Now the truth comes out. Dr. Joseph Mengele forced prisoners to paint pictures at Auschwitz!!!
You can read about it at https://www.jweekly.com/2017/08/15/auschwitz-forced-paint-now-family-wants-art-returned/
I can see it all now. Dr. Mengele swinging a horse whip and shouting “Start painting now, you lazy prisoners, or I will horse whip you.”
The following quote is from the news article:
Begin quote
Babbitt and her family began fighting with authorities at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Memorial in 1973 after the discovery of six of her watercolor portraits of Roma (also known as gypsies). A seventh was found in 1977.
After several failed attempts to get the artwork returned — including State Department intervention spearheaded by then-Rep. Shelly Berkley of Nevada; the involvement of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington; and a petition signed by 400 comic-book legends, including Stan Lee, declaring that artwork belongs to the artist — a recent discovery by Babbitt’s youngest daughter delivered yet another emotional blow to the family.
“I had begun having an ominous feeling anyway as the anniversary of my mother’s death was approaching,” Karin Babbitt said about learning that her mother’s paintings would be part of a new exhibit at the National Museum in Krakow. “There was nothing worse that you could put in my face at that time.”
Along with the ongoing rightful ownership issue, Karin contends that the Oświęcim-based museum is in violation of a “permitted public use” agreement that prohibits it from profiting from Babbitt’s work, for example, by reproducing the watercolors in books the museum plans to sell. Pawel Sawicki of the museum’s press office responded: “For this exhibition, a catalogue has been prepared which contains all works from the exhibition. Using the images in the catalogue is allowed as so-called ‘permitted public use’ connected with promotion of the exhibition.”
Karin, a special-education teacher and resident of Santa Cruz, where her mother lived for nearly 30 years, recounted the fraught history of her paintings that were signed and dated in 1944.
“The SS came in [to her barracks] and saw the art my mother had painted,” she said. “She was put in a jeep and driven to Mengele’s office in Birkenau. She’s thinking, ‘I’m dead.’” Instead, the SS told the young artist that she was to paint portraits of Roma Gypsy prisoners “to have a record of their inferiority,” Karin said.
End quote from news article.
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