Claimant's kin fear anti-Semitic backlash from 'monster' Holocaust art claim - Haaretz

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Wed., September 26, 2007 ,

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Claimant's kin fear anti-Semitic backlash from 'monster' Holocaust art claim

By Cnaan Liphshiz

The Dutch Restitution Committee is currently processing a claim for 227 paintings that belonged to a Jewish art dealer who fled Holland in World War II, committee officials told Haaretz yesterday. But some of the dealer's relatives said they fear the case will spark anti-Semitism.

The claim, which the Dutch media have termed "the Katz monster claim," is among the largest the Dutch government has ever received from a single party. The claimant is Sybilla Goldstein-Katz, youngest daughter of Dieren-based art dealer Nathan Katz. Goldstein-Katz currently lives in the United States.

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But Katz's grandnephew, Emanuel Katz from Velp in eastern Holland, told a local Dutch newspaper last week that he feared the claim might give rise to anti-Semitic sentiments. "Now they'll start saying the Jews are out to get money," he said.

A source close to the family told Haaretz that family members were disturbed to read "several articles of an anti-Semitic nature in the Dutch media over the weekend."

In 1940, before fleeing occupied Holland for Switzerland, Nathan Katz reportedly sold his paintings to Alois Miedl, a German banker and financial agent of Hermann Goering, Nazi Germany's second in command. According to some accounts, Miedl was buying artwork for the Fuehrer Museum that Adolf Hitler planned to build in Linz, Austria.

According to the highly-respected NRC Handelsblad, "all the Katz brothers' transactions with Miedl are generally thought to have been performed out of free will." The newspaper added that the two brothers and Miedl were "good friends."

The paper also claimed that Nathan Katz continued to deal with the Germans from Switzerland, and that Miedl was also in business with Dutch non-Jews, "who do not qualify for restitution."

Another Dutch paper, De Pers, labeled this claim "anti-Semitic."

Professor Rudi Ekkart, who headed a committee to determine guidelines for the restitution of artwork that was seized during the war, has been quoted in the past as saying that "any transaction between Jews and Germans during the war should, in principle, not be regarded as conducted out of free will." Ekkart was nonetheless quoted over the weekend as saying that the Katz claim was "exaggerated."

The sources close to the family said that while Miedl and the Katz brothers had known each other before the war, they were not good friends. "Even if they were on amicable terms, when Nathan Katz 'sold' paintings to Miedl, he knew he was dealing with Hitler's representative," the source said.

"We know for a fact that these paintings saved Nathan Katz's life," he added. "He had to trade paintings for his exit visas, and later for his mother's release from the Dutch concentration camp at Westerbork."

The collection, which came into the Netherlands' possession after the state retrieved it from Germany in 1945, includes works by the 17th-century Dutch painters Gerrit Dou, Nicolaes Berchem and Jacob Ruysdael. They are currently on loan to several national museums, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Evelyn Campfens, from the Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War, told Haaretz that the committee does not expect to begin investigating the claim before 2008. The investigation is expected to take several months.

Nathan Katz died in Switzerland in 1949.

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