworks, whether to donate them to a French museum or bring them to the United States where Fédor wanted them to come in 1940.
REFERENCES
Byron, H. (2024, January 19). The French Riviera under Italian Rule During WW2. Heroine Journey Fiction.
Nistico, M. T. (2013/2014). Beyond GDP: exploring models and indicators of well-being. [Bachelor’s Degree Thesis, LUISS Guido Carli]. Bachelor’s Degree Program>Bachelor’s Degree Program in Political Science.
Note: Following the restitution of Fédor Löwenstein’s three surviving Nazi-confiscated paintings to me, the Centre Pompidou’s Musee National d’Art Moderne (MNAM) sent me a dossier with documents about their history. In this post, I highlight some of the findings about the paintings’ dramatic and involved past and explain how an archivist and curator discovered they were looted art.
Inasmuch as great art should ever belong to a single individual, the three paintings confiscated by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux on December 5, 1940, from my father’s first cousin Fédor Löwenstein that survived their destructive onslaught are now mine. In Post 189, I discussed the Restitution Ceremony that took place at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on September 16, 2025, where the formal turnover of the paintings took place, an event eleven years in the making. (Figure 1)
Following the handover, Dr. Camille Morando, the person at the Centre Pompidou responsible for the documentation of the museum’s collections, sent me a digital file with documents detailing the history of the three paintings. Being a nerd for this type of information, I spent some time reviewing and making sense of it. Most of it is written in French, a language I’m reasonably fluent in. I thought I would share with readers insights and findings from the portfolio.
First, let me review some of what is known about Fédor Löwenstein. (Figure 2) Readers are referred to earlier posts for more detail. Though born in 1901 in Munich, Germany, he is typically referred as a Czechoslovakian artist because his father’s family hailed from there and he held Czechoslovak nationality. Since his two younger siblings were born in Danzig, Germany (today: Gdańsk, Poland), respectively, in 1902 and 1905, Fédor likely never lived in Czechoslovakia. Regardless, there is no question he felt an affinity for his father’s homeland.
The Munich Agreement of 1938, a pact between Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy, that allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland, a German-speaking border region of Czechoslovakia, was intended to prevent a war. It failed. Following the pact, Fédor painted “La Chute,” The Fall (Figure 3), in the style of Picasso’s Guernica. This iconic work reflected his anguish at the betrayal of Czechoslovakia.
Fédor studied at “L’ecole des arts decoratif de Berlin” (School of Decorative Arts in Berlin) then at “l’Academie des Beaux-Arts de Dresde” (Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden). In 1923 he moved to France where he spent the remainder of his life. Fédor Löwenstein was one of many Czechoslovak artists who lived and worked in Paris during what was known as the First Czechoslovak Republic that existed from 1918 to 1938.
Following his arrival in Paris, Fédor started exhibiting at the Autumn Salon in the mid-1920s, first under the name of Fédor Lovest, of Czech nationality, then later as Fédor Loevenstein of Czechoslovakia. He mostly exhibited still lifes, though in 1927 and 1933, he added paintings of nudes.
The fact that Fédor painted nudes is personally intriguing. Let me explain. Between the 1950s and 1980s, my parents would regularly visit Nice, France, where Fédor Löwenstein died in 1946, but where Fédor’s younger sister, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein, lived until her death in 1986. (Figure 4) During one of those visits, Hansi gave my father a pastel of a nude that to this day hangs in my mother’s bedroom. The work is framed so the signature is concealed, but it is logical to consider it might have been drawn by Fédor. One day, I intend to find out.
With his closest friends among the Czechoslovak artists, he regularly displayed his paintings between 1936-1938 with this group. His French friends included Robert and Sonia Delaunay, as well as students from the circle of his mentor André Lhote. Lhote ran a summer art academy in the medieval hilltop village of Mirmande in the Drôme department of southeastern France, where Fedor spent time in 1935 and 1938, then again later as discussed below.
The Nazis captured France in about six weeks (10 May- 25 June 1940) during the Battle of France, starting with the invasion on May 10, 1940, and culminating with the fall of Paris on June 14. This was followed by the signing of an armistice on June 22, 1940, which effectively divided and occupied the country. This resulted in the establishment in the south of the so-called “Free Zone,” the collaborationist Vichy French government led by Marshal Philippe Petain.
Shortly before the occupation of Paris, on the advice of Marcelle Rivier, one of Lhote’s students since 1928 and later Fédor’s lover (Figure 5), he relocated to Mirmande in the Free Zone. However, before leaving, Fédor made a final attempt to ship twenty-five of his canvases by boat from the Port of Bordeaux. They were destined for an exhibition at the Nierendorf Gallery in New York. They never made it there as I’ll explain.
Fédor’s works are characterized as a blend of Cubism and abstract art. A 2014 catalog accompanying an exhibition in Bordeaux of three of his surviving works ponders the question whether the ongoing war was responsible for the evolution of Fédor’s painting style or whether the war accelerated a development already in process. Regardless, two of Löwenstein’s supporters from the Paris art scene, Robert Delaunay and André Lhote, are quoted in “Ce Soir” in 1937 characterizing him as “one of the most inspiring abstract painters.” (Pravdova 2016: p. 60, footnote 6)
In Mirmande Fédor continued working in difficult conditions. Then, on November 11, 1942, German troops occupied Vichy France in Operation Case Anton. No longer safe in Mirmande, in early 1943, disguised as a peasant woman and with the help of Marcelle Rivier and other members of the French Resistance, he was taken to Notre-Dame d’Aiguebelle Abbey, a Trappist monastery located 50km south of Mirmande. Concealed Jews were put to work there on various maintenance tasks related to upkeep of the monastery. In Löwenstein’s case, he painted tiles, a task for which he had no enthusiasm and was ill-suited. He eventually escaped from a work party he’d been assigned to and returned to Mirmande in Spring 1943, obviously feeling it was safe again.
By Fall 1943, Fédor was sick with an unknown ailment. He secretly traveled to Paris to consult a renowned hematologist at the Curie Institute using the pseudonym “Lauriston.” His condition remained undiagnosed and he continued to deteriorate. He seemed largely unconcerned with being arrested while in Paris because of his fluency in French and the fact that he was discrete about his Jewish background. In truth, he appears to have traveled to Paris several times during the Nazi occupation.
An article included in the dossier given to me by Dr. Morando is the catalog mentioned above that was written for an exposition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux (Figure 6) in 2014 in which Löwenstein’s three martyred works were featured. It includes an intriguing footnote (number 24) suggesting Fédor used the pseudonym “Lauriston” as a cynical poke at the Gestapo since they had their Paris headquarters at “93 de la rue Lauriston.”
Family pictures I obtained in 2014 from the archives of the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, located outside Berlin, where the personal papers of two of Fédor’s aunts are archived, were taken in Nice. Given his declining health, it is clear he’d decided to spend his final days with his family there. The pictures were taken after the war ended because his youngest brother Heinz, who spent the entire war imprisoned or escaping from German stalags and was liberated sometime between March and May 1945, appears alongside Fédor in the postwar images. (Figures 7-8) Regular followers will recall the multiple posts I’ve written about Fédor’s brother Heinz. (Post 137; Post 137, Postscript; Post 163; Post 163, Postscript; Post 181; Post 194)
Fédor died in Nice on August 4, 1946, of Hodgkin lymphoma and was buried in the Cimetière Caucade. His mother passed away in 1949 and was entombed alongside her son. While their graves were eventually “evacuated” after the family stopped making payments required to keep them interred, their respective headstones survive as reminders of their existence. (Figure 9)
Included in the dossier that Dr. Morando sent me is the first page of a letter that was written to Mme. Sonia Delaunay on August 21, 1946, following Fedor’s death. Recall the Delaunays were friends and supporters of his from his days in Paris. Written by someone named “Ullmann,” the person told Mme. Delaunay that Fédor had passed away and wrote that “Je perds un ami et le monde un artiste dont la valeur sera peut-etre un jour reconnue.” Translated, “I lose a friend and the world an artist whose importance may one day be recognized.” This day has finally arrived.
With the above as background, having woven in historical events with findings from the file sent by Dr. Morando, let me briefly chronicle the paintings’ journey as documented in the dossier.
The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the “Special Task Force” headed by Adolf Hitler’s leading ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, was one of the main Nazi agencies engaged in the plunder of cultural valuables in Nazi-occupied countries during the Second World War. A particularly notorious operation by the ERR was the seizure of art from French Jewish and a number of Belgian collections from 1940 to 1944. The plunder was brought to the Jeu de Paume building in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris for processing by the ERR’s “Special Staff for Pictorial Art,” the so-called the Sonderstab Bildende Kunst.
The twenty-five pieces of art Fédor Löwenstein tried to ship to New York on the eve of Germany’s capture of Paris are recorded as having been seized by the ERR at Hanger H at the Port of Bordeaux on December 5, 1940. Fedor had a premonition they would never arrive, a concern he expressed in writing to his girlfriend Marcelle Rivier. Following their seizure Fédor’s artworks were sent to the Jeu de Paume. (Figure 10)
At the Jeu de Paume, the paintings were relegated to the so-called “salle des martyrs,” a space where works rejected by Nazi esthetics of the time, “degenerate art” as they were referred to, were stored pending destruction. The fact that this fate awaited the three paintings I recovered in September 2025 is evidenced by the large red crosses chalked across their surfaces. They were slated to be “vernichtet,” destroyed. And yet, by some miracle, three of Löwenstein’s paintings confiscated in 1940 survived.
The documentation on the three Löwenstein paintings suggests that after being shuttled back and forth between the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume during the Nazi era, they wound up at the Louvre where they languished for many years. The many moves between the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume occurred for various reasons including the obsession by the Nazis to remove or destroy the degenerate art before a planned visit to the Jeu de Paume by Nazi dignitaries. It is well known that the space of the Jeu de Paume was rehung to highlight artworks for high-ranking Nazis who would regularly visit to “shop.” Hermann Göring, for example, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, is known to have visited the Jeu de Paume twenty times between November 1940 and November 1942 to select paintings for his personal collection. (Figure 11)
Some paintings considered to be degenerate were not destroyed because they could be traded to dealers or collectors for works more in line with the Nazi aesthetic. As Prévet & Thierry note, “These works, whose style was disapproved of by Nazi aesthetics, were often preserved only because of their market value and the possibilities they offered for exchange with older works that conformed more closely to official aesthetics.” (2012:34)
In any case, this is likely how many works of unknown provenance wound up in the Louvre.
The status of Löwenstein’s paintings was not “legally” resolved until 1973. Through administrative machinations, they were officially added to the modern art collections of the National Museum of Modern Art (Musee National d’Art Moderne) as an “anonymous donation.” Shortly before the museum’s relocation in 1977, the paintings were moved to the reserves of the Centre Pompidou where my wife and I first saw them in 2024. (Figure 12)
The identification of the three paintings, now mine, Les Arbres, Composition, and Les Peupliers, as looted art did not take place until December 2010. This was thanks to the work of archivists and curators, namely, Alain Prévet, head of the Archives of the National Museums, and Thierry Bajou, chief curator of artifacts of the French Museums. It is worth briefly relating how these two men were able to recognize Löwenstein’s paintings as looted art.
As Didier Schulmann, former Director of the Kandinsky Library at the Centre Pompidou (Figure 13), wrote in 2012, it was a case of the “purloined letter syndrome,” based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name, where the answer was right in front of people. (Schulmann 2012: 29).
Preserved in the Archives of the National Museum are thirteen negatives showing views of the rooms at the Jeu de Paume taken during the Nazi occupation exhibiting numerous pieces of art seized by the ERR; these include two negatives specifically showing the “salle des martyrs” (Figures 14-15) where the works deemed degenerate were hung. Using these negatives, Prévet & Bajou describe the process they followed:
“This work initially involved a detailed digitization of the negatives, work by work. Each operation was accompanied by specific brightness adjustments to optimize the legibility of each artwork. Next, we performed an anamorphosis (Figure 16) to correct the distortions related to perspective. From this stage, it was then possible to identify a number of works and confirm attributions suggested elsewhere.”
Next, they referred to a list that the noted art historian Rose Valland recorded in her notebook on March 10, 1942 (Figure 17), of modern art displayed in the Jeu de Paume on this date. It was the translation of a list drawn up by the German authorities that provided a brief description of the pieces of art with dimensions and the name of the owners from whom the artworks had been confiscated. Ironically, while this list was known to historians, astonishingly no one had ever cross referenced it with the photographs of the Jeu de Paume. Ergo, Didier Schulmann’s remark cited above of the “purloined letter syndrome.”
“We also used a website recently launched by a team of American researchers led by Marc Masurovski, which reproduces all the records compiled by the ERR during the looting. This website provides a directory of the looted individuals and the works that passed through the Jeu de Paume, enriched with photographs of the seized works, when available, taken by ERR agents. We found most of the works visible on the negatives there, but some of them, now identified, remain known only through these negatives when they were not specifically photographed by the Germans.
This is how we were able to identify works by Fédor Löwenstein, whose works were looted in December 1940 in Bordeaux. In a list from March 1942, Rose Valland enumerates eleven of the twenty-five works looted from the artist (six watercolors being grouped together as one lot) (see Figure 17), and she mentions two others, around 1944, not explicitly in the ‘Aulnay train,’ but at least remaining in Paris. At least two canvases are visible in one of the photographs, but had never been linked to this artist, particularly because the Germans intended to destroy them. [EDITOR’S NOTE: These paintings correspond to “La Ville Moderne” and an untitled work (see discussion and figures below)]
The connection between visible works and those of a little-known artist, believed to have been destroyed according to the ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg) records, was made possible in part by a preliminary study of Löwenstein ‘s style, some of whose works appear similar to those of Paul Klee, but also by comparing the works still to be identified with those of Löwenstein listed in the ERR records. Comparing our hypotheses with the online catalog of the National Museum of Modern Art (MNAM) allowed us to find mention of three works by this artist (Figure 18), which were not illustrated at the time, one of which was clearly visible in one of the two photographs of the ‘room of martyrs.’” (2012: 34-35) [EDITOR’S NOTE: The visible painting was Fédor Löwenstein’s Composition] (Figure 19)
The so-called “Aulnay train” was a train loaded with looted art the Germans had designated for urgent shipment on August 2, 1944, from Paris as the city was about to fall to Allied troops (i.e., the Allies liberated Paris on August 25, 1944). It was supposed to be the last shipment, but alerted by Rose Valland, the Societe nationale des chemins de fer francais (SNCF), the National Company of the French Railways, blocked the train on August 27 at the train station of Aulnay-sous-Bois; as a result many of the artworks the train contained were restored to their rightful owners. None of Löwenstein’s works, however, were aboard this train since the Germans had already decided to destroy them. As a related aside, none of Löwenstein’s artworks was individually photographed by the Germans, likely for the same reason that the Germans intended to destroy his works.
Based on a comment in Rose Valland’s notebook, footnote number 40 in the catalog accompanying the 2014 Löwenstein exhibit in Bordeaux implies Rose Valland didn’t realize Löwenstein was a painter but rather thought he was a collector. (see Fédor Löwenstein (1901-1946), trois œuvres martyres (exh. cat))
Two of the Löwenstein’s paintings show “signs of laceration along the edges, where they were torn from their stretchers.” (Ministère de la Culture 2025) Documentation in the MNAM dossier sent by Dr. Morando indicates these edges have been repaired. However, since the red crosses bear witness to the “dramatic marks of history,” their “stigmata” remain. (Ministère de la Culture 2025) (Figure 20)
The Löwenstein painting Prévet & Bajou refer to as clearly visible in one of the ERR photos of the “salle des martyrs” is the one titled “Composition (Paysage).” Fascinatingly, it is tucked in a corner alongside works by Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Marie Laurencin, Fernand Léger, and Henri Matisse. Clearly, lofty company to be grouped with! (see Figure 15)
To remind readers, I filed my claim with the French Minister of Culture for compensation and restitution of Löwenstein’s artworks in 2014 with Florence Saragoza’s assistance; Florence was the curator of the 2014 exhibit at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux where the martyred works were first shown. The claim mentioned 25 art pieces but over the years I never got a clear answer where this figure came from. A footnote in the French original of the paragraphs quoted above finally provided the answer. The web address to the database developed by Marc Masurovski, cited above, includes the two original pages of the list developed by the ERR listing the names, dates, art medium, and dimensions of the 25 artworks seized from Fédor Löwenstein. (Figures 21a-c) The paintings are catalogued under ERR record numbers Löwenstein 4 (Composition), 15 (Les Peupliers), and 19 (Les Arbres). These correspond to the three paintings I retrieved in September 2025. As readers can see, all 25 of Löwenstein’s listed works were crossed out, and marked “Vernichtet” (“destroyed”), even the three that survived.
The online catalog of the National Museum of Modern Art cited by Prévet & Bajou (http://collection.centrepompidou.fr.artworks) no longer includes the three Löwenstein paintings in their inventory.
One last observation about Prévet & Bajou’s discoveries. In the second picture taken by the ERR in the “salle des martyrs,” the curators discovered two other canvases in Löwenstein’s style, the first corresponds to the painting entitled “La Ville Moderne,” the Modern City (Figure 22), the second is untitled because too little of it is visible. (Figure 23)
Alain Prévet recounts the astonishing discovery: “No one had recognized the Löwensteins before. It was through studying the negatives of these two images, preserved in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that we were able to identify them.”
Once Löwenstein’s three paintings were positively identified as looted works, they were removed from the inventory of the MNAM (Musee National d’Art Moderne) in 2011 and transferred to the register of artworks confiscated by the Nazis, called the MNR (Musée Nationaux Recuperation) pending their return to heirs. Since their restitution in September 2025, they have now been removed from the MNR database. (Figures 24a-b)
Briefly, some history on the MNR. At the end of the Second World War, roughly 61,000 artworks looted from French territory were recovered in Germany and returned to France. About three-quarters of them were restored to their rightful owners, 13,000 were sold by the French state, and roughly 2,200 were placed under the care of national museums, often regional institutions. Legally, the French state is only a temporary custodian of these works. As such, they are not considered part of the permanent public collections of France’s national museums. This latter group, made up of approximately 2,200 artworks as just stated, are referred to by the acronym MNR, Musée Nationaux Recuperation. The MNR designation signals a complex history. At the MNAM, where these three surviving Löwenstein paintings resided until Prévet & Bajou came along were labeled as R26P (Les Peupliers), R27P (Les Arbres), and R28P (Composition), not by MNR numbers since they were only recognized as looted works in 2010.
It is pointless to imagine how well-known Fédor Löwenstein might have become during his life if circumstances had been different. However, in an article written in 2016 by Anna Pravdova, entitled “Vernichtet! Three rescued paintings by Fédor Löwenstein,” published in the “Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague,” she notes an intriguing fact. Following his death, the property of the Nierendorf Gallery in New York, where Fédor had intended his consignment of 25 paintings to be shipped, was purchased in its entirety by the Guggenheim Museum. It’s enormously satisfying that by dint of owning Fédor’s surviving paintings, I am playing a role in helping my ancestor gain the recognition he never obtained in life, even though his artworks may never hang in the Guggenheim.
REFERENCES
Löwenstein, Fédor. Fédor Löwenstein (exh. cat.), 1962, Gallerie Blumenthal, Paris. (includes André Lhote quote from Ce Soir, Nov. 27, 1937)
Löwenstein, Fédor. Fédor Löwenstein (1901-1946), trois œuvres martyres (exh. cat), 15 Mai-24 Août 2014, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux.
Ministère de la Culture. (2025, September 16). Tracking the ghost paintings of Fédor Löwenstein, lost to Nazi looting. [Press release].
Pravdová, A. (2016). Vernichtet! Three rescued paintings by Fédor Löwenstein. Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague, XXVI, 55-60.
Prévet, A, Bajou, T. La récente identification de tableaux spoliés à l’artiste Fédor Löwenstein, in Florence Saragoza (ed.), L’Art victime de la guerre. Destin des œuvres d’art en Aquitaine pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Bordeaux, 2012, p. 33-35.
Saragoza, F. (ed.) (2012). L’Art victime de la guerre. Destin des œuvres d’art en Aquitaine pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Bordeaux.
Schulmann, Didier. (2012). Fédor Löwenstein, le pillage et la liquidation des ateliers des artistas juifs pendant l’occupation, in Saragoza (ed.), in Florence Saragoza (ed.), L’Art victime de la guerre. Destin des œuvres d’art en Aquitaine pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Bordeaux, 2012, p. 29-32.
Note: In this lengthy post, I bring together two of my passions, archaeology and forensic genealogy, to examine my father’s first cousin’s escape from a German stalag in October 1943. A recent visit to see the ongoing archaeological work at the former British lager where he was interned, located inŁambinowice, Poland, allowed me to stand atop the escape tunnel through which he escaped. This gave me another opportunity to time travel.
This post brings together two of my passions, archaeology and forensic genealogy. While my professional work as an archaeologist was primarily administrative, the skills I learned as a field archaeologist have come in very handy in doing forensic genealogy. It’s simply a different type of “digging.”
Let me explain the genesis of this post and in the process reintroduce my English friend, Brian Cooper (Figure 1), who has been instrumental in my learning as much as I have about one of my father’s first cousins, Heinz Löwenstein(1905-1979). (Figure 2) What has always drawn me to Heinz’s story was that I met him as a child. His wartime exploits were alluded to in tantalizingly vague enough ways they conjured childlike fantasies that he helped Jewish internees escape from detention camps. As implausible as this seems in retrospect, his actual Houdini-like escapades are nonetheless movie-worthy.
Heinz has been the subject of multiple earlier posts, as has his older brother Fedor Löwenstein (1901-1946). (Figure 3) To quickly remind readers about Fedor, he was an accomplished artist whose works were deemed by the Nazis to be “degenerate art,” meaning they destroyed many of them. I most recently wrote about Fedor Löwenstein in Post 189. In that publication, I detailed the culmination of an eleven-year struggle involving the French Ministry of Culture to retrieve three of his surviving paintings confiscated by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940. For years the artworks were warehoused and languished in the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, unrecognized as looted art until 2010.
Back to Heinz Löwenstein. I invite readers to peruse or reread earlier posts for the background about him, specifically, Post 137, Post 137, Postscript, Post 163, Post 163, Postscript, and Post 181. However, let me briefly review Heinz’s wartime experiences and incarceration including how Brian and I first became acquainted.
Brian Cooper specializes in the study of British and Commonwealth World War II prisoners of war. For many years, Brian has been researching the fate of his uncle, Harold William Jackson from the 2nd Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment, who was taken prisoner in 1940 in France. (Figure 4) Following his capture, his uncle was interned in Stalag VIIIB, later renumbered Stalag 344, in Lamsdorf, Silesia, then part of Germany (today: Łambinowice, Poland). Brian’s uncle’s fate is unknown though it seems unlikely he died in Lamsdorf or attempting to escape from there. What appears more probable is that he died during the latter stages of the Second World War when the Nazis began marching still able-bodied prisoners of war westward as the Red Army was on the verge of liberating Lamsdorf in January 1945. Brian remains hopeful that a fellow inmate may have recorded in his postwar memoirs his uncle’s death as prisoners were being force marched, a hope that remains unfulfilled.
Brian first emailed me in February 2023. At the time, he intriguingly mentioned he’d come across a prisoner named “Heinz Loewenstein” (spelled “oe” without an umlaugh over the “o”) in connection with his research on his uncle and other Commonwealth prisoners of war incarcerated in Stalag VIIIB/344. Having found “Heinz Löwenstein” mentioned in Post 16, Brian naturally wondered whether “his” Heinz Loewenstein was the same person as “my” Heinz Löwenstein. Two clues in my publication convinced him they were one and the same person. Firstly, his Heinz Loewenstein used the alias “Henry Goff,” a surname I’d mentioned in Post 16. “Goff” as it turns out was Heinz’s older sister Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein’s (1902-1986) (Figure 5) married name. It was a sensible alias for Heinz, one he could easily have remembered if questioned under duress. Secondly, Brian discovered that my Heinz Löwenstein had the identical date of birth, the 8th of March 1905, as the prisoner of war records indicate for the Heinz he’d been researching.
Having resolved to our satisfaction that we were dealing with the same individual, Brian used the primary source documents he’d collected to develop a detailed timeline of Heinz’s activities and whereabouts during the Second World War. As I wrote in Post 137, Brian found these records in the United Kingdom’s National Archives: “Specifically, records created or inherited by the War Office’s Armed Forces Services containing ‘German Record cards of British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War and some Civilian Internees, Second World War,’ found in Catalogue WO (for War Office) 416 are pertinent.” The National Archives includes records mentioning both Heinz Löwenstein (spelled “Loewenstein”) and his alias “Henry Goff.”
The most informative German Record card for tracking Heinz Löwenstein’s family background and emplacements during his captivity is his Personalkarte, his personnel card, record number WO 416/412/223. (Figures 6a-d) It includes his photograph, his father’s first name, his mother’s maiden name, his religion, and his date and place of birth, information all previously known to me. It also includes details previously unknown to me, such as his service number, his service (i.e., Palestinian Army), his regiment (i.e., Corps of Signals), his profession (i.e., electrician), place (i.e., Greece) and date of capture (29th April 1941), his POW number (i.e., 8576), and the Stalag he was initially interned (i.e., Stalag XVIIIA (Wolfsberg, Austria)).
Knowing the place and date of Heinz’s capture confirms he was taken prisoner during the Battle of Greece, also known as the “German invasion of Greece” or “Operation Marita.” Brian surmises he was ensnared in or near Kalamata on the Peloponnesian Peninsula. As I described in Post 137, he was likely quickly moved to the prison compound at Corinth, then perhaps a month later transferred to Salonika via Athens and the Brallos Pass. The “Salonika Transit Camp Frontstalag 183” was known to be a gateway to the Central European stalags.
As just mentioned, Heinz was initially imprisoned in Stalag XVIIIA in Wolfsberg, Austria after being transported by cattle truck from the Salonika Transit Camp. A map found in John Borrie’s book, “Despite Captivity: A Doctor’s Life as Prisoner of War,” indicates roughly the route by which the author arrived in Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf via Wolfsberg from Salonika, probably the identical path which brought Heinz to the same stalag. (Figure 7)
Obviously, Brian’s interest in Heinz Löwenstein is that both Heinz and Brian’s uncle were interned in Stalag VIIIB/344, though there is no evidence their paths crossed.
As I discussed in detail in Post 137, between September 1941, likely shortly after Heinz’s arrival at Stalag VIIIB/344, and June 1943, Heinz was assigned to work at eight detached work labor camps affiliated with Stalag VIIIB/344; assigning and using prisoners of war as labor in work camps was a common practice.
Most attempted and/or successful prisoner escapes took place from these work camps as these were easier to flee from. In Heinz’s case, his Personalkarte notes three attempted escapes, including one from a labor camp designated as “E479” in Tarnowitz. In Post 137, I quoted at length from a book by Cyril Rofe, “Against the Wind,” where Heinz’s remarkable flight and eventual recapture in Danzig, Germany (today: Gdańsk, Poland) with a man named Joe Powell (Figure 8) was described. What facilitated Heinz’s escapes was his fluency in German since he’d been born in Danzig. What Rofe states and what the entries on Heinz’s Personalkarte confirm is that the repercussions for his attempted escapes were minimal, typically no more than seven days in solitary confinement.
An illegible notation on Heinz’s Personalkarte dated the 15th of September 1943 (see Figure 6d) suggests a fourth escape, a successful one. As I learned, thanks once again to Brian, and discussed in detail in Post 137, record number WO 224/95 from the UK National Archives places “Heinz Loewenstein” among 20 POW escapees interned at Camp Siklós in Hungary in November 1943. As a related aside, we know from elsewhere that the holding facility at Camp Siklós, where sanitary conditions were deplorable, had by then been relocated to the nearby castle estate of Count Mihály Andrássy in Szigetvár in August 1943, where conditions were excellent.
In any case, record WO 224/95 is an inspection report written on the 16th of November 1943 by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in its capacity as a Protecting Power based on an 8th of November examination of the holding facility at Szigetvár. The fact that “Heinz Loewenstein’s” name is listed (Figure 9) in the report among the 20 POWs being held there confirms he successfully made it to Hungary following a fourth escape attempt from Stalag VIIIB/344. In Post 163, Postscript, I discussed the means and likely route by which Heinz ultimately wound up at Szigetvár.
A little background. A state of war did not exist between Hungary and the Allies until March 19, 1944, when the Nazis invaded and occupied Hungary. Before the Nazi invasion, any escaping Allied prisoners caught in Hungary by the authorities would expect no more than internment within the country; there was no concern that any POWs would be returned to German control. This explains Heinz’s detention at Count Andrássy’s estate in Szigetvár, Hungary. However, upon the German occupation of Hungary on March 19th, the Wehrmacht immediately headed there and recaptured most of the POWs detained there. This unfortunately included Heinz Löwenstein.
A little more background. The British and Commonwealth POWs at Szigetvár had always intended to reach the Allied lines by linking up with local partisans who would guide them through the treacherous terrain to the south in then-northern Yugoslavia occupied by the Germans to safe areas further south where they could then be flown out to southern Italy and beyond. Written accounts confirm that the multi-lingual Heinz had already been tasked and had established contact with the Hungarian partisans, and that the POWs at Szigetvár were at most weeks away from fleeing Hungary.
Things got complicated, however, following South African Lt. Col. Charles Telfer Howie’s escape from Stalag VIIIB/344 after he successfully reached Budapest, Hungary; I wrote about Howie’s escape from Stalag VIIIB/344 in Post 163, Postscript and write more about it below. Before the Germans invaded Hungary on March 19th, Howie was actively working with the underground to try and “flip” Hungary to the Allies. While their efforts were ultimately undermined by spies and the Nazi-affiliated Arrow Cross Party, the POWs at Szigetvár were supposed to have played a critical role. An Allied negotiating team had been expected to land near Szigetvár and be rounded up with their help; the POWs were threatened with a post-WWII court martial if they tried to escape before the negotiating team arrived. Howie, however, had promised to warn the British POWs at Szigetvár if the Germans invaded, but the message alerting them to the German occupation was never delivered and the POWs were retaken. More about this can be found in Post 163, Postscript.
As I alluded to above and discussed in Post 137, the ICRC’s inspection report listed Heinz under his given name. This is a list that would presumably have been available to or seized by the Germans when they occupied Szigetvár on March 19, 1944, and recaptured the escaped POWs detained there. For this reason, it is an enduring mystery how Heinz magically “transformed” into his doppelgänger “Henry Goff” and was later assigned a brand-new POW number. Given how meticulous the Germans were about record keeping, logically this should not have happened.
Brian continues to play a pivotal role in terms of finding relevant written accounts and uncovering postwar interrogation reports discussing the escape of British POWs from Stalag VIIIB/344. Let me get into these now as I will eventually tie them into recent archaeological discoveries that support the written accounts.
Brian interacts with Facebook in a way that I don’t. I’m not directly involved in social media, no doubt to my detriment. Let me provide two examples.
A few years ago, Brian discovered some group pictures of Commonwealth POWs interned in Stalag VIIIB/344 that someone had posted on Facebook. I continue to be amazed that one of these photographs includes a barely recognizable photo of an understandably very haggard-looking Heinz Löwenstein. (Figure 10) It was likely taken between 1941 and 1943. Heinz, born in 1905, would have been among the older POWs. And, in fact, some POW accounts describe him as an “elder statesman.”
The second instance where Brian found pertinent information on Facebook was precisely on the 24th of July 2025. It involved a post by a Polish gentleman named Cuba Kubacki on a private group chat that Brian is active on. Brian sent me a screen shot of Cuba’s English-language post. (Figure 11)
As followers can read, Cuba is part of a research and exploration group called “Wataha” (formerly “Wataha Grupa Badawczo Ekspolacyjna”). (Figures 12-13) The group is working under permit in collaboration with archaeologists conducting research in the former prisoner of war camp in Łambinowice, currently focused on the section of the camp that housed British POWs. Using metal detectors, the group has found a vast number of artifacts lost or left behind by the prisoners; these are being precisely mapped, then handed over to the Central Museum of Prisoners of War in Łambinowice-Opole (“Centralne Muzeum Jencow Wojennych”) for curation. Łambinowice is today a “Site of National Remembrance.”
Just a brief history on Łambinowice. In the 1860s, the Prussian Army established an artillery range near the village of Lamsdorf (today: Łambinowice, Poland). During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, between 3,500 and 4,000 French soldiers were detained at Lamsdorf, several dozen of whom died. During WWI, the POW camp at Lamsdorf was one of the largest camps in the territory of Germany with 90,000 soldiers of various nationalities interned here, about 7,000 of whom died. After the Treaty of Versailles, the camp was decommissioned.
It was recommissioned in 1939 to house Polish prisoners following the German invasion of Poland which started the Second World War in September 1939. Later during the war, over 300,000 POWs of different nationalities were kept at the camp, including Brits, Poles, French, Yugoslavians, Belgians, Italians, Americans, and Russians. The most numerous were the soldiers of the Red Army. In 1941, a separate camp, Stalag VIIIF was set up for the roughly 200,000 Soviet POWs; about 40,000 of them died.
Polish insurgents, including women and children, were brought to the camp in October 1943 after the Germans had crushed the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. The camp was liberated on the 17th of March 1945.
In 1945-1946, the camp was used by the Soviet-installed Polish Ministry of Public Security to house some 8,000-9,000 Germans, both POWs and civilian. Polish army personnel being repatriated from POW camps were also processed through Łambinowice and sometimes held there for several months. Some were later released, others sent to Gulags in Siberia. About 1,000-1500 German prisoners died from things such as malnutrition and violence.
In 1968 the area of the former camp and the POW cemeteries at Łambinowice were recognized as a Monument of National Remembrance, altered later to a Site of National Remembrance.
Ongoing archaeological work has been focused on searching for the escape tunnels within the British part of the camp. What obviously caught my attention in Cuba’s post was his mention of Heinz Löwenstein. Though not specifically cited, it is clear Cuba had stumbled on my blog and the posts about Heinz. He had obviously found the map of the escape tunnel from Barrack 19B included in Claerwen Howie’s book that I reproduced in Post 163, Postscript. (Figure 14)
Knowing my wife and I would be in southwestern Poland in August, and that Łambinowice is only 100km (~62 miles) from Wrocław, one of our destinations (Figure 15), I asked Brian to put me in touch with Cuba Kubacki. In very short order Cuba and I were in direct contact, and he gladly agreed to meet us at Łambinowice on August 23rd to give us a guided tour of the site.
In the interim, Cuba and I stayed in touch, and he continued to send me photographs of the Wataha Group’s work. (Figure 16) He also sent a link with astonishing photos secretly taken by one of the POWs while the escape tunnel from Barrack 19B was under construction. I’ll discuss the source of these photographs when I introduce a firsthand account of the construction of the escape tunnel Brian found in a book by John Mellor entitled “Forgotten Heroes: The Canadians at Dieppe.”
As planned, my wife and I met Cuba and his colleague Aram at Łambinowice on August 23rd and were given a general tour of the extensive site and introduced to the current director of the museum, Michal Jabacki. Among other things, the museum includes a 3D model of the site allowing visitors to visualize the layout of the various prisoner “lagers” (i.e., term referring to labor or concentration camp). (Figure 17)
Cuba’s July 24th Facebook post mentioned the anomalies the metal detectorists had found near the British lager that they were getting ready to examine; the Wataha Group thought these pointed to the existence of perhaps two escape tunnels likely including the one from Hut 19B and another from Hut 20B. (Figure 18) They were excavating the anomaly they believe is from Hut 19B when we visited so we had an opportunity to see for ourselves what they’d exposed.
A brief interjection. The prisoner barracks in the British lager lie in ruins. However, wartime aerial photographs survive showing their original layout. Using these photographs, the metal detectorists have outlined and mapped the former barracks. This is enabling them to narrow their search for the escape tunnels, most pertinently the one from Barrack 19B.
Let me quote from John Mellor’s book a section discussing the construction of the escape tunnel from Barrack 19B that Brian Cooper found:
“At the early meetings of the escape committee, various plans were discussed and in most cases discarded as being impractical. Sgt. Larry Palls [sic] of the Essex Scottish, who was of Dutch descent, belonged to an intelligence section of the Canadian Army. Initially, he was elected Chairman of the Escape Committee. Bill Lee was to be his assistant. Escape attempts were to be confined to people considered essential to the war effort who could also speak a foreign language, preferably German. Escape from the camp was a difficult accomplishment, but without an adequate knowledge of German, the escapee would most likely be picked up within 24 hours.
A red-headed sergeant named McMurray from the Royal Canadian Engineers was selected to engineer and build an escape tunnel. Under his direction, many men were approached to work on the construction or to dispose of the excavated soil. Other men were chosen as lookouts to be posted at all strategic points and to give advance warning of the approach of a guard.
Sgt. Lee’s hut, 19b, was chosen for the entrance to the tunnel because it was the nearest hut to the wire. Taking all precautions, a cunningly disguised trap-door was cut in the concrete floor under one of the bunks, and construction begun.
The shaft was sunk and tunneling commenced. Tools were non-existent. Improvised trowels, knives, even spoons were used to dig and hack the red soil, which was then packed into Red Cross boxes and handed to the disposal men. Under cover of darkness, the soil was mixed in with the earth in the vegetable patch, which, fortunately, was raised some 12 inches above the ground. The 40-holer latrine was another favourite dumping ground. Periodically, the human waste was carried away in a wagon drawn by two horses. Russian prisoners had been given the hideous job of cleaning out the latrine; they must have wondered at the large amounts of soil in the human waste—perhaps they thought it was due to the unwashed vegetables in the soup.
The shaft constructed by Sgt. McMurray sunk vertically nine feet beneath the bunk before the tunnel was begun in the direction of the wire, 100 feet away. The sandy soil provided a very treacherous support for the tunnel, so the leaders approached trustworthy men to sacrifice some of their bed-boards; Red Cross string was substituted for the boards. Teams of men worked day and night in rotating shifts. Many of the sappers digging in the tunnel had been hard-rock miners from Timmins; hour after hour they patiently clawed at the soil. Quite a few of them were French Canadians from the Gaspé Peninsula, hard-working men who worked under atrocious conditions without a murmur of complaint.
Light was provided by home-made lamps using pyjama-cord wicks soaked in margarine. The dense black fumes from the lamps soon filled the tunnel with choking carbon dioxide. Work was halted temporarily until some form of ventilation could be provided.
Besides Larry Palls [sic], the head of the escape committee, Bill Lee who would take the escapees through the tunnel, perhaps the most important man was the ‘Procurer’—Jimmy Maitland from Sarnia, Ontario. Larry Palls [sic] had chosen Jimmy for this special job because it required a great deal of nerve, ingenuity, and cheek. A supply of air required a pump and a pipe. Jimmy sat down and wrote ‘Pipe’ on a piece of paper. The tunnel would be approximately 100 feet long; therefore, opposite the word pipe, he wrote 100 feet. Taking a team of engineers, he marched them smartly over to the gate to the German sentry and waved the piece of paper under his nose. In the administrative compound, the Germans were erecting some new wooden huts. Eavestroughs on the roofs were connected to down-spouts, each 10 feet long. What better piping could be provided? In calm, detached fashion, Jimmy and the men proceeded to dismantle the downspouts. On the way back to the Canadian compound, he ordered ‘eyes right’ and gave the sentry a magnificent salute. The sentry blushed at this splendid example of military courtesy extended to a mere private soldier. With a rattle and a great flourish, he presented arms as the men marched proudly past carrying their booty.
A French Canadian named Robichard manufactured the bellows from an old groundsheet. A make-shift valve was fitted, then connected to the lengths of down-spouting; fresh, clean air flooded down the tunnel. Day after day for the next six months, Sapper Robichard would lie in a terribly confined space under the bunk and pump his bellows at a steady, monotonous rate. Such was his splendid contribution to the building of the escape tunnel.
The supply of bed-boards was running low as the tunnel grew in length. Again, Jimmy Maitland came to the rescue with his piece of paper and his ‘working party.’ By now, the sentries were becoming accustomed to the sight of Jimmy marching his men smartly through the gate. Der Canadian was a good soldier—very smart. This time Jimmy returned with a load of prime oak planks for the tunnel, which was then passing under the roadway and required a firm roof.” (Mellor, p. 108-110)
There is a lot to unpack in John Mellor’s account. I’ll touch on only a few details. As an aside, I note that part of the story reminds me of the famous 1963 movie starring Steve McQueen, “The Great Escape,” which was about a mass breakout of 76 Allied prisoners from the German POW camp Stalag Luft III on the night of March 24-25, 1944. I’m also reminded of the 1985 TV series “MacGyver,” where a resourceful secret agent uses his intellect, scientific knowledge, and improvisation to escape dangerous situations, often using everyday items, such as paper clips, much as the POWs constructing the escape tunnel at Lamsdorf were obviously compelled to do in manufacturing a pipe and bellows, etc.
Above, I alluded to rare photographs Cuba found posted on Facebook taken at Stalag VIIIB/344 including some taken during the construction of the escape tunnel from Barrack 19B. It was initially thought they might have been taken at Stalag Luft III in Żagań, the inspiration, as just mentioned, for the movie “The Great Escape.” However, Brian found a 1955 magazine article with the photos confirming they’d been taken at Stalag VIIIB/344 in Lamsdorf by Warrant Officer Kenneth Thomas Hyde of the Royal Canadian Air Force. (Figures 19a-e) Brian also tracked down Ken Hyde’s liberation questionnaire (i.e., UK National Archives WO 344) and a special questionnaire (i.e., UK National Archives WO 208) he completed, both of which place him at Stalag VIIIB/344 from 1942 until the end of 1944 or January 1945. (Figures 20a-b) Ken was never at Stalag Luft III in Żagań so obviously his photos were not taken there.
Additionally, Brian found two of Ken Hyde’s pictures in the book “In Enemy Hands: Canadian Prisoners of War 1939-45” by Daniel G. Dancocks, and another in John Mellor’s book “Forgotten Heroes: The Canadians at Dieppe,” providing further confirmation the pictures were taken at Stalag VIIIB/344.
On familysearch.org Brian found the following description about Ken:
“Kenneth was known as Ken. As a young man he gained skills in photography. He left home at the age of 17, later joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and was a navigator. His plane was shot down, and he became a German Prisoner of War during World War II and remained in captivity until the war ended in 1945. He took photos through the buttonhole of his coat, and later these were published. He donated proceeds received to the Red Cross, stating that without their help they should not have survived. He was head of the escape committee in the prison camp, escaped twice. He was able to build a radio and help forge passports for the prisoners. After his repatriation in England, he returned to Alberta and earned his living as a photographer. He was involved in aerial photography and mapping. Lived in Calgary.”
Not to diminish Ken Hyde’s service, but I would simply note it is well known that the head of the Escape Committee at Stalag VIIIB/344 was not Ken Hyde but the Canadian Sgt. Laurens Pals, as his surname is correctly spelled. Nonetheless, Hyde’s photos prove he played a pivotal role in the construction of the escape tunnel. See discussion below.
Let me discuss a few things about John Mellor’s account of the construction of the tunnel coming from Barrack 19B at Stalag VIIIB/344. As I also talked about in Post 163, Postscript, South African Lt. Col. Charles Telfer Howie escaped through this tunnel. As Howie’s daughter Claerwen Howie recounted in her book about her father, “Agent by Accident,” he suffered a lifetime of nightmares from the claustrophobic imaginings of being trapped in the tiny, dark escape passage.
John Mellor correctly identifies the head of the escape committee at Stalag VIIIB/344 as the Canadian “Sgt. Larry Palls,” who I discussed in Post 163, Postscript. He was captured during the Dieppe operation on the 19th of August 1942 and incarcerated in Lamsdorf from the 1st of September 1942 until the 6th of March 1945.
Sgt. Pals himself escaped in May 1944 but returned to the camp of his own volition when the partisan at an address in Metz he’d been given warned him he was being watched by the Gestapo; knowing six future escapees were headed there, Pals returned to Stalag VIIIB/344 to ward them off. Upon his recapture, for this valorous act the Germans gave him 28 days solitary confinement.
Brian transcribed the lengthy report prepared by interrogation officers following Sgt. Pals’ liberation at the end of the Second World War from a place named Hohenfels. The source of the interrogation report is “UK Archives Catalogue Reference WO 208/3336/98.”
In his interrogation report, Pals remarks the following: “By that time [EDITOR’S NOTE: JULY 1943] I had an assistant, Pte. LICHENSTEIN, a native of DANZIG who had enlisted in the Palestinian Army and was a P/W at LAMSDORF.” Clearly referring to Heinz Löwenstein, while not surprised that Heinz had been part of the Escape Committee, I’d previously been unaware of this fact.
Regarding the construction of the escape tunnel, Pals provides more details: “It took about eight weeks to complete this tunnel, the length of which was about 60 ft. About six men did the actual digging, while about 15 assisted in watching and in the disposal of the dirt.”
Regarding Howie’s and Löwenstein’s escape from Stalag VIIIB/344 along with those of others, Pals writes the following:
“In Aug 43 a party of about 40 officers arrived at the Stalag from somewhere in ITALY. They were supposed to go to STRASSBURG. Amongst these were Lt-Col. HOWIE (South African) (SKP/4296) [EDITOR’S NOTE: HOWIE WAS CAPTURED DURING THE SIEGE OF TOBRUK IN LIBYA] He suggested that he wanted to make an escape and go to HUNGARY. He made contact with me through R.S.M SHERRIFF. Lt-Col. HOWIE was fitted out with the necessary papers, in company with a Jewish Pte. who spoke Hungarian – Pte. WEINSTEIN (Palestinian Army). They escaped through our tunnel about two days after the Lt. Col.’s arrival at the Stalag.
Lt-Col. HOWIE reached Budapest successfully and worked there with the Underground until the occupation of HUNGARY by the Germans. He was not captured but I do not know what happened to him. Pte. WEINSTEIN was captured during the occupation of HUNGARY and was returned to Stalag VIIIB in 44.
Several of the other officers who arrived with Lt-Col. HOWIE came to me and I instructed them how to escape. I also gave them samples of documents and rubber stamps. Capt. WILLIAMS (Brit) and Pte. SMITH (Brit) escaped two days later through the tunnel but were recaptured on the Swiss border and returned to the camp. Pte. SMITH, who belonged to SOE and whose name was a ‘nom de guerre’ was with us on the DIEPPE operation and it was felt necessary that he should return to the UK as soon as possible. He [Williams] made a successful escape later.
Six men had made escapes in one week and I considered it necessary to cement the tunnel up again. These six people had been missed by that time. To cover up the escapes through the tunnel I had arranged that holes were made in the barbed wire to make the Germans believe that the personnel had escaped through the wire. At the same time, I made arrangements for several ‘nuisance’ escapes from the different Working Parties.
In Oct 44 (sic, 43) we reopened the tunnel and six more people escaped. CSM McLEAN (FMR) (SDIC/CMF/EAST/SKP.4(a)) and Pte. LICHENSTEIN (Palestinian) (SKP/4574) [EDITOR’S NOTE: HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN] went to Budapest; Pte. DAGENAIS, G (FMR) and Pte. SPAH (Palestinian) went to FRANCE; CSM PARRY (Brit) and A.B. MASON (Royal Navy) escaped but were recaptured at the border with SWITZERLAND and eventually returned to the camp. CSM McLEAN and Pte. LICHENSTEIN were successful and as far as I know reached the UK eventually. [EDITOR’S NOTE: HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN WAS RECAPTURED IN SZIGETVÁR, HUNGARY WHEN THE GERMANS INVADED ON MARCH 19, 1944, AND NEVER MADE IT TO ENGLAND] Pte. SPAH and Pte DAGENAIS have not been heard of to date and as far as can be found out through Canadian Records, Pte. DAGENAIS from the FMR is still missing.
We again sealed up the tunnel after having made several holes in the barbed wire fence to cover up our actual means of escape.”
Pal’s description brings us to the work that the archaeologists in collaboration with the metal detectorists are now undertaking. As mentioned above, the day my wife and I visited, the Wataha Group was excavating one of the anomalies they believe was the escape tunnel from Barrack 19B. Astonishingly, later that same day they fully exposed the remains of the tunnel. Cuba sent us pictures of some of the artifacts they recovered and the rubble-filled tunnel. (Figures 21a-b; 22)
In his interrogation report, Pals remarked the following: “In Nov. 43 the Germans walked directly to the entrance of the tunnel, which had been cemented over, in Barrack 19B and dug up the tunnel. It is unknown who gave away the information to the Germans.” Pals remarks the same thing happened in January 1944 to an escape tunnel coming from Barrack 22B which had been partially completed to a length of 40 ft. Collaborators were a constant worry. Pals notes the construction of yet a third tunnel: “In the spring of 44 we built another tunnel in Barrack 9B with the intention of making an organised mass break of about 12 men. On 17 May 1944 the tunnel was ready. I intended to go myself.”
A contemporary photo Brian found in John Mellor’s book shows the tunnel exit from Hut 19B after its discovery by German guards. (Figure 23) In the case of both escape tunnels, upon their discovery, the Germans demolished the escape tunnels and, according to Ken Hyde, had the POWs fill them back in with rubble, bricks, and rocks. This is what the Wataha Group exposed on the day we visited.
As a side note, in his Facebook post, Cuba remarked that the metal detectorists had identified two anomalies near the British lager. As shown in Figure 18, one is the tunnel coming from Barrack 19B, and the other is possibly from Barrack 20B. However, in his interrogation report Pals mentions the never completed tunnel from Barrack 22B and another completed one from Barrack 9B, so more sleuthing will be needed to find these.
In any case, standing in the very spot that my father’s first cousin had escaped Stalag VIIIB/344 through the tunnel from Barrack 19B was exhilarating, literally imagining where he experienced a life-changing event 82 years ago! (Figure 24)
As readers can appreciate, there are so many moving parts related to the escape of British Commonwealth POWs from Stalag VIIIB/344, most that transcend Heinz Löwenstein’s own escape. Inevitably, there will be inconsistencies between the various accounts due to, among other things, faulty POW memories, brutal living conditions, aliases and swapped identities, unknown names of fellow prisoners, a natural desire to portray oneself in a most favorable manner, etc.
Archaeological investigations provide an opportunity to answer some unanswered questions, such as the length of the escape tunnel. For example, Mellor writes the tunnel was 100 feet long, Pals’ interrogation report says it was 60 feet long, and Claerwen Howie’s map claims it was 44 meters (~144 feet). Excavations can reveal the actual length and depth of the tunnel. The various POW diaries and post-WWII interrogation reports tell us something about the construction of the tunnel and the number of men involved but there will always be some discrepancies, something archaeological studies won’t necessarily answer.
In terms of other things, we can only surmise based on the preponderance of evidence, for example, the approximate date of Heinz’s fourth escape from Stalag VIIIB/344. His Personalkarte implies he may have escaped in mid-September 1943; Pals’ interrogation report says he escaped in October; and Claewen Howie claims he escaped in December 1943. The ICRC inspection report placed Heinz in Szigetvár on November 8, 1943, so Heinz probably escaped in October 1943, perhaps late September.
Let me conclude this very lengthy and involved post with a few remarks. It’s likely given the various and divergent accounts from which I’ve drawn information that I’ll revisit and update this post. Brian’s research continues to uncover additional POW biographies which may change the narrative. In addition, Brian has been accessing and reading the interrogation reports for the multiple POWs identified by Sgt. Laurens Pals as having escaped to Hungary using the tunnel leading from Barrack 19B. In combination with the ongoing archaeological work this is likely to yield some unexpected surprises that may compel an update to this publication.
REFERENCES
Borrie, John. Despite Captivity: A Doctor’s Life as Prisoner of War. Whitecoulls, 1975.
Dancocks, Daniel G. In Enemy Hands: Canadian Prisoners of War, 1939-45. Hurtig, 1983.
Howie, Claerwen. Agent by Accident. Lindlife Publishers CC, 1997.
Mellor, John. Forgotten Heroes: The Canadians at Dieppe. Methuen, 1975.
Rofe, Cyril. Against the Wind. 1st ed., Hodder & Stoughton, 1956.
Note: In this post, I tell the story of how after eleven years I prevailed in my quest to have three surviving paintings seized from my father’s first cousin Fédor Löwenstein by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940 returned to me. I include pictures from the formal restitution event that took place at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on the 16th of September 2025 and share French and English versions of the 18-minute speech I delivered on the occasion. Along with previous posts I’ve written on this longstanding saga, this post provides readers with some of the history of the seizure along with the story of how I eventually succeeded in my pursuit.
While this is a story eleven years in the making, the tale had its genesis almost 85 years ago in December 1940. This is when 25 paintings destined for an art gallery in New York were seized at the Port of Bordeaux in France by the Nazis from my father’s first cousin, Fédor Löwenstein. (Figure 1) As I’ve previously reported the Nazis shipped them to the Jeu de Paume in Paris where they were slated to be “vernichtet,” German word for destroyed, as examples of so-called “degenerate art.”
Miraculously, three of Fedor Löwenstein’s confiscated works of art survived (Figure 2), although in 1973 they were conveniently integrated into the collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, housed in the Centre Pompidou as an “anonymous donation.” This “error” was only uncovered in 2010. Following this revelation, the French Minister of Culture began the search for the legitimate owner. However, before the Minister of Culture could find me, I contacted them.
As I’ve previously written about in Post 105 and Post 160, I learned about the three surviving paintings in 2014 while doing some forensic genealogy in Berlin. Coincidentally, 2014 is the year that the three seized paintings were first displayed in the city where they were initially seized, in Bordeaux at the Musée des Beaux-Arts. When I learned about the paintings, I immediately contacted the curator of the exhibit, Mme Florence Saragoza (Figure 3), who helped me file a restitution claim. I was eligible to file this claim by dint of the fact that as Fédor Löwenstein’s first cousin once-removed, I’m his closest surviving relative; Fédor never had any children nor did either of his two siblings.
Because France has a civil law system rather a common law system, my claim was trumped by those of two so-called “universal legatees” and denied. It was subrogated by the French Minister of Culture’s Commission pour l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliations (CIVS) without the legatees ever having even lifted a finger, done any work or research, or even been aware of the artist. To say this was galling is an understatement. To rectify this outrageous situation necessitated a lengthy, costly, and litigious process that took eleven years to resolve. It was only because the French Ministry of Culture was offering a substantial sum of money as compensation for the 22 presumably destroyed works of art, compensation I was willing to forego to obtain possession of the paintings, that Fedor Löwenstein’s works of art now belong to me.
It would be disingenuous to pretend that money does not factor into compensation claims filed by Jewish heirs. Afterall, the only justice many such people are ever apt to obtain for the crimes perpetuated against their ancestors are financial. In my case, this was not possible. That said, I’m satisfied that the path going forward will lead to my ancestor Fédor Löwenstein obtaining some of the accolades he never received in life. He failed to achieve this recognition because he died prematurely at age 45 of Hodgkins Lymphoma and because the Nazis denied him this validation.
Regular readers know that over the years I’ve written about my compensation claim involving the French Minister of Culture’s CIVS, often venting great frustration. I direct first-time readers to these earlier posts, namely, Post 105 and Post 160.
The Restitution Ceremony was held on the 16th of September 2025 on the fifth floor of the Centre Pompidou in the Grand Salon. (Figure 4) Because the Centre Pompidou has just begun a five-year renovation, the museum was empty save for the approximately 50-75 people who attended the event. Several distinguished guests participated and spoke at the event, after which I was given the floor to say a few remarks. I delivered an 18- minute speech in French, a language I’m reasonably fluent in.
Restitution ceremonies comparable to the one I was the center of are rare events. Without exaggerating, they tend to be noteworthy and newsworthy. Ordinarily, the French Minister of Culture Rachida Dati would have presided over the Restitution Ceremony. Unfortunately, the date of the ceremony coincided with the period after September 8th in the wake of the French government’s collapse after Prime Minister François Bayrou lost a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly, forcing French President Emmanuel Macron to seek a new prime minister. Because there was no official French Minister of Culture on the 16th of September, the ceremony was instead presided over by the M. Laurent Le Bon (Figure 5), President of the Centre Pompidou, and M. Luc Allaire (Figure 6), Secretary General of the Ministry of Culture, on behalf of the Minister of Culture.
Je tiens à vous remercier chaleureusement de votre présence à cette cérémonie.
Citoyen américain, je me nomme Richard BROOK. Je vais vous raconter en quelques mots la raison de ma présence, mon lien avec l’artiste Fédor LÖWENSTEIN et comment j’ai appris son existence.
Je suis aujourd’hui à Paris pour reprendre possession de trois tableaux de Fédor LÖWENSTEIN.
Ces tableaux font partie des 25 œuvres saisies par les nazis au port de Bordeaux en décembre 1940 alors que Fédor tentait de les envoyer à une galerie d’art à New York. Les nazis considéraient ces œuvres comme des exemples de ce qu’ils appelaient « l’art dégénéré ». Après leur saisie, elles furent expédiées au Jeu de Paume en attendant d’être détruites. On présume pour exposition que les 22 autres œuvres saisies à Fédor ont effectivement été détruites. La preuve que le même sort attendait les trois tableaux survivants se trouve sur la surface des toiles. En effet, de grands « X » y ont été tracés, signifiant qu’ils devaient être « vernichtet », le mot allemand pour « détruit ».
J’aime à imaginer que votre héroïne française, MME Rose VALLAND, a joué un rôle essentiel dans la sauvegarde des trois œuvres qui se trouvent devant vous. Elle était le seul membre du personnel du Jeu de Paume à avoir été maintenue en poste par les nazis pendant leur occupation de Paris.
Fédor LÖWENSTEIN est souvent considéré comme un artiste tchécoslovaque. La famille de son père était en effet originaire de ce pays. Il est évident que Fédor ressentait un lien profond avec la patrie de son père. L’une des peintures les plus célèbres de Fédor s’intitule « La Chute ». Elle s’inspire de la signature des accords de Munich le 30 septembre 1938. Ces accords ont démantelé la Tchécoslovaquie de l’époque et conduit à l’annexion des Sudètes par l’Allemagne. Cette peinture s’inspire de « Guernica », le tableau anti-guerre de Picasso datant de 1937.
Fédor LÖWENSTEIN est né en 1901 à Munich. Il était l’aîné de trois enfants. Sa mère, née Hedwig BRUCK, était ma grand-tante (mon nom de famille BROOK est la version anglicisée de BRUCK). Hedwig était la tante de mon père; Fédor et mon père étaient donc cousins germains. On ne sait pas très bien à quel point ils se connaissaient. Fédor et sa mère sont morts à Nice avant ma naissance en 1950. Cependant, enfant, j’ai rencontré le frère et la sœur cadets de Fédor, Jeanne, affectueusement surnommée « Hansi », et Heinz. Mon père était proche d’eux.
Je suis le descendant direct le plus proche de Fédor LÖWENSTEIN encore en vie. Ni Fédor, ni son frère, ni sa sœur n’ont eu d’enfant. La France étant un pays de droit civil, j’ai dû mener une bataille juridique de près de 11 ans pour récupérer ces trois tableaux. En effet selon la loi française, les droits de deux « légataires universels » priment sur les miens. Cependant, mon avocat a réussi à convaincre la CIVS (Commission pour l’Indemnisation des Victimes de Spoliations) que mon long travail de recherches et mes actions nécessaires et indispensables à la mise à jour des 3 tableaux devaient être également indemnisés. Cela n’a en en effet été possible que parce que j’ai été le premier à découvrir que la CIVS cherchait à restituer les tableaux de LÖWENSTEIN à ses descendants. C’est également moi qui ai déposé la demande initiale.
J’ai pu obtenir la possession des tableaux en renonçant à toute compensation financière offerte par la CIVS pour les 22 tableaux détruits. Cette somme est considérable. Au risque d’offenser quelqu’un, j’ai le sentiment d’avoir obtenu gain de cause sans l’intervention de la justice. Il serait peut-être exagéré de dire que cela ressemble presque à une victoire à la Pyrrhus… Deux légataires universels sont indemnisés et récompensés pour un travail que j’ai accompli et payé. Qu’il soit permis de dire que dans un pays régi par la common law, cela ne se serait pas produit.
Permettez-moi de vous raconter brièvement comment j’ai découvert l’existence de Fédor LÖWENSTEIN. Mon père ne parlait jamais de sa famille, à l’exception de sa sœur bien-aimée Suzanne, arrêtée à Fayence en août 1942 et assassinée à Auschwitz. J’ai découvert le reste de la famille de mon père grâce à mes propres recherches généalogiques.
Au cours de ces recherches, j’ai découvert que les documents personnels de deux tantes de Fédor, deux autres grands-tantes célèbres, étaient archivés au Stadtmuseum de Berlin. En 2014, j’ai pris des dispositions pour examiner et photographier tous les documents et toutes les photos. La collection comprenait plusieurs photos de Fédor. J’ai rapidement compris qu’il était le frère aîné de Hansi et Heinz, que j’avais rencontrés quand j’étais enfant.
Il y avait également plusieurs lettres, toutes écrites en allemand, langue que je ne maîtrise pas. La plupart étaient manuscrites et presque impossibles à déchiffrer. Mais quelques-unes étaient dactylographiées, principalement par la sœur de Fédor, « Hansi ». À mon retour aux États-Unis, j’ai traduit ses lettres dactylographiées, les seules que je pouvais lire, à l’aide d’une application de traduction. Dans une lettre datée d’août 1946, Hansi écrivait qu’elle avait vendu à titre posthume l’une des peintures de Fédor pour 90 000 francs français. Cela semblait être une somme énorme en 1946.
Déterminé à en savoir plus sur Fédor LÖWENSTEIN, j’ai contacté en 2014 une connaissance travaillant à la mairie de Nice. Je lui ai demandé si elle pouvait trouver la nécrologie de Fédor. Elle m’a plutôt envoyé des liens vers plusieurs articles. Le plus instructif concernait une exposition qui avait eu lieu en 2014 au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux et qui présentait ces trois tableaux. Vers 2010, le Centre Pompidou a découvert que les œuvres de Fédor LÖWENSTEIN lui avaient été confisquées pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. L’exposition à Bordeaux était la première exposition publique consacrée à cette découverte.
Par coïncidence, 2014 est la même année où ma femme Ann et moi avons passé 13 semaines en Europe. Nous avons voyagé en voiture du nord-est de la Pologne au sud de l’Espagne, visitant des lieux associés à la diaspora de ma famille juive. Si nous avions su qu’il y avait une exposition, nous aurions certainement fait un détour par Bordeaux.
Les documents que j’ai reçus identifiaient Mme Florence SARAGOZA comme la commissaire de l’exposition et fournissaient une adresse électronique. Je l’ai immédiatement contactée. Elle m’a répondu deux jours plus tard. Je me souviendrai toujours de sa réponse. Elle m’a dit, en substance, que le fait d’apprendre qu’un membre de la famille LÖWENSTEIN avait survécu l’avait émue aux larmes. Florence – nous nous appelons désormais par nos prénoms – m’a gracieusement proposé de m’aider à déposer une demande d’indemnisation. Compte tenu de sa connaissance de Fédor, son aide m’a été précieuse. Je serai éternellement reconnaissant à Florence pour son aide désintéressée et compatissante au fil des ans. J’ai la plus haute estime pour Florence.
Il y a quelques autres personnes que je tiens à remercier. Tout d’abord, ma femme, Ann FINAN, qui a été ma plus grande supportrice et admiratrice tout au long de ces 11 années difficiles. Elle m’a aidé à créer mon blog sur l’histoire de ma famille (bruckfamilyblog.com), où j’ai écrit plus de 200 articles depuis ses débuts en 2017.
Après le rejet initial de ma demande par la CIVS début 2020, j’ai rédigé un article de blog très critique pour dénoncer cette décision. Une de mes cousines américaines éloignées a lu cet article et m’a immédiatement appelé. Elle m’a suggéré de contacter son avocat à New York. Sa branche de la famille est impliquée depuis longtemps dans une procédure complexe visant à obtenir une indemnisation pour une très importante collection de tableaux volés à son oncle à Berlin. J’ai immédiatement appelé son avocat. Il m’a mis en contact avec un avocat français formé aux États-Unis, Pierre CIRIC, qui s’occupe de demandes d’indemnisation similaires à la mienne. Pierre s’est montré extrêmement aimable, m’a fourni gratuitement de nombreux conseils juridiques et m’a mis en contact avec mon avocate française, Maître Caroline GAFFODIO. Sans Caroline et Pierre, je ne serais pas ici aujourd’hui.
Enfin, je tiens à remercier deux membres du personnel de la CIVS, David ZIVIE et Muriel DE BASTIER. Même si nous n’avons manifestement pas toujours été d’accord au fil des ans, je n’ai jamais eu l’impression que les décisions de la Commission étaient motivées par autre chose que des contraintes juridiques.
Je voudrais terminer cette présentation par une brève anecdote concernant Heinz, le frère de Fédor. Je ne l’ai rencontré qu’une seule fois, mais je me souviens de lui comme d’un homme très charismatique. Je me souviens qu’on mentionnait ses exploits pendant la guerre. Comme le font souvent les enfants, j’ai confondu réalité et fiction. J’ai toujours cru qu’il avait aidé des Juifs incarcérés à s’échapper des centres de détention. Grâce à un gentleman anglais, j’ai appris la vérité il y a quelques années.
Heinz était membre du Royal Pioneer Corps anglais. Il s’est engagé alors qu’il se trouvait en Palestine. Il a été capturé par les Allemands en 1941 pendant la bataille de Grèce et incarcéré dans divers stalags. Il s’est évadé quatre ou cinq fois. Son histoire mérite vraiment d’être racontée dans un livre, et il est d’ailleurs mentionné dans plusieurs ouvrages écrits par d’anciens prisonniers de guerre. Le public se demande peut-être pourquoi je termine mon exposé sur cette note. Tous les récits de guerre concernant Heinz soulignent à quel point il était doué pour falsifier des documents afin d’aider les prisonniers à s’échapper. Je ne doute pas que, comme Fédor, Heinz et probablement Hansi aient appris à peindre et à dessiner dès leur plus jeune âge.
Le public se demande sans doute ce qu’il adviendra des peintures de Fédor LÖWENSTEIN. J’ai accepté la demande de la Commission de les laisser en France pendant les prochaines années et pour les exposer au MAHJ (Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme) et à l’Orangerie ici à Paris, peut-être au Centre National Jean Moulin à Bordeaux lieu de leur spoliation. Ils seront au cœur d’expositions consacrées à l’art dégénéré. Une fois les expositions terminées, je déciderai de leur destination finale. Je suis désormais dépositaire d’une longue histoire qu’il ne nous faut pas oublier, je m’y emploie. A vous de me soutenir dans cette tâche
Merci de votre attention ! Y a-t-il des questions ?
ENGLISH
Ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to warmly thank you for attending this ceremony.
I am an American citizen named Richard BROOK. I will briefly explain why I am here, my connection to the artist Fédor LÖWENSTEIN, and how I learned of his existence.
I am in Paris today to reclaim three paintings by Fédor Löwenstein.
These paintings are among the 25 works seized by the Nazis at the port of Bordeaux in December 1940 while Fédor was attempting to send them to an art gallery in New York. The Nazis considered these works to be examples of what they called “degenerate art .” After their seizure, they were sent to the Jeu de Paume to await destruction. It is presumed that the 22 other works seized from Fédor were indeed destroyed. The proof that the same fate awaited the three surviving paintings can be found on the surface of the canvases. Large “X” marks were drawn on them, signifying that they were to be “vernichtet,” the German word for “destroyed.”
I like to imagine that your French heroine, Mme Rose Valland, played a key role in saving the three works before you. She was the only member of the Jeu de Paume staff to be retained by the Nazis during their occupation of Paris.
Fedor Löwenstein is often considered a Czechoslovakian artist. His father’s family was indeed from that country. It is clear that Fedor felt a deep connection to his father’s homeland. One of Fedor’s most famous paintings is entitled “The Fall.” It was inspired by the signing of the Munich Agreement on September 30, 1938. These agreements dismantled Czechoslovakia at the time and led to the annexation of the Sudetenland by Germany. This painting was inspired by “Guernica,” Picasso’s anti-war painting from 1937.
Fedor Löwenstein was born in 1901 in Munich. He was the eldest of three children. His mother, née Hedwig BRUCK, was my great-aunt (my surname BROOK is the Anglicized version of BRUCK). Hedwig was my father’s aunt, so Fédor and my father were first cousins. It is not clear how well they knew each other. Fédor and his mother died in Nice before I was born in 1950. However, as a child, I met Fédor’s younger brother and sister, Jeanne, affectionately nicknamed “Hansi,” and Heinz. My father was close to them.
I am the closest living direct descendant of Fédor LÖWENSTEIN. Neither Fédor, nor his brother, nor his sister had children. As France is a civil law country, I had to fight a legal battle lasting nearly 11 years to recover these three paintings. Under French law, the rights of two “universal legatees” take precedence over mine. However, my lawyer managed to convince the CIVS (Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation) that my extensive research and my actions, which were necessary and essential for updating the three paintings, should also be compensated. This was only possible because I was the first to discover that the CIVS was seeking to return the LÖWENSTEIN paintings to his descendants. I was also the one who filed the initial claim.
I was able to obtain possession of the paintings by waiving any financial compensation offered by the CIVS for the 22 destroyed paintings. This sum is considerable. At the risk of offending someone, I feel that I have won my case without the intervention of the courts. It might be an exaggeration to say that this is almost like a Pyrrhic victory… Two universal legatees are compensated and rewarded for work that I did and paid for. Let me say that in a country governed by common law, this would not have happened.
Let me briefly tell you how I discovered the existence of Fédor LÖWENSTEIN. My father never spoke about his family, except for his beloved sister Suzanne, who was arrested in Fayence in August 1942 and murdered in Auschwitz. I discovered the rest of my father’s family through my own genealogical research.
During my research, I discovered that the personal documents of two of Fédor’s aunts, two other famous great-aunts, were archived at the Stadtmuseum in Berlin. In 2014, I made arrangements to examine and photograph all the documents and photos. The collection included several photos of Fédor. I quickly realized that he was the older brother of Hansi and Heinz, whom I had met when I was a child.
There were also several letters, all written in German, a language I do not speak. Most were handwritten and almost impossible to decipher. But a few were typed, mainly by Fédor’s sister, “Hansi.” When I returned to the United States, I translated his typed letters, the only ones I could read, using a translation app. In a letter dated August 1946, Hansi wrote that she had sold one of Fédor’s paintings posthumously for 90,000 French francs. That seemed like an enormous sum in 1946.
Determined to find out more about Fédor LÖWENSTEIN, in 2014 I contacted an acquaintance who worked at Nice City Hall. I asked her if she could find Fédor’s obituary. Instead, she sent me links to several articles. The most informative one was about an exhibition that had taken place in 2014 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, which featured these three paintings. Around 2010, the Centre Pompidou discovered that Fédor Löwenstein’s works had been confiscated during World War II. The exhibition in Bordeaux was the first public exhibition dedicated to this discovery.
Coincidentally, 2014 was the same year that my wife Ann and I spent 13 weeks in Europe. We traveled by car from northeastern Poland to southern Spain, visiting places associated with my Jewish family’s diaspora. If we had known about the exhibition, we would certainly have made a detour to Bordeaux.
The documents I received identified Ms. Florence SARAGOZA as the exhibition curator and provided an email address. I contacted her immediately. She replied two days later. I will always remember her response. She told me, in essence, that learning that a member of the LÖWENSTEIN family had survived moved her to tears. Florence—we now call each other by our first names—graciously offered to help me file a claim for compensation. Given her knowledge of Fédor, her help was invaluable. I will be eternally grateful to Florence for her selfless and compassionate assistance over the years. I hold Florence in the highest regard.
There are a few other people I would like to thank. First of all, my wife, Ann FINAN, who has been my biggest supporter and admirer throughout these difficult 11 years. She helped me create my blog about my family history (bruckfamilyblog.com), where I have written more than 200 articles since its inception in 2017.
After my claim was initially rejected by the CIVS in early 2020, I wrote a highly critical blog post denouncing the decision. One of my distant American cousins read the post and immediately called me. She suggested I contact her lawyer in New York. Her branch of the family has long been involved in complex proceedings to obtain compensation for a very important collection of paintings stolen from her uncle in Berlin. I immediately called her lawyer. He put me in touch with a French lawyer trained in the United States, Pierre CIRIC, who handles compensation claims similar to mine. Pierre was extremely kind, provided me with a great deal of legal advice free of charge, and put me in touch with my French lawyer, Maître Caroline GAFFODIO. Without Caroline and Pierre, I would not be here today.
Finally, I would like to thank two members of the CIVS staff, David ZIVIE and Muriel DE BASTIER. Even though we clearly did not always agree over the years, I never felt that the Commission’s decisions were motivated by anything other than legal constraints.
I would like to conclude this presentation with a brief anecdote about Heinz, Fédor’s brother. I only met him once, but I remember him as a very charismatic man. I remember people talking about his exploits during the war. As children often do, I confused fact with fiction. I always believed that he had helped imprisoned Jews escape from detention centers. Thanks to an English gentleman, I learned the truth a few years ago.
Heinz was a member of the English Royal Pioneer Corps. He enlisted while he was in Palestine. He was captured by the Germans in 1941 during the Battle of Greece and imprisoned in various stalags. He escaped four or five times. His story really deserves to be told in a book, and he is mentioned in several works written by former prisoners of war. The audience may wonder why I am ending my presentation on this note. All the war stories about Heinz emphasize how skilled he was at forging documents to help prisoners escape. I have no doubt that, like Fédor, Heinz and probably Hansi learned to paint and draw from an early age.
The public is no doubt wondering what will become of Fédor LÖWENSTEIN’s paintings. I have accepted the Commission’s request to leave them in France for the next few years and to exhibit them at the MAHJ (Museum of Jewish Art and History) and the Orangerie here in Paris, and perhaps at the Centre National Jean Moulin in Bordeaux, where they were looted. They will be the focus of exhibitions devoted to degenerate art. Once the exhibitions are over, I will decide on their final destination. I am now the custodian of a long history that we must not forget, and I am committed to this task. It is up to you to support me in this endeavor.
Thank you for your attention! Are there any questions?
Note: This brief post is a prelude to upcoming posts where I will talk about thrilling events that took place during a five-week European vacation my wife and I recently took.
My wife Ann and I recently returned from a five-week trip to Europe that had us leaving from San Diego and traveling to or through parts of Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Italy (Figure 1), and France. We visited multiple out-of-the-way places connected to my Jewish family’s history. This required renting a car and driving long distances through often unfamiliar territory and on small backroads. This occasionally led to unexpected adventures and mishaps. Suffice it to say, our vacations are not conventional and are in some ways reminiscent of the semi-structured travel we took through Europe in our youth. Realistically, our advancing age makes it unlikely we’ll take more such trips in the future.
Notwithstanding the pace of our vacation, I had two primary aims during this trip. The first was to revisit the town where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was born in 1907, Ratibor, Germany [Racibórz, Poland]. As I’ve frequently discussed, my family owned a hotel restaurant in the town from ca. 1850 to 1925 known as the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. The hotel survived the Second World War intact save for the burned roof, but sadly following their rise to power the Communist authorities dismantled the establishment to “harvest” bricks to rebuild Warsaw. I have old cutlery monogrammed with the three generations of my Bruck family that owned the hotel and decided to donate them to the local museum. I also bequeathed a small briefcase of my father’s surviving dental tools. (Figure 2) While my father never practiced dentistry in his birthplace, coincidentally, the Muzeum w Raciborzu has an entire floor of its exhibit space devoted to old dental machines and equipment so donating my father’s dental instruments there made sense.
The second purpose of my trip to Europe was to attend a restitution ceremony in Paris to retrieve three paintings from the French Ministry of Culture that were seized by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940 from my father’s first cousin, a man named Fedor Löwenstein. (Figure 3) Following their confiscation, the three surviving paintings, among 25 originally expropriated, were shipped to the Jeu de Paume in Paris where they remain unrecognized as seized works until the early 2010s. Over the years, I’ve written multiple posts about my compensation claim originally filed in 2014. After 11 long contentious and litigious years, I finally achieved the goal of reclaiming the paintings. (Figure 4) The restitution ceremony took place on the 16th of September 2025 at the soon-to-be renovated and now empty Centre Pompidou in Paris, and my wife and I participated in this event where I delivered a formal speech in French, a language I speak passably well. (Figure 5)
In upcoming posts, I will tell readers more about these two events.
Sandwiched between these happenings, which occurred towards the beginning and end of our vacation, my wife and I met a great many other people I’ve encountered through my blog or developed a friendship with over the years. These rendezvous will be the source of additional forthcoming posts. I look forward to relating to readers some delicious little tales connected to our vacation that expand on posts I’ve previously written or that explore new topics.
Note: In this post, I draw a connection between two “encounters” my family had with the Nazi war criminal Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. This gives me an opportunity to discuss where so-called “decadent art” confiscated in France by the Nazis, including from my father’s first cousin, wound up and explore Göring’s role as leader of the “artistic underworld” during the Nazi Occupation.
From the window of his dental office (Figure 1) in Tiegenhof (today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland) in the Free City of Danzig, my father Dr. Otto Bruck witnessed and recorded increasingly large crowds of Danzigers (i.e., residents of the Free City of Danzig, basically a city-state) parading in support of Nazi candidates in 1933, 1934, and 1935. This culminated in the participation by Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring in the 1935 procession. (Figure 2) My father’s unique pictures of the event that took place on April 5, 1935, capture one “interaction” of my family with this psychopath who played a key role in issuing orders that led to the Final Solution.
I recently discovered another indirect interaction of Göring with my family, specifically to artworks that once belonged to one of my ancestors. Though a remote connection, I’ve chosen to link it to my father’s 1935 “encounter” with Göring because it represents the culmination of an almost 11-year journey to repatriate on behalf of my family artworks confiscated by the Nazis from my father’s first cousin in December 1940 at the Port of Bordeaux in France. As the closest and only surviving heir, the task of recovering the paintings in question has of necessity fallen to me. While I have finally prevailed in my quest to have the three surviving paintings returned, I grapple with the existential question of whether I’ve simply attained success at the expense of obtaining justice? I’ve not satisfactorily answered this question, though one of my lawyers characterizes my achievement as “nothing less than a miracle.” I would only say that since France is governed by a civil law system, obtaining justice would have been an impossible bar to clear and would have jeopardized the success I have achieved.
Let me provide more background. One of my father’s first cousins was named Fedor Löwenstein, the oldest of Rudolf Löwenstein and Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck’s three children; Hedwig Bruck was my father’s aunt and likely the one he was closest to. Fedor Löwenstein has been the subject of several previous posts. He passed away before I was born so I never met him. However, I met his two younger siblings, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein and Heinz Löwenstein as a young boy in Nice, France. (Figure 3)
As detailed in Post 105, in 2014 I uncovered a letter at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, outside Berlin, that Hansi wrote in 1946 to another aunt, Elsbeth Bruck, following her older brother’s death earlier that year. She mentioned that one of his paintings had posthumously sold for 90,000 French Francs, a sizeable amount of money at the time. In the process I discovered Fedor had been an accomplished artist.
After further investigation, I learned that France’s ministère de la culture, the French Ministry of Culture had uncovered three paintings by Fedor Löwenstein at the Centre Pompidou in the early 2010s that had been confiscated by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940 and sent to the Jeu de Paume (more on this below); the three paintings were among a cache of 25 of his works originally seized on their way to New York, the remainder presumed to have been destroyed by the Nazis as examples of so-called “decadent art.” According to the information I discovered in 2014, France’s ministère de la culture is looking to return rediscovered stolen art to surviving heirs.
Let me provide more context. In 2014 my wife and I spent 13 weeks in Europe driving from northeast Poland to south-central Spain visiting places associated with my Jewish ancestors’ diaspora. Coincidentally, that year, soon after the Centre Pompidou recognized Fedor Löwenstein’s works to be stolen art, they were exhibited at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. (Figure 4) Given our extensive travels that year, had we known about Fedor Löwenstein and the exhibition, my wife and I would certainly have detoured there to see the artworks. Regrettably, I only learned of the exposition following my return stateside.
Online materials identified the curator of the exhibit, a Mme Florence Saragoza. Two days after learning about her, we were in communication. In her response, she wrote words that resonate with me to this day and probably will for the remainder of my life. Paraphrasing, she wrote words to the effect that learning that a descendant of Fedor Löwenstein survives brought tears to her eyes. While Florence and I have never met, a situation we hope to rectify at the upcoming restitution ceremony in Paris later this year, I consider her a friend who has aided and always supported my repatriation claim. I have tremendous admiration for her.
Given my background as an archaeologist, it was coincidental that at the time we first communicated Mme Saragoza was the Director of the Musée Crozatier in Le Puy-en-Velay, France, an archaeology, Velay crafts, fine arts, and science museum. (Figure 5) Today, Florence is the Director of the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi, France. Florence’s familiarity with Fedor Löwenstein’s art given her involvement as curator of the 2014 Bordeaux exhibition was exceedingly helpful when she offered to help me file my claim with France’s ministère de la culture’s CIVS.
to recommend measures to compensate for material and bank-related anti-Semitic spoliations that occurred in France between 1940 and 1944, exclusively based on referrals from heirs;
to recommend measures to compensate for the anti-Semitic spoliation of cultural property in France between 1940 and 1944, at the request of any person concerned or on its own initiative;
to recommend the restitution of cultural property looted in the context of Nazi anti-Semitic persecution, including outside France, between 1933 and 1945, when this property is held in a public or similar collection.
Let me shift gears and discuss the Jeu de Paume in Paris where works of art confiscated by Nazis from Jewish painters, private collectors, gallery owners, and art dealers living in France were shipped.
According to their mission statement, today, the Jeu de Paume is “. . .an art center that exhibits and promotes all forms of mechanical and electronic imagery (photography, cinema, video, installation, online creation, etc.) from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It produces and coproduces exhibitions but also organizes film programs, symposiums and seminars, as well as educational activities. Jeu de Paume also publishes a few art publications each year. With its high-profile exhibitions of established, less known, and emerging artists, this venue ties together different narrative strands, mixing the historic and the contemporary.”
The Jeu de Paume, however, did not begin as an art center. It was constructed in 1862 in the Tuileries Garden as an area in which to play an early variant of tennis, the so-called jeu de paulme, literally the “palm game.” Nowadays, this sport is known as real tennis or court tennis, while in France it is called courte paume. Originally an indoor precursor of tennis played without rackets, thus the “game of the hand,” rackets were eventually introduced.
The relevance of the Jeu de Paume for the purpose of the present post was its use from 1940 to 1944 as the place to store Nazi plunder looted by the regime’s Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce. This was the Nazi Party’s organization dedicated to appropriating cultural property during WWII. It was under the command of the Nazi Party’s chief ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg. The plundered works included masterpieces from the collections of French Jewish families like the Rothschilds, the David-Weills, the Bernheims, and noted dealers including Paul Rosenberg who specialized in impressionist and post-impressionist works. As mentioned above, the works of Fedor Löwenstein confiscated in December 1940 in Bordeaux were among those that wound up at the Jeu de Paume (Figure 6), 25 pieces of art according to the information gathered by Florence Saragoza from contemporary documents and included in my repatriation claim.
Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring directed that the looted art would first be divided between Adolf Hitler and himself. Towards this end, Göring visited the Jeu de Paume twenty times between November 1940 and November 1942. (Figures 7-8) The art dealer Bruno Lohse (1912-2007), art historian and specialist in Flemish and Dutch masters of the 17th century, attracted Göring’s attention because of his art knowledge. (Figure 9) He essentially became Goring’s envoy in charge of enriching his collection by tracking down the most beautiful works in French art collections. (Polack & Prevet, 2014) In conjunction with each of Göring’s visits, Lohse staged special expositions of newly looted art objects, from which Göring is known to have selected at least 594 pieces for his own collection; the remaining pieces were destined for Adolf Hitler’s unrealized art museum, the so-called Führermuseum, in Linz, Austria.
Figure 10 is a plan view of the Jeu de Paume. Salle 15, room 15, was specifically referred to as the “Salle des Martyrs,” the “Martyrs’ Room.” This is the room that was designated for so-called “degenerate art,” that’s to say modern art deemed “unworthy” in the eyes of the Nazis and slated for destruction. Much of the art dealer Paul Rosenberg’s professional and private collection wound up here, as did some, perhaps all, of Fedor Löwenstein’s paintings.
Joseph Goebbels was the chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. He had privately decreed that the degenerate works of art should be sold to obtain foreign currency to fund the building of the Führermuseum and the wider war effort. Göring used this decree to personally appoint a series of ERR-approved dealers to liquidate the looted art and then pass the funds to him to enlarge his personal art collection. Much of the looted art designated as degenerate was sold via Switzerland. Unsold art, including works by Picasso and Dali, as well as my lesser-known relative Fedor Löwenstein, were destroyed in a bonfire on the grounds of the Jeu de Paume on the night of 27th of July 1942. This unparalleled vandalism was unfortunately not unprecedented; the Nazis had perpetuated a similar outrage in Berlin in 1939 when they destroyed 4,000 works of German “degenerate” art.
In a March 2014 article entitled “Bruno Lohse and Herman Göring,” the authors Emmanuelle Polack and Alain Prevet, discuss the art market in Paris under the Nazi Occupation. They characterize it as undeniably flourishing, the “. . .euphoria (being) . . .a reflection of a massive influx of goods taken from people of Jewish faith and from all opponents of the Third Reich.” The authors characterize Göring as the true leader of this “artistic underworld.” They use the French word “rabatteur” to describe essentially the “beaters” and “canvassers” Göring surrounded himself with, people such as Bruno Lohse, to flush out collections of great value.
I’ve included three photographs (Figures 7-9) in this post that immortalized at least two of the 20 twenty visits Hermann Göring made to the Jeu de Paume. They are attributed to German staff working for the ERR, either Rudolph Scholz or Heinz Simokat, both photographers at the Jeu de Paume. The one of Göring and Lohse is described as follows: “Comfortably installed on a sofa in a museum office, requisitioned for the benefit of the Parisian service of the ERR, under the satisfied gaze of Bruno Lohse, Hermann Goring carefully examines a monograph devoted to Rembrandt, most likely one of the publications of the German art historian Wilhelm R. Valentiner, a great painter’s specialist since his thesis in 1904.”
Preserved in the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (FR-MAE Centre des archives diplomatiques de La Corneuve, 20160007AC/7) are 14 negatives showing the rooms of the Jeu de Paume museum taken after November 1, 1940. This date corresponds to when the museum was made available to the ERR to store the confiscated works of art plundered by this organization in France. The shots were likely also taken by the photographers working at the Jeu de Paume. The photographs have been optimized thanks to a specific digitization of the details. This has allowed for the identification of 232 works of art. Among the 14 negatives are two photographs of room 15, the Salle des Martyrs. More on this below.
A list exists of the works present at the Jeu de Paume at the beginning of 1942. The notes were compiled by Rose Valland (Figures 11a-f) and sent to her boss Jacques Jaujard on March 10, 1942; Rose Valland was an unpaid museum employee and the only one retained by the Nazis upon their takeover of the Jeu de Paume and was a clandestine member of the French resistance. The list translated into French, most probably surreptitiously, is an inventory drawn up by the ERR staff. It has the advantage of including a description of the looted works and providing the names of the people from whom they were plundered. The comparison of this list with the works visible on the two photographs of room 15 has made it possible for museum staff to identify many works that were previously unknown or poorly attributed. Figures 11b-c include a few details of some of Fedor Löwenstein’s confiscated works of art from Rose Valland’s list.
As confiscated art passed through the building, Rose Valland eavesdropped on German conversations and covertly kept notes on where the looted pieces were being shipped. Her records were instrumental in the recovery of tens of thousands of artworks, many of which were returned to rightful owners. Yet about 70 of the paintings belonging to the French art dealer Paul Rosenberg, for example, are still missing.
Let me conclude this post by mentioning two ERR photographs of room 15, the Salle des Martyrs, where some of Fedor Löwenstein’s confiscated paintings were hung. Until recently, I was uncertain how many photographs of the Jeu de Paume existed. One picture I had stumbled upon, then lost track of, showed Rose Valland standing in the Salle des Martyrs. (Figure 12) Relocating this picture was of paramount interest because clearly visible in the background is one of Fedor Löwenstein’s paintings, the one known as “Composition (Paysage),” which happens to be one of the three paintings I’ll be repatriating. (Figure 13)
Unable to relocate this image on my own, I asked one of my acquaintances at the CIVS if she could help me track it down. Of passing interest to readers but of great personal interest is that Rose Valland has been “photoshopped” into the Salle des Martyrs. If she was ever photographed there, such a picture does not survive; I’ve included an authentic one of Rose standing elsewhere in the Jeu de Paume. (Figure 14) The one I’d come across was based on a photo of Rose taken elsewhere where she was “inserted” into room 15. I include a copy of that original. (Figure 15)
The two contemporary authentic photos of the Salle des Martyrs both show Fedor Löwenstein paintings. So-called View 1 (Figure 16) includes two Loewenstein paintings. Photographed is a fragmentary section of an unknown painting (Figure 17), and a second one titled “La Ville Moderne,” “The Modern City.” (Figures 18a-b) Regrettably, the latter two were lost or destroyed. View 2 (Figure 19), the one where Rose Valland has been photoshopped into the image, includes the still existing painting “Composition (Paysage).” This is one of the three paintings I will be repatriating.
Besides the painting “Composition (Paysage),” I’ll also be acquiring artworks entitled “les Peupliers” (Figure 20) and “Arbres.” (Figure 21) Neither of these paintings is pictured in the ERR photographs. Having personally seen the three paintings, it is obvious the Nazis intended to destroy them as evidenced by the fact that now faintly visible red Xs were scrawled across their painted surfaces. Whether Rose Valland played a role in saving Löwenstein’s paintings is unknown.
“History of CIVS.” Premier Ministère, Commission pour la restitution des biens et l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliations antisémites (Commission for the Restitution of Property and Compensation for Victims of Anti-Semitic Spoliation), Updated 19 April 2024.
Note: In this post, I discuss my great-uncle Rudolf Löwenstein and the Rudolf Mosse “Annoncen-Expedition-Reklame-Büro,” advertising expedition or agency, for which he worked.
In an imagined account that may have taken place in my father’s life almost 95 years ago, in Post 71 I pictured the day he learned that his uncle, Rudolf Löwenstein, had died in a plane crash. (Figure 1) The date was the 22nd of August 1930, when his uncle was returning to Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland] in the Free City of Danzig from visiting family in then-Czechoslovakia. At the time, I’m certain my father was living with his uncle and his paternal aunt, Rudolf (1872-1930) and Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck (1870-1949), and likely two of their three children, while apprenticing as a dentist. My father would eventually open his own dental practice in April 1932 in a town 40km (i.e., ca. 25 miles) to the east of Danzig in Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland], also located in the Free City of Danzig.
As mentioned, Rudolf and Hedwig Löwenstein had three children, the eldest, Fedor Löwenstein (1901-1946), who died in 1946 before I was born. Hedwig passed away in 1949, also before I was born. However, as a child I met Rudolf and Hedwig’s two youngest offspring, Jeanne Goff, née Löwenstein (1902-1986) and Heinz Löwenstein (1905-1979), in Nice, France. (Figure 2) If the Löwenstein surname sounds familiar to regular readers, it’s because I’ve written multiple posts about Fedor Löwenstein and his brother Heinz Löwenstein.
As a reminder, Fedor Löwenstein was an accomplished artist, 25 of whose artworks were intercepted and confiscated by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940 as they were being shipped to New York: Long time readers know I’ve been engaged in a more than 10-yearlong battle with the French Ministry of Culture to recover the three surviving paintings. Heinz Löwenstein, by contrast, fought as a member of England’s Royal Pioneer Corps and was captured in the Battle of Greece in 1941, and incarcerated and escaped from German stalags no fewer than five times. His story is truly movie-worthy.
In any case, based on what I know, Jeanne and Heinz Löwenstein were the two cousins my father was closest to. (Figures 3-4) He lived with them in Danzig, then later near Jeanne and her mother in Nice, France. The fact that these are my father’s only cousins whom I met growing up supports the notion they were close. Another of my father’s first cousins lived in New York City, where I grew up. Because my father didn’t bother to tell her about my birth, she never again spoke to him. Suffice it to say, I never met her. With rare exceptions my father was not into family, a phenomenon I don’t fully comprehend.
A brief digression. I have an ancestral tree on ancestry.com with around 1,200 names. I use it to orient myself to the people I write about on my blog. Where available, I attach images or pictures of family members, though for long-ago ancestors sometimes the best I can do is find a painted rendering of them. In the case of Rudolf Löwenstein, I’ve not yet uncovered a picture of him though I remain optimistic one or more survive. The difficulty is that none of Rudolf and Hedwig’s children had children of their own so tracking down who may have inherited Löwenstein family photos and personal papers and where they may have wound up, assuming they’ve survived, is challenging.
My paternal grandfather Felix Bruck (1864-1927) and his seven siblings including Hedwig Bruck were all born in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the same place as my father. Hedwig and Rudolf Löwenstein were married there in 1899. For reasons that are unclear to me their first child Fedor Löwenstein was born in 1901 in Munich, Germany. Their two younger children, however, were born in Danzig, respectively, in 1902 and 1905.
It’s safe to assume that no later than 1902, Rudolf and Hedwig Löwenstein had relocated to Danzig, presumably from Munich. However, contemporary Danzig address books first list Rudolf Löwenstein in the 1905 directory. (Figure 5) His occupation at the time was “Generalvertreter fur Rudolf Mosse und Paul Stabernack & Co., Berlin,” or General Agent for Rudolf Mosse & Co. The 1905 address book identifies this as the “Zentral-Bureau fur jederlei Reklame,” or the Central office for all kinds of advertising. Above the bolded ad Rudolf Löwenstein is identified as a “Kfm. (=Kaufman), Vertreter d.(=der) Annoncen-Expedition,” or translated literally as “merchant or businessman, agent for advertisement expedition.” Curious as to what precisely an advertisement expedition is, I investigated.
In German Wikipedia, I learned about Rudolf Mosse & Co., the company for who Rudolf Löwenstein was an agent. Rudolf Mosse (1843-1920) was a German-Jewish publisher, company founder, and businessman. He founded Rudolf Mosse Zeitungs-Annoncen-Expedition on the 1st of January 1867 in Berlin. He started by advertising his own business in advertisements but quickly went from being a mere intermediary to being a provider of advertising space, which he sold to advertisers. As one of the first publishers, he accomplished this by leasing entire advertising pages from several newspapers. This was a highly successful business model, so much so that five years after he founded his company it had 250 branches in Germany and abroad. Obviously, one of these branches was in Danzig and Rudolf Löwenstein was its local General Agent.
Let me say a little more, generally, about “Annoncen-Expedition,” but more specifically about Rudolf Mosse & Co. This is also drawn from German Wikipedia (i.e., U.S. Wikipedia does not include mention of these advertising expeditions). In the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, advertising expeditions mediated the placement of advertisements between newspapers and advertisers. This was only possible after the abolition in Prussia of the so-called “insertion obligation” on the 1st of January 1847. Prior to this date, advertisements were only allowed to be published in intelligence magazines. After the abolition of the insertion obligation, advertisements could also be placed in daily newspapers.
While Rudolf Mosse was a major player in the German advertising landscape during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his company was not the first advertising expedition in Germany. In 1855, the first advertising expedition was founded in Altona by the Haasenstein advertising agency. Similar companies had already emerged earlier in the Anglo-American world, as well as in France. Haasenstein collected advertisements from advertising customers, sold them to newspapers and collected a commission.
In Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and in many other cities, advertising expeditions were also founded as pure intermediaries of advertising space. Soon newspapers financed more than 50 percent of their operations by advertising, which made them attractive capital investments.
At first, the advertisements differed only slightly from the rest of the paper, forcing advertisers to find a suitable publication environment for their ads. In the decades after the founding of the German Empire in 1871, however, and amid industrialization and mass production, advertisements began to stand out and be distinctive. The advertising expeditions, above all Rudolf Mosse as mentioned above, leased the entire advertising space of some newspapers and thus went from simply being an intermediary to being a provider of advertising space. In addition, the advertising expeditions now also advised their customers on the design and placement of the advertisements.
In 1872, Rudolf Mosse founded the “Berliner Tageblatt,” followed in 1889 by the founding of the “Berliner Morgenzeitung.” Mosse purchased printers and expanded his expedition to become a newspaper publisher, thus competing with other publishers. Effectively, the advertising expeditions had grown into large media companies and were accused of favoring (their own) newspapers and influencing the content of the other publications in which ads were placed.
Between 1918 and 1929, there were fierce price wars between the advertising expeditions. Some became the objects of speculation for investors. By the mid-1920s, branches of American advertising agencies first opened in Germany, all of which operated as full-service companies. By 1932, Rudolf Mosse & Co., which had grown into the largest advertising expedition at the time, ran into financial difficulties and was acquired by a German GmbH (i.e., “Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung,” a “limited liability company (LLC)” which offers limited liability to its owners and is comparable to an American LLC).
On the 12th of September 1933, the Nazis passed the Gesetz über Wirtschaftswerbung, the “1933 Commercial Advertising Act.” This created the legal basis for the establishment of an “Advertising Council of the German Economy.” This Council served to synchronize the advertising industry in the Nazi state. The advertising expeditions were de facto brought into line and were now under the control of the Ministeriums für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
Following Rudolf Löwenstein’s untimely death in 1930, his son Heinz took over the business although the business was still listed under his father’s name. (Figure 6) The 1933 Danzig address book list introduces a slightly different business term, namely, “Reklame-Büro,” which translates literally as “advertising agency.” As opposed to an advertising expedition, I think this was a company that created and managed advertising campaigns for other businesses, developing marketing strategies to promote products or services across media channels. In other words this was a full-service company versus one that merely helped facilitate the placement of advertisements in newspapers and elsewhere.
While Heinz Löwenstein appears to still have been the General Agent for Rudolf Mosse advertising expedition in 1933, I strongly suspect it was probably the last year he was in business. The 1933 Commercial Advertising Act would have severely limited his ability as a Jew to freely run his advertising agency. Based on an unclear reference on one of his military papers, I have reason to believe that he and his wife immigrated to Palestine ca. 1935, whereupon he joined Britain’s Royal Pioneer Corps.
There is one final thing I want to discuss regarding Heinz Löwenstein’s occupation as indicated in the 1934 Danzig address book, namely, the use of the German term “propagandist.” Like me, given the years in which Heinz operated the “Reklame-Büro. Annoncen-Expedit.” after Hitler came to power, readers might erroneously assume he was a mouthpiece for the Nazi government. “Propagandist,” in the English sense is defined as “someone who creates and spreads propaganda, which is communication used to influence or persuade an audience, often with a specific agenda or viewpoint, and may not be objective.” I can’t emphasize strongly enough how implausible it would have been for Heinz to parrot Nazi ideology, given his life history. Heinz clearly saw the handwriting on the wall and, in my opinion, departed for Palestine as soon as he was able to after Hitler came to power.
Given what I believe to be true about Heinz, I turned to German Wikipedia to understand the use of the term “propagandist” in German. A German synonym for propagandist is Verkaufsfördererung. Expectedly, the term means something very different in German, a sales promoter, who is involved “in sales promotions, namely, all temporary activities with a promotional character [that] are combined within the marketing communication policy, which serve to activate the market participants (sales bodies, dealers, customers) to increase sales results, and support other marketing measures.” Use of this term in the context of running an advertising agency makes much more sense to describe the work that Heinz Löwenstein was involved in.
This suggests one final thought. Growing up my German-born father would occasionally use a German aphorism or saying to make a point. Asked to explain, he would tell me there was no comparable saying in English. While the difference between use of “propagandist” in English versus German is not quite the same thing, it is worth bearing in mind that online translators may occasionally give you inaccurate translations so further investigation may be required.
Note: In this post, I discuss some previously unknown details about my father, Gary Otto Brook (Dr. Otto Bruck), and his life before and during WWII uncovered in a file I was given by a staffer at the German Embassy in connection with my German citizenship application. The staffer ordered this file from an office in Saarburg, Germany, where my father’s 1950s dossier wound up after his compensation petition was processed.
In Post 166, I related to readers my ongoing endeavor to obtain German citizenship. The process is moving apace thanks to the assistance of an extraordinarily helpful staffer at the German Embassy in Los Angeles. I recently delivered the preliminary application and only require one additional certificate to complete my submission. For reasons I will explain below obtaining citizenship could take 18 months or more. The recovery of an unexpected document is a direct result of my ongoing efforts and is the subject of this post.
Based on my vague childhood recollections of my father’s attempt to obtain some measure of recompense for the loss of his dental practice in the Free City of Danzig during the era of the National Socialists, I would have expected an application to exist supporting his petition. I was just not sure where I might find it. However, I’m now in possession of my father’s 13-page compensation file he originally submitted in the 1950s to the then-Federal Republic of Germany. (Figure 1) The file was ordered by the staffer at the German Embassy from Saarburg, Germany, from an office I did not know existed. While alone insufficient to fulfill application requirements, it bolsters my petition. I will discuss some of the contents below.
Though not particularly revelatory in a broad sense, the petition pinpoints some of the chronological events in my father’s life providing a more nuanced understanding of their timing. The events are told firsthand in a matter of fact-style chronicling when they took place. However, they mask an undercurrent of extreme loss that leaves me almost 90 years later deeply saddened. It’s not what’s written but what’s implied about how my father’s life and by extension the lives of so many other Holocaust victims were extinguished or upended that reverberates to this day. Possibly because of the fragmented nature of our ongoing political discourse this seems even more relevant.
A related issue I’ve been grappling with is the question of success versus justice. Suffice it here to say that for most Holocaust victims or their descendants no amount of financial compensation, what could be construed as a “successful” outcome, can ever make up for the loss they suffered. Ergo, they can never obtain real justice. This is an existential question that merits further consideration outside of my blog. However, it’s a question I’ve been pondering in the context of my longstanding claim against the French Ministry of Culture to obtain compensation and repatriation for paintings confiscated by the Nazis from one of my father’s first cousins in December 1940. Notwithstanding the fact that I’m the closest surviving relative to my father’s cousin, because France has a civil law legal system, I’ve been denied the opportunity to obtain justice on behalf of my family. As my petition nears resolution, this will be the subject of an upcoming post.
Back to the subject of this post. As I proceed, I’ll describe a few of the documents attached to my father’s petition which shed further light on what I know. I need to emphasize that much of the new information about my father comes from a dry recitation of events, not from any detailed discussion about what my father thought or felt about these events. Still, reading between the lines conceals disappointment and resignation to his fate. In fact, growing up, my father often used the word “kismet,” which comes from the Arabic word “qisma” which literally means “to divide” or “allot.” As a practical matter “kismet” is used to describe something that happens by chance like it was meant to be.
One document in my father’s petition is titled “Lebenslauf” (Figure 2), translated as curriculum vitae. Most often, a curriculum vitae summarizes a job applicant’s qualifications from the standpoint of work experience, education, and skills. In terms of what my father includes, it harkens back to its original Latin meaning, “the course of one’s life.” My father, born in 1907 (Figure 3), indicates his schooling involved three years in elementary school followed by nine years in a Humanistic Grammar School. He passed his so-called “Abitur,” basically his high school-leaving examination, in 1926. Then, from 1926 to 1930, he studied dentistry at the universities of Berlin, Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], and Munich. He qualified to be a dentist on the 8th of May 1930. During 1930 and 1931, my father apprenticed, assisted, and temporarily filled in for dentists in Königsbrück, Berlin, Allenstein [today: Olsztyn, Poland], and Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland].
Let me digress for a moment. As implied above, the broad outline of my father’s life was previously known to me. Still, there are a few surprises. I was aware my father studied dentistry at the University of Berlin since I have his diploma from there, but it was a complete revelation that he studied at the universities of Breslau and Munich. His link to Breslau is less surprising given that the Bruck family had longstanding ties with this city, including the fact that my father’s older brother, Dr. Fedor Bruck, received his dental degree here. However, the fact that my father studied dentistry in Breslau makes me wonder whether he apprenticed with his renowned relative, Dr Walther Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) (Figure 4), dentist to Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Kaiser, his family, and other royalty. This would strongly suggest my father trained with a family member who was exceptionally skilled in his craft.
Munich and Breslau are about eight hours apart today by car. There is no indication how long my father studied in Munich, although this merits further investigation.
As far as the four places where my father apprenticed in 1930 and 1931, none are surprising. I have in my possession letters of recommendation from the respective dentists in Königsbrück (Figure 5) and Allenstein (Figure 6) commending my father on his exemplary work in their absence. Furthermore, since my father attended dental school in Berlin, then later lived in the Free City of Danzig, I would have expected he would have apprenticed in these places. In the case of Danzig, I even have a picture showing him there in his dental scrubs. (Figure 7)
Let me continue. I know from a note in my father’s surviving papers that he had his own dental practice in a town in the Free City of Danzig named Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] from April 1932 through April 1937; this town is approximately 40km (25 miles) east of Danzig. While it is technically accurate to say my father maintained an independent dental practice until April 1937, as a practical matter because of the Nazi imposed boycott of Jewish businesses, he’d ceased having patients by 1936.
My father’s compensation file includes another informative document, an “Eidesstattliche Erklaerung” (Figures 8a-b), translated as affidavit. Here my father writes that he sold his dental equipment and instruments at less than ten percent of their market value. To compound the affront, patients whom my father had treated before the boycott went into full effect stiffed him to the tune of what today amounts to many thousands of dollars.
One particularly intriguing document included with my father’s compensation application is titled “Fuhrungszeugnis,” a “Certificate of Good Conduct.” (Figure 9) It is dated the 28th of April 1937 from Tiegenhof, and signed by “Die Polizeivertbeltung,” Tiegenhof’s “Police Bureaucracy.” It gives the precise dates my father’s dental practice was in business, from the 14th of April 1932 until the 28th of April 1937. Why my father would have wanted such a document is completely understandable, though why authorities would have felt compelled to document his service when they no longer wanted it in Germany, or the Free City of Danzig is mystifying.
Following the sale of his dental equipment in Tiegenhof, my father moved to the city of Danzig in April 1937, where, in his own words, “he took over the representation of dental colleagues until March 1938.” I presume the anonymity of this larger city, where my father had multiple professional colleagues, allowed him to continue working for a while. This is like what my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck did after he was forced to shutter his own dental practice in Liegnitz [today: Legnica, Poland] in Lower Silesia after Hitler came to power in January 1933. He moved to Berlin, working under the auspices of non-Jewish dentists until that too became impossible.
I’d always been uncertain where my father spent the period between April 1937 and March 1938. I mistakenly thought he might have joined his brother in Berlin, possibly working there. Based on photographs in his albums, however, I knew that by early March 1938 he’d permanently left Germany since photos show him transiting through Vienna, Austria following his departure. (Figure 10) He was headed to Fiesole, Italy, outside Florence, to join his sister and brother-in-law, who were then operating a bed-and-breakfast there.
What caused my father to leave Germany before Kristallnacht on 9-10 November 1938 is not entirely clear, though I have no doubt he clearly saw the handwriting on the wall. The absence of a wife and any children made his departure a relatively easy decision.
A stray sentence in the affidavit accompanying his compensation petition suggests my father may have had a plan. The two first cousins with whom my father was closest were Jeanne “Hansi” Löwenstein (Figure 11) and her brother Heinz Löwenstein. (Figure 12) Both were born in Danzig, and I strongly suspect that while doing his dental apprenticeship in Danzig in 1930-1931, he lived with his aunt, Hedwig Löwenstein, nee Bruck (Figure 13), and these two cousins. Following the death of her husband Rudolf Löwenstein in a plane crash on the 22nd of August 1930, subject of Post 71, Hedwig and the family moved to Nice, France, along France’s Côte d’Azur. The precise date of their move is unknown.
Following his departure from Germany, I don’t think my father ever permanently intended to stay in Fiesole, Italy. I think his intended destination at the time was Nice, France. My father writes in his affidavit that he was unable to obtain a work permit in France so finally enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in November 1938.
Suffice it here to say that as I learn more about France’s complicity with the Nazis during WWII, I never fail to get angry anew at France’s treatment of my father and his family before, during, and after the war. For me this still seems very relevant, particularly as France has fought for ten years since 2014 to retain paintings rendered by Fedor Löwenstein (older brother of Hansi and Heinz) confiscated by the Nazis in December 1940 in Bordeaux and stored in Paris since, the provenance of which was only uncovered in 2010. I digress.
Though of no particular interest to readers, the exact dates of my father’s engagements in the French Foreign Legion (FFL) and England’s Pioneer Corps are mentioned. My father was in the FFL (Figure 14) in Algeria from the 9th of November 1938 until the 9th of November 1943. He was in the English Army (Figure 15) from the 19th of November 1943 until the 5th of May 1946, thus for two years 224 days. I have a picture of my father in his English Army uniform with his comrades-in-arm, taken in September 1945 in Rome, Italy. (Figure 16) Appearing to be almost a farewell gathering, I mistakenly concluded that my father had been demobilized from the English Army in Rome. Contrary to my assumption, in his affidavit my father writes he was demobilized in Nice, France.
For readers interested in knowing what I’ve learned about my father’s time in Nice, I discussed this in Post 26. After his discharge from the English army, my father procured a permit to work as a dental technician but was unable to work as a dentist. Because he had no connections, he could barely make ends meet.
Other information of personal interest is the precise date my father left France, the 2nd of June 1948, and the exact date he landed in America, the 7th of June 1948. Having previously found my father’s naturalization card (Figure 17) on ancestry.com, I knew he became an American citizen through Court Order #7509013, dated the 19th of July 1955. Though both the “Bruck” and “Brook” names appear on the card, I’d never been sure if he changed his name upon landing in America in 1948 or upon becoming an American citizen. Well, as it turns out, my father changed his name to Gary Otto Brook in 1955.
The final document in my father’s compensation file I’ll discuss is titled “Staatsangehorigkeitsausweis.” (Figure 18) Issued in Berlin on the 22nd of November 1927, this is my father’s German nationality card. I have the original among my father’s surviving papers, and as implied above it bolsters my claim for German citizenship.
As to the restitution my father received for the loss of his dental practice and livelihood, it amounted to a pittance, approximately $2,500. in 1966. Unlike my uncle Fedor who miraculously survived the entire war hidden in Berlin, my father never received a regular pension from the German government.
Let me return to something I alluded to above, namely the reason for the lengthy delay in processing German citizenship applications. The explanation is rich. Because of the tragic events of October 7, 2023, in Israel, Israelis of German descent are applying in droves for German citizenship.
In closing, let me be clear that I don’t expect the above to be of much interest to readers. However, it highlights that occasionally one happens upon a primary source document related to one’s ancestors that fill in some gaps in one’s understanding of their lives. In my case, the recovery of my father’s compensation petition was a fortuitous outcome of my German citizenship application.
Note: In this post, I detail further discoveries about Heinz Löwenstein, my father’s first cousin, and his successful escape from Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf [today:Łambinowice, Poland] in around November 1943. Relying on an account of the escape of South African Lt. Colonel Charles Telfer Howie held in the same Stalag, I infer the means and route by which Heinz might have escaped.
With the help of Brian Cooper, an English friend who specializes in the study of English World War II prisoners of war, I’ve written multiple posts about the whereabouts and survival during the war of Heinz Löwenstein, my father’s first cousin. Because I met him as a child and heard confusing accounts that he was an “escape artist,” his story has always intrigued me. What could this possibly mean in the context of the mass arrests and deportation and internment of Jews in extermination camps? It seemed unlikely that Heinz could have escaped from one of these. Because no one bothered to explain this, my childhood imagination conjured up wild explanations, none of which in retrospect approach reality.
As readers know, I’ve written extensively about Heinz’s wartime experiences and escapades. I refer followers to these earlier stories of Heinz’s enlistment in the British Pioneer Corps in Palestine in around 1935, his capture during the Battle of Greece in April 1941, his subsequent incarceration in Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf [today: Łambinowice, Poland] in 1941 (Figure 1), his multiple escapes from there between 1941 and 1943, and more.
Relying on prisoner records, POW liberation questionnaires and exit interviews, and various books and accounts by former POWs, I thought I’d exhausted what more I would learn about the circumstances of Heinz’s internments and escapes. However, following the publication of my most recent post, Post 163, Brian brought to my attention two additional books he uncovered where he’s mentioned. The first is entitled “Agent by Accident” by Claerwen Howie, the second “Facing Fearful Odds” by John Jay. Because Heinz is featured prominently in Claerwen Howie’s book, I will focus on this one because it provides in-depth details on how her father-in-law, Lt. Col. Charles Telfer Howie, escaped from Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf, the same Stalag in which Heinz was incarcerated.
As a quick correction, I mistakenly noted in Post 163 that Lt. Col. Howie had escaped from Stalag VIIB in Memmingen, Bavaria, near Munich. At the time, I questioned the likelihood of this having happened since Howie and his fellow escapee, Tibor Weinstein, eventually wound up in Budapest, Hungary, a great distance from Munich across very hostile territory. While Howie and Weinstein traveled a large distance following their escape from Stalag VIIIB, it involved a more direct and less dangerous route.
Claerwen Howie’s book is based on in-depth interviews she conducted with her father-in-law and on question-and-answer sessions she had with some of his contemporaries, including people who helped him escape from Stalag VIIIB and Hungarians, Dutchmen, and Brits he met and who assisted him once he reached Hungary. Though Heinz Löwenstein made his getaway from Stalag VIIIB perhaps a month after Howie, he likely followed a similar trajectory to freedom. For this reason, I discuss in detail Howie’s escape as a way of describing the situation at Stalag VIIIB as well as talking about some of the issues and challenges both men likely faced.
Charles Telfer Howie was a Lt. Colonel in the South African army captured by German Generalfeldmarschall (field marshal) Erwin Rommel’s troops during the Siege of Tobruk, in Libya, as part of the Western Desert campaign of the Mediterranean and Middle East theater of WWII. To remind readers, following his flight from Stalag VIIIB Howie made his way to Budapest and coordinated with opposition leaders in Hungary on an ultimately unsuccessful effort to get Hungary to abandon the Axis alliance in favor of the Allies prior to the Nazi occupation of Hungary on the 19th of March 1944. Self-proclaimed “Captain” Roy Natusch, an escapee from Stalag XVIIIA in Wolfsburg, Austria who similarly made his way to Budapest and met Howie, also discussed in Post 163, was intimately involved in Howie’s clandestine efforts to “flip” Hungary.
In any case, in the wake of his capture in Tobruk, Howie arrived in Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf on Sunday, the 19th of September 1943, following a lengthy and interrupted journey that included stays in Benghazi, Libya; and Lecce, Bari, Aversa, Florence, and Modena, Italy. Knowing that as an officer he would within days be transferred to an Oflag (Offizierslager), an officers’ camp where security was tighter, Howie wasted no time establishing contact with the camp’s escape committee. He immediately looked for the first non-commissioned officer who could take him to the Vertrauensmann or SBO, Senior British Officer, in charge of the camp. This was Regimental Sergeant-Major Sherriff of the Welsh Guards, also captured in Tobruk. Coincidentally, Sherriff was a WWII prisoner who was returned to the same Stalag where he’d been held as a POW during WWI.
The escape committee included many Canadiens who’d been captured on the 19th of August 1942 during the disastrous raid on heavily fortified Dieppe; ergo, it was informally referred to as the “Dieppe escape committee.” Operation Jubilee or the Dieppe Raid was a catastrophic Allied amphibious attack on the German-occupied port of Dieppe in northern France, during WWII. Over 6,500 infantry, predominantly Canadian, supported by a regiment of tanks, were put ashore from a naval force operating under the protection of Royal Air Force (RAF) fighters. The port was to be captured and held for a short period, to test the feasibility of a landing and to gather intelligence. While the operation was a fiasco with mass casualties, particularly among the Canadians, the Allies learned lessons that influenced the success of the D-Day landings.
According to what Lt. Col. Howie reported to his daughter-in-law, conditions in Stalag VIIIB were predictably deplorable. There was chronic overcrowding which affected the men’s health. Dysentery, fleas, and lice were constant problems; food rations were poor, the water supply inadequate, and coal to heat the barracks meager. Each prisoner was given one thin blanket and a spoon. Red Cross parcels were relied on to supplement what prisoners were meted out.
The large camp was surrounded by two barbed-wire fences running parallel to one another. Adjacent to the outer fence was a path along which the guards patrolled. Approximately six feet from the inner perimeter fence was a low tripwire. Crossing this wire would result in being shot. The Stalag was divided into compounds, and while movement between them was not allowed, the prisoners found ways around this restriction. Each compound contained block-like barracks that included a central washroom, an office and work area, and three-tier bunks, reaching from concrete floor almost to the ceiling. The bunks formed three rows with spaces in between. Each block housed 324 men.
One of the key members of the escape committee was a Canadian sergeant named Laurens Pals. Originally from the Netherlands, he went to Canada in his mid-twenties. When the war broke out, he joined the Canadian Light Infantry and was initially dispatched to England. Because he was fluent in French, German, and Dutch, he was sent on intelligence courses including one studying German documents, information that was to become invaluable to the escape committee. Pals was captured during Operation Jubilee in Dieppe.
A POW could improve his situation by going to a work camp, several hundred of which surrounded Stalag VIIIB. Beyond the opportunity for a POW to improve his situation and living conditions, these outside assignments provided an opening to obtain tools, documents, local currency, civilian clothing, train schedules, and other information needed by the escape committee.
Readers will recall from earlier posts that most of Heinz Löwenstein’s escapes took place from work camps to which he’d been detailed. The fact that Heinz had been born in Danzig and was therefore fluent in German meant the escape committee would have looked more favorably upon his escape attempts because of a greater chance of success.
Let me say a little about such attempts. It was a prisoner’s duty to try to escape. SBO Sherriff had reached agreement with the Canadians to back their attempts. They agreed that escape plans would be common property. Information and equipment that had been obtained by prisoners out on working parties would be shared. Forgers and tailors from other sections would give their services. While only a few men would ultimately escape, the combined skills of a great number was needed.
Planning and preparation for any escape typically required weeks, if not months. The Dieppe escape committee had selected Hut 19 in their compound as the barrack from which an escape tunnel would be sunk because it was closest to the perimeter fence. (Figure 2) It was dug immediately below the pair of three-tiered bunks pushed up against the wall facing the fence. Twenty men were involved in the work. The large amount of excavated soil had to be disposed of to avoid raising German suspicions. As tunneling progressed, tools and lights had to be improvised, and a system constructed for pushing clean air down a ventilation pipe. Also, because the soil was sandy, the tunnel was shored up using bed boards from the POWs’ bunks. By April 1943, a tunnel roughly 135 feet long which had its exit roughly 20 feet outside the perimeter fence had been completed.
Simultaneously, other POWs worked on obtaining civilian clothes or tailoring POWs uniforms into them. Alterations were made and uniforms dyed. Guards’ movements were studied. Outside the Stalag, potential escape routes were assessed with an eye towards escapees avoiding drawing unwelcome attention and blowing their cover. Work parties obtained other useful information including train schedules; details on the level of security at nearby railway stations; and examples of documents travelers in Germany required.
Obviously, the German documents had to be forged. As I learned and discussed in earlier posts, Heinz Löwenstein was a first-rate forger. Given that Heinz’s brother Fedor Löwenstein was a well-known abstract artist and that his sister Jeanne Loewenstein reputedly also a skilled painter, I’ve periodically wondered whether their ability to expertly illustrate ran in the family?
Regardless, the German documents which had to be forged included an identity card, an Arbeitskarte or work permit, a document from the police indicating the bearer was allowed to travel and, most importantly, an Ausweis or civilian identity card which had to be always carried; to advance the deception a letter or two from an escaper’s fictitious wife, girlfriend, or employer, was also forged. It goes without saying that well-forged documents could make the difference between a successful or failed escape.
Claerwen Howie recounts an amusing anecdote about Sergeant Laurens Pals. Upon reaching Stalag VIIIB, because of his intelligence training he felt he could successfully escape and return to England. The escape organization handed him a small hand drawn map of Germany to plan his escape with the approximate position of Berlin and Stalag VIIIB, as well as a forged Ausweis; he dismissed both as useless, claiming the eagle on the Ausweis “looked like a chicken.” The escape committee was insulted, and a court of inquiry was convened to investigate the incident. Pals convinced everyone his observations were accurate, and he was rewarded by being asked to head up the escape organization for the entire camp.
Pals was extremely resourceful, and within weeks obtained examples of French, Belgian, and Dutch identity papers. He found men in camp who ingeniously could carve the various stamps found on official documents from rubber soles. Incredibly he even managed to smuggle in a typewriter. Dyes, inks, and suitable paper for creating authentic-looking documents were exchanged for cigarettes which came in the Red Cross parcels or were stolen by POWs out on work parties. Because of frequent unannounced searches by the Germans, these materials had to be carefully hidden, although the remote possibility of betrayal by spies still loomed.
The fact that Howie wanted to escape within days of his arrival at Stalag VIIIB presented obvious challenges. Yet, by the time Howie asked to be put in touch with the escape committee, several things that needed to happen had already been completed. The tunnel had been dug, documents forged, civilian clothes prepared, and careful studies undertaken of the various routes prisoners could follow.
The escape committee preferred POWs who were fluent in a foreign language, preferably German, which Howie was not. Pals suggested he recruit a POW to accompany him, but he was unable to find someone. Still, the escape committee was impressed with Howie’s escape plan, so agreed to help him. Howie proposed heading east towards Hungary following his escape to minimize the distance he would have to travel. His plan initially had been to reach Hungary, then dogleg south towards Yugoslavia to connect with Tito’s partisans before eventually rejoining the Allies.
Pals came to be the primary person on whom Howie relied for his escape. He recruited a Hungarian-born Jew who was fluent in German and had a good knowledge of the local countryside and the countries through which they would pass to accompany him; his name was Tibor Weinstein, though he went by the alias “Tom Sanders.” Like Heinz, Tibor was captured during the Battle of Greece though only in the final throes of the battle when Crete was seized.
Pals and his committee had already learned from previous attempts that the best identity they could give an escaper would be that of a foreign worker because thousands were constantly moving about German-occupied territory. In Howie’s case, the false identity they created was that of a Dutch engineer on his way east to a sugar beet factory near the Austro-Hungarian. The committee theorized that if Howie was stopped the Afrikaans he spoke might fool the average German soldier into thinking it was Dutch.
Given that Howie’s escape window was narrow, he opted to flee via the tunnel rather than await assignment to an outside work party. The fact that he’d arrived only days earlier also meant that he would not instantly be recognizable by the guards and that his disappearance might be less noticeable. Howie and Weinstein’s initial nighttime escape was planned for the 25th of September 1943, a mere six days after Howie’s arrival.
The night of Howie’s and Weinstein’s planned escape it rained so their departure was postponed. When they awoke the next morning, the rain had cleared, so a risky daylight escape was decided. Howie only received his forged documents including a testimonial declaring his value to the sugar beet industry at the last minute; the money to buy train tickets was given to Weinstein. He was only introduced to Heinz Loewenstein, who had forged his documents, and to his traveling companion Tibor Weinstein on the morning of his departure. Admittedly, Howie’s stay at Stalag VIIIB was brief, but this appears to have been the only time Howie and Loewenstein met in Lamsdorf.
After saying their quick goodbyes, Howie suffered a brief moment of doubt realizing he had to crawl through the claustrophobic tunnel, an experience that seemingly caused him a lifetime of nightmares imagining being trapped in a tiny, dark passage.
A brief observation. Given that Claerwen Howie’s account is a retelling of her father-in-law’s wartime experience, I’m enormously impressed with the authenticity and detail with which she recounts the story. Unfeasible events which typically litter Hollywood movies are rare. One example of an accurate portrayal is the greatcoats the escapees wore as they crawled through the tunnel to protect their civilian clothes. Another trivial example is the civilian shoes Howie was given, which were several sizes too large and ultimately caused Howie’s feet to blister; Hollywood would have you believe that everything fit perfectly. Suffice it to say, the escape committee tried to leave as few things to chance as possible.
The escape route had been finalized by Sergeant Pals. (Figure 3) Howie and Weinstein would travel through eastern Silesia, then head south towards Vienna, and from there cross into Hungary. Their first destination would be Budapest where Tibor had family and where it was felt that Howie would be able to obtain accurate information on how to proceed to Yugoslavia. The escape committee only gave the escapees enough money to reach the Austrian border, after which they would have to manage on their own.
Since Howie and Weinstein’s escape took place during the day, the prisoners staged a wrestling match to distract the guards manning the watch tower closest to the trapdoor. Following their flight, they walked not to the nearest train station but the second nearest one in Falkenberg; the escape committee felt that if the authorities had been alerted to their escape, they would first check the nearest train depot.
Howie and Weinstein successfully arrived by train in Vienna. While awaiting the connecting train to a town near the Austro-Hungarian border called Bruck-an-der-Leitha (Figure 4), Gestapo agents checked their papers and seemed to accept their authenticity. Concerned this was a ruse and that the Gestapo agents had alerted the conductor, they jumped from the train. With no money to buy replacement tickets, they were forced to walk to Bruck-an-der-Leitha, a center for sugar beet processing. This destination fit neatly with Howie’s cover story.
Let me briefly digress on a personal note. Many years ago when I first started my genealogical research I came upon a pretentiously titled book at the Mormon Library about my family, “A Thousand Year History of the Bruck Family.” The author claims my family, then known as “Perlhefter,” originally came from Hungary, and purchased the right to be toll keepers on the bridge in Bruck-an-der-Leitha. The family eventually sold the concession and moved to Vienna and changed their name to “Bruck” because of this connection. In 2014, during a 13-week trip visiting places connected to my Jewish family’s diaspora, my wife and I stopped there. (Figure 5)
Another thing that speaks to the authenticity of Claerwen Howie’s account of her father-in-law and Weinstein’s escape are the protocols the former POWs established to avoid being caught. Aware there were likely many German informers in the area through which they were traveling, they called one another by their forenames, did not stay in one place too long, and did not approach locals, even though they were desperate for food and water.
Howie and Weinstein crossed into Hungary near Nickelsdorf, virtually atop the Hungarian border. Near the largish town of Csorna, they came upon some Polish workers who gave them shelter, food, water, and what money they could spare. Along with money Weinstein got from selling his woolen Red Cross vest, they had enough to buy train tickets to Budapest.
So much for Howie and Weinstein’s story though there is much more to it. I’ve related their tale as a way of inferring how Heinz Löwenstein’s escape might have unfolded, and the route he might have taken to get to Hungary.
I surmise Heinz successfully escaped directly from Stalag VIIIB through the tunnel in Hut 19. It’s likely Heinz’s three previous unsuccessful escapes from work camps taught him lessons he applied to finally escape triumphantly. Heinz no doubt forged his own documents.
I suspect Heinz reached Hungary via the same route as Howie and Weinstein had taken. Claerwen Howie writes that the Dieppe escape committee knew enough about railway timetables and local costs to get escapees to Bruck-an-der-Leitha. Taking a different route might have created challenges for which Heinz was unprepared.
Howie and Weinstein we know reached Budapest. Like “Captain” Ray Natusch (see Post 163), Heinz however was probably arrested by Hungarian soldiers in the countryside and briefly incarcerated in Komárom, Hungary. This is supported by a footnote in Claerwen Howie’s book stating that Heinz Löwenstein arrived there on the 1st of December 1943, and was transferred to Szigetvár, Hungary on the 19th of December 1943. This means Heinz likely escaped from Stalag VIIIB during the last week of November, so roughly a month after Howie and Weinstein crawled their way out.
In the book by Francis Jones entitled “The Double Dutchman,” we learn that on account of his language skills Heinz Löwenstein was tasked with establishing contact with the Hungarian resistance while he was being detained in Szigetvár, Hungary; the aim was to have the Hungarian resistance connect the former POWs to Tito’s partisan forces in Yugoslavia so they could rejoin the Allied forces. Had it not been for Lt. Col. Howie’s clandestine efforts in Budapest to flip Hungary and his personal visit to Szigetvár to reinforce his order that the POWs not try to escape upon the threat of a post-WWII court martial, no doubt Heinz would have done another disappearing act. Incidentally, Heinz and Howie met for the second and last time in Szigetvár before all the POWs were recaptured following Germany’s invasion of Hungary on the 19th of March 1944.
In closing, I would say given Heinz’s numerous escapes from German stalags and his skills as a forger that finding additional accounts of his exploits is still possible, perhaps even probable. That said, the general outline of the places where Heinz was imprisoned and his contribution to the war effort even as a POW are now well-documented. So I again thank my English friend Brian Cooper for helping me work this out and solve the mystery of Heinz’s Houdini acts!
REFERENCES
Howie, Claerwen. Agent by Accident. Lindlife Publishers CC, 1997.
Jay, John. Facing Fearful Odds: My Father’s Story of Captivity, Escape & Resistance 1940–1945. Pen & Sword Military, 2018.
Jones, Francis S. The Double Dutchman: A story of wartime escape and intrigue. The Dunmore Press Limited, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 1977.
Note: In this lengthy post, I compile the substantial amount of evidence I’ve collected related to my father’s first cousinHeinz Löwenstein’s exploits during WWII. This post would not have been possible without the substantial contributions of Mr. Brian Cooper from England who ferreted out most of the primary source documents and books citing Heinz. I’m eternally grateful.
My last three posts (Post 160,Post 161, & Post 162) have largely dealt with Fedor Löwenstein (1901-1946), one of my father’s first cousins, a renowned painter. He moved to Paris in 1923, attracted by the artistic influence of the capital. He was part of an artistic movement that dominated there, designated as the École de Paris, the School of Paris. This does not refer to any school that really existed, but rather to a movement which brought together artists who contributed to making Paris the focus of artistic creation between the two world wars. It was in this rich artistic context that Löwenstein painted and drew. His early works were marked by the influence of cubism, whose main representatives worked in Paris, although his subsequent productions evolved towards abstraction.
In Post 160, I provided an update on my now ten-year old claim against the French Ministry of Culture’s (Premier Ministre) Commission pour la restitution des biens et l’indemnisation des victims de spoliations antisemites (CIVS), Commission for the restitution of property and compensation for victims of anti-Semitic spoliation. In brief, my claim involves a request for compensation and repatriation of 25 works of art produced by Fedor Löwenstein confiscated by the Nazis in December 1940 at the Port of Bordeaux. The works were destined for New York for an exhibition at the Nierendorf Gallery but only three paintings are believed to have survived the Nazis’ destruction of his so-called “decadent art.”
In Posts 161 and 162, respectively, I discussed photos and letters that have been discovered and/or have survived among the personal effects of two of Fedor’s girlfriends, the Corposano Studio dancer Doris Halphen and the renowned artist Marcelle Rivier (1906-1986).
In this post, I shift my attention to Fedor Löwenstein’s younger brother Heinz Löwenstein (1905-1979) (Figure 1), specifically his whereabouts during WWII. His capers and adventures during the war are bookworthy. I’ve previously explored this topic relying on detailed information unearthed by an English gentleman named Brian Cooper from Maidstone, Kent, England. (Figure 2) Brian specializes in studying and researching British WWII prisoners of war and coincidentally stumbled upon a mention of Heinz Löwenstein and an alias he used, “Henry Goff,” while investigating his uncle incarcerated in a German stalag during the war. Since writing Post 137 and Post 137, Postscript, with Brian’s help and guidance, I’ve discovered an astonishing amount of new information which I discuss below.
Unlike Fedor Löwenstein, who died prematurely of Hodgkin lymphoma in 1946 in Nice, France before I was born, as a child I met both of Fedor’s younger siblings, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein (1902-1986) and Heinz Löwenstein. Both Hansi and Heinz were my father’s closest cousins. Hansi was an austere person who seemingly disliked children; by contrast, her brother Heinz was exceedingly affable and charismatic. Throughout her life, Hansi retained her married name “Goff,” a name I will return to below as I relate the story of her brother’s wartime escapades.
As a brief aside, from the report that the CIVS’ forensic genealogist prepared in connection with my claim against the French Ministry of Culture, I learned that Hansi’s husband’s name was “Georges Goff.” To the best of my knowledge, Georges and Hansi never had any children, or at least none that survived to adulthood. To date, I have been unable to learn whether they divorced or whether Georges died prematurely; regardless, Hansi never remarried.
As many readers whose relatives survived WWII can probably attest to, my own relatives were rather reticent to talk about their experiences during the war. My father occasionally alluded to Heinz Löwenstein’s wartime exploits but in such vague terms that as a child I never understood what those escapades entailed. My childhood fantasies filled in the blanks in ways that now seem phantasmagoric. I never anticipated I would learn the truth but thanks to Brian, I’m now able to fill in more of Heinz’s story.
Let me start by reviewing what I presented earlier, then move to the more recent discoveries so the entire story is told somewhat linearly.
Brian Cooper first contacted me in February 2023 after coming across my Post 16 where I discussed my great aunt, Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck (1870-1949), and her three children, including Heinz. (Figure 3) In his own research on British prisoners of war, he’d come across the name Heinz Lowenstein (without an umlaugh over the “o”). Initially uncertain whether the Heinz he’d come across and my ancestor were the same person, two threads in my post convinced him they were one and the same. First, as mentioned, Heinz Lowenstein used the alias “Henry Goff,” Goff being his married sister’s surname. Second, he learned that my father’s cousin Heinz Löwenstein had the same date of birth, the 8th of March 1905, as the prisoner of war records indicate for the Heinz Lowenstein he’s been researching.
I immediately asked Brian why he was interested in Heinz Löwenstein. Though very familiar with this branch of my extended family, I assumed there was an ancestral connection of which I was unaware. Amazingly, it turns out Brian’s uncle, Harold William Jackson from the 2nd Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment, captured in 1940 in France, was interned in one of the same Stalags as Heinz had been held, namely, Stalag VIIIB/Stalag 344 in Lamsdorf, Silesia [today: Łambinowice, Poland]. More on this below but suffice it to say that unlike Heinz who was at multiple Stalags and work labor camps throughout his captivity, Brian’s uncle was apparently only imprisoned in Stalag VIIIB until January 1945 when the Nazis began marching the still able-bodied prisoners-of-war west as the Red Army was approaching. By contrast with my father’s cousin Heinz Löwenstein, Brian’s uncle’s fate is unknown. Whether Heinz and Brian’s uncle knew or ever ran into one another is similarly unknown.
Until Brian Cooper provided documentary evidence, I had no idea where Heinz spent the war nor how he survived. The primary source of information on Heinz Löwenstein’s whereabouts and movements during the war can be found in the UK National Archives. Specifically, records created or inherited by the War Office’s Armed Forces Services containing “German Record cards of British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War and some Civilian Internees, Second World War,” found in Catalogue WO (for War Office) 416 are pertinent. Three entries related to Heinz Löwenstein, or his alias “Henry Goff,” can be found in this dossier. The National Archive website provides a summary of these German Record cards, but Brian obtained complete copies of the originals, which form the basis for the detailed synopsis he compiled of Heinz’s wartime activities.
The most informative German Record card in terms of tracking Heinz Löwenstein’s movements during the war is record number WO 416/412/223 (Figure 4a-d), alternately referred to as his Personalkarte, his personnel card. This card includes his picture, his father’s first name, his mother’s maiden name, his religion, and his date and place of birth, all previously known to me, confirming this was my father’s first cousin. Unknown to me was his service number (i.e., 8576), his service (i.e., Palestinian Army), the regiment or squadron he was a member of (i.e., Corps of Signals), his profession (i.e., electrician), the place he was captured (i.e., Greece), the date of his capture (29th April 1941), his POW number (i.e., 8576), and the camp name and number where he was initially interned (i.e., Stalag XVIIIA which was located in Wolfsberg, Austria).
Prior to being contacted by Brian, I’d already learned that Heinz married a divorcee named Rose Nothmann, née Bloch in Danzig, Germany [today: Gdańsk, Poland] on the 22nd of October 1931; interestingly, she was eleven years his senior. An illegible notation in the upper righthand corner of the marriage certificate indicates they got divorced, an event I assumed had taken place in Danzig. However, from Heinz’s Personalkarte where he named his wife Rose Löwenstein living in Palestine as his next of kin, I now realize the divorce likely took place after Heinz returned from the war.
Another thing I concluded from Heinz’s Personalkarte is that he and his wife moved to Palestine from Danzig where he enlisted in the English Army, probably in around 1935. Two POW lists published, respectively, in September 1944 (Figure 5) and April 1945 (Figure 6) indicate the regiment/unit/squadron Heinz was a member of, “3 L. of C. Sigs.” This refers to the “3 Line of Communication Signals [Royal Corps of Signals, often simply known as Royal Signals].” For readers, like me, unfamiliar with the work of this squadron, this unit is responsible for providing full telecommunications infrastructure for the Army wherever they operate. Signal units are among the first deployed, providing battlefield communications and information systems essential to all operations.
As mentioned above, Heinz’s Personalkarte shows he was captured on the 29th of April 1941 in Greece. Before discussing where he is likely to have been captured, let me provide readers with a general overview of the Battle of Greece. This battle, also known as the “German invasion of Greece” or “Operation Marita,” was the attack of Greece by Italy and Germany during World War II. It began on the 28th of October 1940 with the Italian invasion of Greece from the west via Albania, then a vassal state of Italy. Greece, with the help of British air and material support, repelled the initial Italian attack and counterattack in March 1941.
Realizing that the bulk of Greek troops were massed along the Greek border with Albania and that Italy was in trouble, German troops invaded from Bulgaria to Greece’s north on the 6th of April 1941, opening a second front. The Greek Army was quickly outnumbered even with the reinforcement of small numbers of British, Australian, and New Zealand forces. The Greek forces were outflanked by the Germans at the Albanian border, forcing their surrender. British, Australian, and New Zealand forces were overwhelmed and forced to retreat southwards down the Greek peninsula, with the goal of evacuation. For several days, Allied troops were able to delay the German advance, allowing ships to be positioned to evacuate the units defending Greece. Still, by the 27th of April the German Army captured Athens, and reached Greece’s southern shores by the 30th of April. The conquest of Greece was completed a month later with the capture of the island of Crete. An intriguing footnote is that Hitler later blamed the unsuccessful German invasion of the Soviet Union on Mussolini’s failed conquest of Greece.
Knowing that Heinz was taken prisoner on the 29th of April, Brian reasons that he was seized in or near Kalamata on the Peloponnesian peninsula. Based on testimony from others, we know that POWs were quickly moved to a prison compound at Corinth, then shortly thereafter to Salonika. On their way to Salonika, the prisoners stopped briefly in Athens before continuing northwards. However, when they reached the tunnel below the Brallos Pass, north of the town of Gravia, the prisoners had to dismount because the tunnel had been rendered unusable by explosives during the recent retreat by Allied soldiers. Thus began what is referred to as “The March,” the destination of which was the town of Lamia 40 miles north. This involved a long slog uphill, followed by a precipitous downhill walk in unpleasantly hot weather.
A Facebook account about the “Battle of Kalamata 1941” estimates that by September 1941, 12,000 POWs had passed through the “Salonika Transit Camp Frontstalag 183,” on their way to the central Europe Stalags They included many nationalities—Scots, English, Australians, New Zealanders, Serbs, Indians, Palestinian Jews, Cypriots, Arabs, and Greeks. Many of the POWs died, and a few daring ones escaped.
From Heinz’s Personalkarte we know he was initially imprisoned in Stalag XVIIIA in Wolfsberg, Austria after being transported by cattle truck from the Salonika Transit Camp. A different German Record card for Heinz Lowenstein, WO 416/228/460, records his transfer from Stalag XVIIIA in Wolfsberg, Austria to Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf on the 28th of July 1941. (Figures 7-8) The earliest date on Heinz’s Personalkarte, German Record card WO 416/412/223, is the 8th of July 1941, which corresponds to the date he was inoculated against typhoid, perhaps upon his arrival at Stalag XVIIIA in Wolfsberg. (see Figure 4b)
Another interesting detail recorded on Heinz’s Personalkarte are the solitary confinements he was made to endure for neglecting or disturbing work operations and for two escapes. Remarkably, Heinz’s escape from work labor camp designated as “E479” in Tarnowitz is recorded in a book by Cyril Rofe entitled “Against the Wind.” Cyril himself escaped from a work camp that was subordinate to Stalag VIIIB on his third attempt, eventually making his way to Moscow before being repatriated via Murmansk. I refer readers to Post 137 for the verbatim description from Cyril Rofe’s book of Heinz’s escape, a compelling read.
Following Heinz’s release from the brig in August 1943 after his third escape, possibly in September 1943 or slightly later, Heinz made a successful fourth escape from Stalag VIIIB/Stalag 344 or one of its subordinate work labor camps. The evidence for this comes from War Office record WO 224/95 (see Post 137, Figures 21a-d) which places him at Camp Siklós in Hungary in November 1943.
Record WO 224/95 is a Visit Report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) written on the 16th of November detailing prison conditions at the Camp Siklós Hungarian detention center inspected on the 8th of November 1943. While referred to as Camp Siklós the holding facility had in fact been moved from Siklós to Szigetvár on the 12th of August 1943 due to the poor conditions prevailing at Siklós; Siklós is approximately 39 miles southeast of Szigetvár. Attached to this report is a list of 20 army personnel, presumably all POW escapees, including “Henry Lowenstein.” Based on the Visit Report from the ICRC it is unclear when and where Heinz was arrested in Hungary following his escape from Stalag VIIIB/Stalag 344 (Lamsdorf) but no later than the 8th of November, probably earlier, he was in Hungarian custody. Szigetvár, incidentally, was the castle estate of Count Mihaly Andrassy, and incarceration conditions there were excellent.
The ICRC visit to Camp Siklós (Szigetvár) was conducted in its capacity as a Protecting Power which was formalized in the Geneva Convention of 1929. Protecting powers were allowed to inspect prisoners of war camps, interview prisoners in private, communicate freely with prisoners, and supply books for the prison library.
Let me provide some historical context regarding Hungary’s situation vis a vis Nazi occupation at the time that Heinz was detained there.
In March 1944, Hungary was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany. Before the Nazi invasion, Hungary had not formally declared war against the United Kingdom, so any British POW escapees, if caught by the Hungarian authorities, would expect no more than internment by Hungary as a neutral power. There was no concern that British POWs would be returned to German control. Based on the existing War Office records, as mentioned, Heinz escaped from Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf and somehow made his way to Hungary before the Nazi occupation.
Now we get to the murkiest part of Heinz’s story. From one moment to the next, he went from being known as “Henry Lowenstein” to being “Henry Goff.” (To remind readers, the surname “Goff” was Heinz’s sister’s married name.) As a Hungarian internee, Heinz was known as “Henry Lowenstein,” but at some point, after he was recaptured by the Germans following their invasion of Hungary on the 19th of March 1944, he became known as “Henry Goff.” Exactly when this happened is unclear. The Hungarians knew Henry’s real identity and presumably would have shared this information with the Germans following their takeover of the internment camp at Szigetvár. We know from War Office record WO 416/141/191 (see Post 137, Figure 22) that “Henry Lowenstein” becomes “Henry Goff,” born on the 8th of March 1905 in Manchester, England. Presumably after he becomes Henry Goff, he is also assigned a new POW number, No. 156116. From Heinz’s point of view, the change of surname and birth place was presumably an insurance policy because of his Jewish faith. Together with his new POW number, he presumably thought that his chances of survival improved, although how much danger he was in is uncertain.
WO 416/141/191 record tells us Heinz was returned to the Stalags in Austria after he was recaptured in Hungary. All I knew for certain is that by the 28th of July 1944, Henry Goff was transferred from Stalag XVIIA in Kaisersteinbruch, Austria to Stalag XVIIB in Gneixendorf, Austria. (Figure 9).
Prior to obtaining the recently acquired information, the above formed the basis for what I discussed in Post 137 and Post 137, Postscript. Since these earlier posts, I’ve obtained: excerpts from two books Brian found discussing Heinz; two “Liberation Questionnaires” alluding to Henry Lowenstein and Henry Goff; dossiers from the ICRC related to both Lowenstein and Goff; reference to Henry Lowenstein in a so-called “Mentioned in Despatches,” which would have been a condition of obtaining certain war decorations; a group photo taken in a German Stalag showing Heinz; and more. These documents provide a better picture of Heinz’s movements during the war and a more nuanced understanding of how his actions fit into broader events going on at the time. Let me systematically review these new findings.
Brian Cooper brought to my attention a book entitled “The Double Dutchman: A story of wartime escape and intrigue” by Francis S. Jones. Heinz is prominently featured in this book. Let me review some of the details.
The story is primarily about a New Zealand soldier, captured like Heinz Löwenstein during the Battle of Greece in April 1941, by the name of Roy Natusch. He was interned in Stalag XVIIIA in Wolfsberg, and like Heinz escaped from a work camp with two other internees, Lance-Bombardier David “Dai” Tom Davies and Joe Walker. The work camp from which they fled was located not far from the Hungarian border in a place called Gaas, Austria. (Figure 10) The author does not specify the exact date of their get away, but I place it in the Fall or Winter of 1943. Following their nighttime escape, the three internees tried to get as far into Hungary as possible; they were trying to avoid being recaptured by the German-influenced Hungarian border squads who would have handed them back to the Germans.
Let me reiterate what I previously mentioned. Following the beginning of WWII, the British and Americans declared war on Hungary, an ostensible ally of Germany and Hitler. However, the declaration of war was not reciprocated by the Hungarian government, and as mentioned above, any escaped Allied prisoners who made their way to Hungary were merely incarcerated but not sent back to the Germans. Clearly, this is what happened to Heinz Löwenstein.
While Roy Natusch was only a Corporal, with the agreement of his two companions, he passed himself off as a Captain knowing that if the three were captured by the Hungarians an officer would be better treated. Eventually, the three escapees were in fact arrested by Hungarian police or military, and temporarily interned in Komárom, Hungary, near the then-Czechoslovakian border. Had they avoided capture and internment by the Hungarians, Roy and his traveling companions had always intended to do a dog-leg through Hungary into then-Yugoslavia (i.e., head east into Hungary, then turn southwards towards Yugoslavia), linking up with Tito’s Partisans and being repatriated with the Allies in Italy. This was not to be their fate, at least not immediately.
As an officer, or at least claiming to be one, Roy quickly came to the attention of the only other escaped Allied officer in Hungary, a real officer, the South African Lieutenant Colonel Charles Telfer Howie hiding in Budapest (i.e., Komárom and Budapest are only about 60 miles apart). Along with a Private by the name of Tom Sanders, Howie had escaped from Stalag VIIIA in Lamsdorf [today: Łambinowice, Poland].
While at Komárom, Roy Natusch was visited by a Colonel Utassy from the Hungarian War Office along with a Foreign Service Officer, presumably to be vetted for possible involvement in a plot to change the course of the war. He eventually made his way to Budapest where he met other members of the Hungarian resistance and was introduced to Lt. Colonel Howie. While Howie could have left Hungary and rejoined the Allies, he consciously decided to remain there. Clandestinely, he was working with the various opposition factions in Hungary to switch them from the Axis to the Allied side. This was a particularly precarious undertaking since Budapest and more generally Hungary had Nazi spies everywhere. Moreover, it was an open secret that as soon as the Soviets got anywhere near Hungary, a day which was quickly approaching, the German troops would invade the country and quickly seize Budapest.
At the time Natusch met with Lt. Colonel Howie, Germany had not yet invaded Hungary, however. Howie dispatched Natusch to the detention camp in Szigetvár at Count Andrassy’s castle estate with specific orders that the detained British POWs there not attempt to escape to Yugoslavia, or they would be court-marshalled after the war. Sargeant Major Norman McLean was ostensibly in charge of the soldiers. As noted above, Heinz Löwenstein was among the twenty or so British soldiers confined there and was considered the “intellectual of the camp”; here is where Roy Natusch first encountered Heinz. With Heinz’s nod of approval, the British soldiers put off their escape attempt, a fateful decision, as it turned out. By the time Natusch and Howie made their request, Heinz, the point of contact because of his fluency in multiple languages, had already contacted a local Hungarian who would have facilitated their escape by accompanying them to the Partisans in Yugoslavia. The distance from Szigetvár to the Yugoslav border was less than 15 miles, although the march to reach Partisan lines once inside Yugoslavia was long and dangerous because the Wehrmacht troops were active in the northern part of the country.
The British representatives who were supposed to negotiate with the Hungarian opposition were to be dropped by parachute on the plains near Szigetvár, and the British soldiers were expected to gather the inexperienced parachutists and bring them to Budapest. Howie had assured the British soldiers that in the event of a sudden German invasion, he would notify them by phone and/or send one of his men to warn them so they could quickly flee to Yugoslavia to join the Partisans.
As it turned out, Germany’s sudden invasion of Hungary took place on the 19th of March 1944, and came from three directions, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Germany. As expected, the Wehrmacht immediately headed for Budapest and the internment camp at Szigetvár where they recaptured all the British soldiers, including Natusch and Löwenstein. The warning the soldiers had been awaiting from Lt. Colonel Howie never arrived because the phone lines were immediately cut throughout the country upon Germany’s invasion, and the man Howie sent to warn the soldiers instead decamped for Romania.
Because of Natusch’s knowledge of “The Mission” (i.e., the Allies plan to try and peel off Hungary from the Axis alliance) and the players involved, he was a wanted man. Under torture, Natusch could have divulged the names of no fewer than eleven co-conspirators. For this reason it was imperative he escape the clutches of the Gestapo. Fortunately, he managed to escape at Szigetvár despite being guarded by seven Wehrmacht soldiers. Following his getaway and subsequent travails, he eventually made his way back to Budapest in the company of another British escapee, and reestablished contact with Lt. Colonel Howie who was in hiding. In Budapest, through contacts he had there, he connected with some Dutch soldiers, including a Lieutenant Eddie van Hootegem. The latter would wind up giving him his identity card, so for a period this was his alias. However, when he and two other Dutch officers (Lieutenant Frank Brackel & Lieutenant Joob Sengor) were arrested in Budapest and taken to Buda prison, together they crafted an elaborate explanation for why the purported Dutch soldier “Eddie” was unable to speak Dutch.
Suspicious of his explanation, the Germans transferred Roy Natusch, now Eddie van Hootegem, along with a contingent of almost a hundred Hungarians, Poles, French, and Jews, and non-descripts, by train from Buda prison. The Wehrmacht intended to take Roy/Eddie to an Oflag, a prisoner of war camp for officers established by the Germans during WWII, in Neubrandenburg, about 120 miles north of Berlin. This presented a major problem for Roy since they would ultimately have discovered he was Natusch, not van Hootegem.
On their way to Neubrandenburg (Figure 11), however, the prisoners were unloaded in Stalag XVIIA [Kaisersteinbruch, Austria]. Roy once again had the good fortune to run into Heinz Löwenstein there, who had by now assumed his own alias, the previously mentioned “Henry Goff.” As a side note, Francis Jones, author of “The Double Dutchman,” incorrectly claims Heinz’s alias was “Henry Lewis.” Regardless, Roy had learned from his time in Szigetvár that Heinz was a master forger, so he asked him to prepare a set of papers so that he could pass as an Italian.
Below is how Francis Jones describes the episode and the results:
“Henry Lowenstein appeared a few hours later and got past the guards without difficulty. ‘Here you are, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s finished. He glanced around nervously. ‘Best hide it. I’m not sure about these guards.’ Natusch put the slim package he’d been given into his breast pocket. The Palestinian was as jumpy as a cat. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything for your friends [EDITOR’S NOTE: THE AFOREMENTIONED BRACKEL & SENGOR]’ he went on, ‘but there was only enough material for you.’ Pride of craftsmanship calmed some of Henry’s agitation. ‘You’ll find a passport there, properly stamped,’ he announced, ‘a travel warrant, also stamped, and a couple of letters. You’re Mario Brioni, sir. That’s if you want to be Italian. I’d better go now, sir. Good luck.’ He shook hands with Natusch, gave Frank and Joob a half-bow, and left.
The New Zealander passed the little folder to his two friends without a word and stayed on the alert whilst they examined him it. The verdict came quickly. ‘It’s perfect,’ Frank said slowly. His eyes were wide with admiration. ‘This is first-class work.’ Joob Sengor, taking longer over his examination, agreed, and with that, Natusch was really satisfied. Joob was a protégé of the great Bentinck [EDITOR’S NOTE: A DUTCH FORGER], and a connoisseur of forgery. He put the documents back into his pocket and breathed thanks once again to the ever-helpful Henry Lowenstein.”
What the Germans had failed to do in Budapest, namely check his photo and fingerprint files in Berlin, they would certainly have done in the Oflag in Neubrandenburg; obviously, they would quickly have learned his real identity and turned him over to the Gestapo for interrogation. This meant that Natusch couldn’t risk facing new interrogators and had planned to jump off the train en route to the Oflag and change his identity from Eddie van Hootegem to Mario Brioni, who happened to be a fictitious Italian traveling legitimately. Incidentally, Roy had opted for an Italian surname because he spoke passable Italian and thought he could fool most Germans.
Roy’s intention after he jumped from the train was to travel in the opposite direction along the same line from Stettin [today: Szczecin, Poland] towards Hegyeshalom, near the Austrian-Hungarian border. Stettin lay 30 miles east of Neubrandenburg, which made the revised journey feasible. Roy was concerned that if his luck failed some attentive German might check and discover there was no such person as Mario Brioni. If this happened, he knew that he could no longer be Eddie van Hootegem, a Dutchman who didn’t speak Dutch, and certainly not be himself. Henry Lowenstein again came to his rescue and offered him his own identity since he now went by Henry Goff. Roy jumped at the offer, so Lowenstein gave him his identity tag. This was the last interaction between Heinz and Roy documented by Francis Jones.
As fate would have it, when Roy jumped off the train at the stop before Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], he was seriously hurt. Knowing he would be recaptured because of his injuries he ditched the identifications for both Mario Brioni and Henry Lowenstein. He was arrested at the train station near Breslau by one of the three guards escorting him to the Dutch Oflag in Neubrandenburg. On the 2nd of August 1944 two guards from there came to collect Roy. Because his Hungarian civil papers were in order, upon his arrival in the Oflag he continued to pass himself off as Eddie van Hootegem. However, eventually he gave up the ghost and admitted to his interrogators that he was Roy Natusch, an escapee from Stalag XVIIIA in Wolfsberg. Fortunately, the Germans didn’t immediately make the connection that he was wanted by the Gestapo; consequently, they sent him back to Stalag XVIIIA where he’d originally escaped from years before. Knowing he was still in danger, he quickly had himself assigned to a work party in a place called Radkersburg near the Yugoslavian border. With help from the Hungarian resistance, he escaped across the border and after a dangerous journey through German lines reached the Partisans. From there he was eventually repatriated in Italy.
I’ve gone into so much detail about Roy Natusch because his story sheds a lot of light on Heinz Löwenstein/Henry Goff.
Another book published in 2016 citing Heinz was co-authored by David “Dai” Tom Davies, the Lance-Bombadier with whom Roy Natusch originally escaped from Stalag XVIIIA, and Ioan Wyn Evans. In the book, entitled “All for Freedom – A true story of escape from the Nazis,” he writes of Heinz during his time in Szigetvár:
[Page 101] “There was an exceptionally interesting character in our midst. A French Jew named Henry Lowenstein. Extremely able, he spoke many languages, but his greatest accomplishment was his ability to forge documents. He could make copies of official documents that would look every bit as authentic as the originals.”
[Page 103} “We needed to utilise Henry Lowensten’s forging skilled to make passports. We went to a photography shop in Szigetvar where two Jewish women very kindly took our pictures, free of charge. Lowenstein then made passports for us. We were given those so that we had ‘official documents’ if we were stopped by the authorities at any time.”
The reference to passports would presumably have been some type of Hungarian identity card rather than what we commonly call a passport. The German occupation of Hungary obviously forestalled their use as all the British escapees in Szigetvár were retaken on the 19th of March 1944. Upon their recapture, Davies and the other internees were sent to Dulag 172 in Zemun, Yugoslavia [German: Zemlin/Semlin] near Belgrade [today: Zemun, Serbia]. (Figure 12)
“We were taken to a place called Zemun. This was a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Belgrade. Without a shadow of a doubt, it was the most awful place I had ever seen. Yes, I’d been held in pretty miserable places before. But they were nothing like this. Everywhere else paled into insignificance compared to Zemun.
It was difficult to comprehend what happened there and what would happen. It is absolutely impossible to describe Zemun to anyone who hasn’t been there, felt it, and smelled it. For me, this was simply hell on earth. The Nazi’s name for Zemun was Semlin, and it was located on the site of the old Belgrade Exhibition Grounds. There were several large buildings there known as pavilions. The Nazis had first taken people there to be incarcerated in 1941. At that time it was a Judenlager, a camp where the Jewish people were imprisoned. Thousands of Jews had been taken there, men, women and children. They weren’t guilty of any crimes, of course. They had simply been taken there because they were Jews, and Hitler hated them. And the horrible truth was that once the Jews arrived at Zenum, there was little chance they would leave alive.
The Nazis had these gas vans, also known as death vans. Cruelly, they would pile about 80 to 100 Jews at a time, including elderly people and young children, into the back of the large vans, and they would expose them to a poisonous gas which would kill them. Can you imagine such a thing? Apparently, 6,300 Jews were killed at Zemun between Marh and May 1942. That was just cold-blooded, inhuman cruelty.
After they had killed almost every single Jew to enter Zemun, the Nazis changed the camp status. From the middle of 1942 onwards it became an Anhaltelager, a camp where political prisoners were held. These were mostly Partisans from Yugoslavia, who now supported the Allies in the war. In truth, these people weren’t politically active. They were just ordinary Serbians from different parts of Yugoslavia. Many of them had just helped Partisan soldiers by offering them food or giving them shelter overnight, whilst several of them were just families and old people who happened to live in villages where there was support for the Partisans. They weren’t guilty of any real crimes.
By the time that we reached Zemun in March 1944 there were people of all ages and backgrounds there, many of them women and children. There were some Jewish people, but not many.
In the block where we were held, there wasn’t even a roof over our heads. To all interests and purposes, we were outdoors, exposed to the elements. In terms of hygiene and sanitation it was awful. I can’t remember seeing a single toilet there. It was absolutely disgusting. The stench was unlike anything I’d come across before – a potent mixture of the worst odours of life mixed with the unmistakable, lingering aroma of death.
As you can imagine, there was little food, and what we were given was incredibly bad. I remember a very weak cabbage soup, which looked like dirty water and tasted even worse. There was the odd scrap of stale bread, and tiny amounts of water. But there was nothing that was remotely nourishing. Nothing. People were starving there. Every single day there were several deaths. People were just dying on their feet.
There were scenes of unfathomable cruelty. I remember one day seeing a woman with a baby queuing for some food and holding a small bowl. When she got to the front, she was given a few drops of that horrible cabbage soup. Starving, she turned to the officer, and asked if she could have some more. But, instead of giving the young mother an extra spoonful, the officer knocked the bowl out of her hand and laughed in her face. Those of us waiting behind the woman were incensed by what we saw, and it was only the presence of heavily armed guards that prevented a riot. The sad truth was, though, that no one could really challenge these guards. Such bravery would have been folly: we would probably have been shot dead there and then. The only way we could help the young mother was by offering her some of the contents of our own meagre bowls. The poor woman didn’t get much, but it was better than nothing, and it was some kind of moral support.
It was little wonder that many lost their heads in such an atmosphere. Some poor desperate souls would run at the large wire fences and try to clamber over. Such attempts were futile, however. As they struggled to gain footholds on the fence, they were unceremoniously shot in the back. Very often the guards would leave their bodies there to decay, a reminder and warning to others who harboured similar thoughts of escape. The message was clear and stark. There was no way out.
We were kept in the block with no roof for several days, before a dozen or so of us were moved to another area of the camp. It was still unpleasant.”
While Zemun is today located in Serbia, according to Dai Davies the camp guards were Croatians. During an air raid that took place on the 16-17 April 1944, Davies escaped with three other internees. Like Ray Natusch, all were eventually repatriated to Italy via southern Yugoslavia.
Let me return briefly to the puzzling question of when Heinz Löwenstein possibly adopted the name Henry Goff. Brian Cooper believes this took place after Heinz arrived in Dulag 172. As the war went on, Brian knows from other cases that the German paperwork system broke down presenting Heinz with an opportunity to take on an alias. One must also remember that Heinz was a master forger, and there’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t have created a set of papers for himself bearing the Henry Goff name.
We know from the Visit Report the ICRC made to Szigetvár that Heinz was known to Hungarian authorities as Henry Lowenstein. We also know that the Germans headed straight to Szigetvár on the 19th of March 1944 after they invaded Hungary. No doubt, the Germans would have been told by the Hungarians the names of the POWs being detained there, so Heinz was no doubt still known as Lowenstein then. I also know from a prisoner card I obtained from the ICRC (see discussion below) that on the 24th of March 1944 he was transferred from Szigetvár under the name of Henry Lowenstein.
Aware of the potential dangers of being returned to German “care,” he probably decided to become Henry Goff if the opportunity arose. He would have let his fellow detainees know his alias. I assume he would have gotten rid of his German POW dog tag with his actual name and POW number from Lamsdorf to make it harder to trace him in the German war records. However, Francis Jones tells us on pages 151-52 that Lowenstein gave his Heinz Löwenstein dog tag to Ray Natusch when they briefly met again in Stalag XVIIA in Kaisersteinbruch, Austria after their escape and recapture. Perhaps Heinz was able to retain and hide his original dog tag? It seems Heinz only got his new POW number upon his arrival at Stalag XVIIIA (Wolfsberg) from Dulag 172 when he was telling the Germans that he was Henry Goff and before he was transferred to Stalag XVIIA.
Support for the notion that Henry Lowenstein became Henry Goff at Dulag 172 comes from a “Liberation Questionnaire” completed after the war by a Robert Vivian Sunley, one of the British POWs at Szigetvár. He writes:
“After removal from Hungary we were taken to Dulag 172 Belgrade and imprisoned. Following an American Bombing Raid I attempted an escape in the company of Pte Heinrich Lowenstein, a Palestinian of the Signal Corps then under the name of Henry Goff. We were spotted by the guard and fired upon, narrowly escaping death, and returned to closed imprisonment.”
Corporal Joseph Crolla was interned with Heinz in Szigetvár. Following the war, he also completed a “Liberation Questionnaire,” which corroborates some of the detailed information provided above. I quote:
“I went back and collected the other three who we had left to watch our kit. We all filed into the wagon (which was full of salt) except Hall who climbed in through the window after he had put a new seal on the door of the wagon. We were ten (10) days inside the wagon which was pretty tough owing to water difficulties, but between Hall and I in turns we got out of the wagon and found water. On the 4th of December 1942 we arrived at our destination a place called Hegyeshalom (on the Hungarian border) so we got out of the wagon and started walking further into Hungary. We must have walked twenty to thirty miles until we came to a barn where we bedded down for the night. The next morning we were rudely awakened by the farmer who was quite annoyed and scared to find five men sleeping in his hay but we bluffed him for a while by saying we were German soldiers who had wandered over the border while on maneuvers and were trying to find our way back again to Austria but had got lost. He invited us into his house for some breakfast, and at the same time sent his wife for the police (Gendarmes) who after we had a wash and something to eat arrived and took us away to a place called KOMOROM where we got treated not too badly, on Xmas day we were taken to Siklos Vaar, Siklos where we stayed until a Graf Andrassy, Szigetvar Hungary took us to his estate and gave us our freedom. We lived with this Graf until the Germans occupied Hungary on the 19th of March 1944, during this time there arrived two officers (at different times) first to come was a Colonel Howie (South African captured at Tobruck) and secondly a Captain Natusch (British, captured at Tunis). [EDITOR’S NOTE: ACCORDING TO FRANCIS JONES, ROY NATUSCH WAS CAPTURED IN KALAMATA, GREECE IN APRIL 1941 (p. 165)] Colonel Howie gave an order that anyone attempting to escape would find themselves on a Court Martial when returning to England. He also promised us that he would at least give us twenty (24) four hours warning if the Germans invaded Hungary so we could get away to Yugoslavia to join the Partisans as he had arranged everything for us, but without any warning the Germans walked into Hungary at 5:30 in the morning and recaptured all of us except Colonel Howie who was in Budapest at the time. Captain Natusch escaped that night although he had an escort of 7 Germans with Tommy guns, the Germans didn’t waste much time with the rest of us for before we knew what was happening we were on our way to a Dulag at Semmlin just across the River Sava from Belgrade, we had not a chance to get away as were heavily guarded until Easter Sunday (April 27 1944) when the Americans bombed our camp killing about 1500 prisoners of war (Italians and Serbs) during the raid that night five of us managed to get away (George Ratcliffe, Chestshires, John McAteer A.& S.H., John Martin Australian, Harry Grant Australian, and myself) but after two days of walking through bog country we walked into an Anti-Aircraft post and were recaptured, the Germans took us back to our camp the next day after a bit of trouble as the Croat people wanted to hang us as they thought we were American airmen, so after a bit of stone throwing and spitting we managed to get clear of the area, which was bombed to the ground. When we got back to the camp about midday there was another air raid on so for punishment, we were not allowed to go into the trenches but had to stand up out in the open with guards in the trenches round about us with orders to shoot to kill if any of us tried to make a break, they also took our boots and trousers from us. That same night McAteer and I got away again but were caught the very next morning by a German patrol and taken back to camp which was a blazing inferno, and the huts which were not on fire we soon put a match to them. A few days later all of us (about 12 British and 8 or ten American airmen) were put into a wagon (after removing our boots and trousers) and taken to Stalag 17A. Kaisersteinbruch Austria where we all got a severe interrogation then locked up together in a shed away from the other British P.O.W’s During our stay at the Stalag we met Brigadier Davies and a Colonel or Captain Verral with ten or eleven other officers (British and American) one of them had his legs broken and was refused medical aid. These officers told us they were going to Berlin for interrogation.”
Knowing the ICRC had visited Camp Siklós (Szigetvár) in its capacity as a Protecting Power, Brian suggested I ask them about any documentary materials they might have in their archives on Heinz Löwenstein/Henry Goff. Because of the large number of archival searches they are asked to do, one can only submit applications by email twice a year on specific dates. I applied in September 2023, and the ICRC responded in December with information on BOTH Heinz and Henry. I attach the summaries sent by the ICRC (Figures 13-14) and will highlight a few new things I learned.
The ICRC staffer handling my application told me that in her 20 years of working there, she’d never come across a case like the one involving my father’s first cousin, and the Houdini act he orchestrated in adopting an alias and thus having two dossiers on file with the ICRC. Because the ICRC contact took a personal interest in my request, she even discovered materials that had been misfiled citing Heinz.
The documents include a letter dated the 19th of June 1941 (Figure 15), written by the Greek Red Cross to the ICRC in Geneva which lists British militiamen who are POWs in Greece and who are interned in Goudi (Athens) concentration camp. The list includes “H. Loewenstein,” says he’s in good health, and gives the name of his wife living in Jerusalem, Palestine as the person to be notified of his status.
One prisoner card shows the precise date that Henry Lowenstein, as his name was then written, was interned in Camp Siklós, the 24th of October 1943. (Figure 16) A different prisoner card dated the 8th of December 1943 seems to suggest he was transferred to the castle estate of Count Andrassy in Szigetvár on the 16th of November 1943. (Figure 17) An attached document of British POWs on the estate of Count Andrassy at that time lists 16 individuals, including Henry Loewenstein, with an extra “e.” (Figure 18)
Yet another prisoner card shows Henry was transferred from Szigetvár on the 24th of March 1944, five days after the Germans invaded Hungary. (Figure 19) A list of POWs from that exact date includes 24 names (Figure 20), including “Captain” Roy Natusch, who we know escaped during the transfer. We also know from Dai Davies’ book that the British POWs were transferred from Szigetvár to Dulag 172 outside Belgrade, Yugoslavia; the distance between these places is approximately 225 miles.
The ICRC accompanied by a representative from the Hungarian Red Cross visited Szigetvár on the 24th of January 1944, and submitted a report written in French on the conditions there, which were described as excellent. Some interesting details can be gleaned from this report. There were no Hungarian guards, only two soldiers who were administrative liaisons to Camp Siklós. Prisoners were free to wander close by, but they needed special authorization to roam more widely. The POWs were paid 5 Pengös a day with 2 Pengös a day deducted for food. Roy Natusch is mentioned in this report, stating that he had excellent lodgings in the Count’s manor. The report paints a unique picture of how POWs were humanely treated by Count Andrassy.
The ICRC sent a prisoner card (Figure 21) for Henry Goff dated the 29th of June 1944 indicating his transfer from Stalag XVIIA (Kaisersteinbruch, Austria) to Stalag XVIIB (Gneixendorf, Austria). Trivially, this tells us that Henry’s last encounter with Roy Natusch, which took place upon Roy’s transfer from Budapest to Neubrandenburg with a layover in Stalag XVIIA, had to have occurred before the end of June 1944.
Brian Cooper is a real wizard at unearthing and sleuthing out military documents and first-hand accounts from various archives, books, etc. One day he sent me a picture (Figure 22) he came across on Facebook, of all places, captioned as follows: “The Israeli Jewish soldiers of the UK Pioneers Corps in a photo taken in Lamsdorf (unknown date between 1941 and 1944).” He suggested I check each of the faces to see if Heinz might be among them. Astonishingly he is! He is the individual seated in the front row on the far left. Even though he was only between 36 and 39 years of age at the time, clearly internment made him look much older.
If this picture was indeed from Lamsdorf, I can narrow the period when it was taken to between the 28th of July 1941, when Heinz was transferred from Stalag XVIIIA (Wolfsberg, Austria) to Stalag VIIIB (Lamsdorf) and his final escape from Lamsdorf in Fall or Winter of 1943. Following his recapture in Szigetvár, Hungary, and his return to Austria in 1944 via Dulag 172 (Zemun, Yugoslavia) to Stalag XVIIA (Kaisersteinbruck, Austria) and Stalag XVIIB (Gneixendorf, Austria), he was never returned to Lamsdorf, so the picture was not taken in 1944.
Another item of interest Brian found for Henry Lowenstein was a reference to him in a so-called “mentioned in despatches,” under the dossier WO 373/103/370. (Figure 23)
The man who likely recommended this award for Heinz was Sergeant Major Norman McLean, ostensibly the senior military POW at Szigetvár prior to “Captain” Roy Natusch’s arrival. From McLean’s account, we can confirm that Heinz Löwenstein escaped from captivity four times, not including his short-lived escape from Dulag 172. Given his skill as a forger, Brian and I both wonder why he was allowed to escape Lamsdorf? One would think the camp leadership would have valued him more for his skills forging documents than risking his life on the lam, particularly as a Jew.
With this observation, I conclude this very lengthy and involved post. I’m not optimistic I’ll learn much more about Heinz Löwenstein’s daring exploits during the war. However, there’s always a chance of uncovering additional accounts from some of Heinz’s fellow internees. Another possibility I’m looking into is trying to determine whether the universal legatee in Israel involved in my claim with the French Ministry of Culture, who is one of the heirs to Fedor Löwenstein’s estate via Heinz, may have inherited a diary, documents, or photos from him. Hope springs eternal.
REFERENCES
Davies, D.T.A. & Ioan Wyn Evans. All for Freedom: A True Story of Escape from the Nazis. Gomer Press, 2016.
Jones, Francis S. The Double Dutchman: A story of wartime escape and intrigue. The Dunmore Press Limited, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 1977.
Rofe, Cyril. Against the Wind. 1st ed., Hodder & Stoughton, 1956.
