The Monuments Men

The recent movie The Monuments Men is based on an epic true story about men and women who saved the soul of Europe.

Being a museum studies graduate student, of course I had to go see the new movie The Monuments Men. The movie is an interesting historical drama, though not an action movie, like the previews would have you think. While the movie is well worth the watch, they did take a number of liberties with the actual story. Here's the story of the true Monuments Men and the many people who supported them.

From the beginning of WWII, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Harvard Group called for the US military to protect and preserve the cultural heritage of Europe. Hitler was systematically looting art from the great museums and collectors of Europe in preparation to stock his own personal museum and the US army destroyed important buildings while invading Europe. However, it wasn't until 1943 that the efforts of these groups finally bore fruit.

The Monuments Men started with a group called whose official name was the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, but was more commonly referred to as the Roberts Commission, after its chairman, Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts. Proposed by Francis Henry Taylor, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, the group was created in 1943 to advise military actions in order to best protect and preserve national treasures during World War II, provided they did not interfere with military operations. They created the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section, for which 345 men and women volunteered, coming from the United States, Britain, France, Austria, and Belgium.

These men and women were primarily middle-aged; some were even WWI veterans. They were professors, museum curators, archivists, and librarians. Together, they saved an estimated 5 million art pieces and cultural objects.

Some of the Monuments Men at the Altuasee Salt Mine in 1945. (Wikimedia)

These artworks included numerous masters, such as the Ghent Altarpiece and Michaelangelo's Madonna, both featured in the movie.

The Monuments Men recovering the Ghent Altarpiece at Altusee. (Wikimedia)

After the war, a smaller contingent of Monuments Men continued to hunt down stolen art. Many of the members of the MFAA returned or went on to prominent jobs in cultural institutions. They are responsible for the foundation of the New York City Ballet, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Despite their incredible efforts, a number of other artworks remain missing. And, due to Hitler's "Nero Decree," stating that all evidence that could be used in a war crimes trial be destroyed, many may never be recovered.

The story of the Monuments Men was rediscovered in 1995 and in 2009, Robert Edsel wrote his book The Monuments Men and started the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art. He and the foundation aim to acknowledge the work of these incredible men and women, continue their quest to return stolen artworks, and attempt to return the preservation of cultural heritage to the consciousness of the American military.

President George W. Bush presents the 2007 National Humanities Medal for the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art to, from left, Robert Edsel and World War II veterans Jim Reeds, Harry Ettlinger, Horace Apgar and Seymore Pomrenze. (Wikimedia)

In 2007, the Monuments Men Foundation was awarded the National Humanities Award by President George W. Bush.  You can go to their website to learn more about the Monuments Men and assist in the effort to recover and repatriate stolen goods.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum: Some Connection Required

After a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, I came out feeling that I was missing something essential: a human connection.

A few weeks ago, I went to DC on a field trip for my Master’s program. One of the focal points of the trip was the Holocaust Memorial Museum. We had spent one class talking about articles and books about the museum and learning its history so that we would be prepared to study the museum as museum professionals. Quite frankly, I was not looking forward to this part of our trip to begin with, and the reading did not make me any more optimistic.

I am sorry to say that my expectations were realized.

Perhaps one of the problems was the crowds. We got there about ten minutes before the museum opened and there was already a line halfway around the block. Add the school groups to the tourists, and the crowds grew to the point of claustrophobia. This was only exacerbated by the way the museum was designed. The first exhibit space is a long narrow hallway with exhibits on both sides. It created a bottleneck and endless frustration as people stopped to look at exhibits and held up everyone behind them. Maybe I would have had a different experience if I had gone on a day with fewer people, and, if you go, I encourage you to find an off day.

But even the removal of the crowds could not have fixed what I found to be the fundamental problem with the museum: a lack of humanity.

For a museum completely about a people’s erasure of identity, it did a very poor job establishing that identity in the first place. Visitors are taken up an elevator and dumped into Hitler’s rise to power. There is no celebration of Jewish life before the war, no way to connect to these people as people. Without that visceral connection to the victims of the Holocaust, the museum becomes a horror show, or, if you can get past the horrors, a history lesson.

There were only three places in the entire museum that I felt something like that connection. The first was the Tower of Faces, photographs from the Eishishok Shetl (the name for a Jewish village). The exhibit lines a three story tower, looking like an album plastered to the walls, and ends with a startling message: Today, there are no Jews in Eishishok.

The second place was on the two glass bridges over the main hall. The first is etched with the first names of people who died in the Holocaust while the second is etched with the names of villages that were destroyed by the Holocaust. These are easy to connect to: “That could be my name up there,” or maybe “My name is up there” and “That could be my town on this wall.”

Finally, the Identity Cards. Visitors receive a card when they enter the museum, picking from piles sorted into Male and Female. It tells the story of the person in the card as you move through the museum. The cards are often criticized because they wind up in the trash as soon as the visitor leaves the museum, but for me, the card was where I connected most; I spent most of my time in the museum wondering if the person whose life I held in my hand had survived and her presence became a constant companion through the museum.

If you get the chance, go to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Everyone should go once. But bring the personal connections with you. Learn about these people before you go. Maybe then, you won’t get wrapped up in the horrors, but rather the loss—of people, of culture, of serenity. And then you can walk out of the museum feeling the truth of their motto: Never Again.

A Recommendation

Okay, so that didn't quite go as planned. Ah, well, what do you do? Life intervenes.
My summer is... well, honestly, it never really happened. I'm two weeks out from classes starting up again and I've barely had time to breathe this summer. I've had to fight to get the fun in, and that's why this trip to DC is so important to me. I finally have details settled and I'm headed out in the next couple of days.
But crossing things off my packing list made me remember this blog and I'd like to put up one of the posts I'd meant to write on before life sidetracked me.

So, this isn't about travel, per se, well, at least not about physical travel. If you've read some of the previous posts, you might have noticed that I love books. I read more than a librarian, honest to goodness. And I'm omnivorous. Romance, fantasy, women's fiction, epics, paranormal, historical, nonfiction, action, adventure, teen/kids books, science fiction, if it's out there, I'll probably read it (though I'll admit it took me a while to warm up to science fiction). And one of my favorite parts of a book, a well written book, at least, is that it transports you. It takes you somewhere else, to another world, inside another person's head. You can tell when a book wasn't quite done as well as it could have been because you keep find yourself, sometimes rather rudely, back in your world, inside your own head. The best books make you forget that all you hold are some bits of paper with squiggles on them, because all you can see is the story, the action, the romance, the world of the book in front of you.

Because of this, I count books as travel. I read so much (though, admittedly, not so much lately) that I'd like to share the best ones with the nonexistent readers I have. :) (Hi, Mom!)




I love funny books. I think there tends to be enough sadness in our world that we don't need to read about it in our spare time. I'm not saying that we should ignore that there is sadness in the world, only that sometimes we need to be reminded that there is happiness, too.

That's probably why I was a bit reluctant to read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I am generally wary of New York Times Bestsellers; too often they are heavy literature about how bad someone's life is. But I am so glad I picked this one up. It is written as a series of letters, telegrams, and journal entries, between a varied cast of characters in post-WWII Britain. The main character, Juliet, wrote a column during the war meant to keep morale up and is finishing up a book tour of the collected columns when the book starts. Her problem now? Her editor (also her best friend's brother) wants another book. So what's a girl to do? Well, through a strange series of events, she winds up in contact with an entire island in the Channel that was occupied during the war, namely, Guernsey.

I laughed at Juliet's (and the entire island's) antics and thoroughly enjoyed this book. It doesn't treat the war lightly, but it does remind you that life goes on. Being American, it is difficult for me to grasp the rebuilding that Britain, and the rest of Europe, went through after WWII. This will give you a picture of what it was like under the occupation and how lines are never as clear as you thought they were.

Alright, recommendation done. If you have some of your own (or, you know, you're actually reading this and just want me to feel less lonely) post in the comments.

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a book, it's too dark to read." --Groucho Marx

Two Days In!

So, Wow! Long two days. I've managed to cram a lot in. Friday morning I woke up and went to my first class. We met in the courtyard and then went to the cafeteria. We mainly talked semantics. Afterward, McGee was going to the i-zone (IT) and it's in the same building as the library, so I tagged along and found the books on the Normans (my independent study topic). I ate lunch a cute cafe with a couple of the other girls and found out that lemonade is actually funny tasting sprite. Then we went on a walking tour of Canterbury. We saw the city walls, some of which were knocked down by Cromwell's army, Dane John's hill, which used to be a Norman palisade, some bomb shelter's from WWII, Canterbury Castle, which was amazing, and then we went to the Greyfriars' Garden. It's the garden of an actual monastery and is absolutely beautiful. Then we took a tour of the Pilgrim's Hospital and were off for tea. That night was one of the girl's birthdays, so we went out to the Penny, a pub less than a block away from the House and everyone (but me) had a pint.

Today, we went to London. We went a took a tour of Parliament, which was really neat. The building is incredible and the traditions are pretty cool too. If you aren't a peer, you can't sit in the House of Lords. Which was sad because our feet hurt from waiting in line. I got a couple of post cards and I got Mom a thimble. We had a really cool experience just as we got out. We were standing around eating our snacks outside the cafe in Parliament when Big Ben started ringing. If I'd been smart, I would have had a video going, but I didn't think about it until it was almost done ringing. Then, we went to the Imperial War Museum. They had a gun out front with shells bigger than I was. I also looked through the spy exhibit. At that point, Sam and I couldn't find anyone we knew, so we headed back to the train station. I got some pictures of Big Ben and Parliament from across the Thames and we made it on a train back home, where we ran into some very drunk Englishmen, who proceeded to give us advice on the best pubs in Canterbury. They were rather vulgar, but actually pretty funny. It was definitely an experience.

My feet hurt from all the standing and walking and I am definitely tired.Tomorrow is a walking tour of the churches of Canterbury and Monday is STONEHENGE! Up at 2 in the morning, but so worth it.