JUN 21 1966
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The Canadian English "Jewish Weekly
VOL. XLVIII
GARDENVALE, QUEBEC, JUNE 17, 1966
t CT
No. 38
TWO SMALL OIL PORTRAITS BY DURER, BOUGHT BY N.Y. LAWYER IN 1946 FOR $500, SAID TO BE WORTH $1-MILLION
Two small paintings believed to be by Albrecht Durer and worth at least $l-million have turned up in the collection of a lawyer who purchased them in New York for $600 in 1946. The Durer paintings have been missing from a German castle since World War II, says the New York Times. Scholars consider the discovery one of the most important art finds in many years.
One prominent art scholar estimated that the two .Durer works were worth $l-million.
The lawyer, Edward I. Elicofon, is sixty-two years old and has been collecting art for many years. He said he had bought the paintings "from a young man who said he was sent to me by a friend of mine."
The paintings hung unrecognized on a wall near a staircase in Mr. Elicofon's home at 1100 East 19th Street in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Their background was discovered only several weeks ago.
Diirer is believed to have painted them in 1499. They are portraits of Hans and Felicitas Tucher, members of a prominent merchant family in Weimar. Each painting, oil on wood, is 11 by 9J,2 inches.
The paintings, now in a bank vault, have been examined by curators of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum, with the approval of Mr. Elicofon, has notified the U.S. State Department "in view of the possible uncertainty of title."
One day in 1946, Mr. Elicofon said, a man "about 25 to 30 years old" came to Mr. Elicofon's home saying "he was sent to me by a friend of mine."
Underneath his arm the man carried a package containing eight paintings which he said he had hmieht i^ R'fr-po. *r<- EMcofon picked out the twa portraits, "dick-ered with the young man" over the price and finally agreed on $500, which he paid in cash, says the New York Times. He said the man gave him a receipt but that, after twenty years, he had been unable to find it. .
"I never saw him or heard from him again," Mr. Elicofon said. He added that it was not unusual for people to drop by his home with art items to sell.
Several weeks ago, Mr. Elicofon said, one of his friends, Gerard Stern, of 698 West End Avenue, an art researcher and dealer, spotted reproductions of the portraits
in "Lost Art Treasures," a book recently published in West Germany.
Mr. Stern remembered having seen the paintings in the Elicofon home. He went to the lawyer's office a^ 401 Broadway and they decided to take the paintings to the Metropolitan.
The German book noted that the paintings had hung for many years in the Grand Ducal Museum,in Weimar, now in East Germany,
Early in World War II, the paintings were among 121 art treasures moved from Weimar for safe-keeping to a castle at �ehwarzburg in Thuringia, now an East German state. Hundreds; of other paintings from various collections were stored in the castle.
Miss Ardelia R. Hall, who helped' to recover thousands of stolen war treasures as arts and monuments officer of the U.S. State Department from 1945 to 1962, said in a telephone interview from Washington that the two portraits were among eight works missing from the castle when it was occupied by American forces in the spring of 1945.
"We conducted a big investigation trying to trace those eight paintings, but we got nowhere," Miss Hall said. "Among the eight were works by Cranach the Elder and Friedrich."
Theodore Rousseau, the MeU ropolitan's curator of European paintings, said after examining the portraits:
"As far as I can make out, these arc the paintings reproduced in the book. The book states that they are reproductions of the paintings that were in Weimar. Scholars who studied the paintings in Weimar almost all agree that they are by Diirer."
Prof. Erwin Panofsky, of Princeton University, one of the world's leading art scholars and an authority on Durer, said that the two -Diirer portraits he saw in Weimar many years ago, reports the New York Times, were "perfectly genuine" and "really first-rate."
The works are believed to have been part of a set of four portraits. A third portrait, ef Elspeth Tucher, is in a museum in"Kassel, West Germany. The fourth portrait, of her husband, Nicolas, presumably was lost long ago.
On the back of the portrait of
STORE LEASING SERVICE
Retailers � Building Owners � Shopping Centre Developers �
ROYAL TRUST
Commercial Leasing Dept. Martin P. Merson
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Hans Tucher, Dtirer painted the Tucher family coat-of-arms.
Miss Hall said: "Under the Hague Convention, the two portraits cannot be kept in the United States. Our Government has returned manv stolen art objects that have teen found in this country to West Germany. Since we do not have relations with East Germany, we cannot transfer property to Weimar. What we have done in the past is to transfer objects to a West German trusteeship organization that handles stolen property."
She said, "The West German Government, if necessary, can sue for possession of the portraits in a New York court."
Some observers said the legal issues were so complicated that Mr. Elicofon, if he desired, could hold the paintings for many years before the case was settled. There is a possibility that he might be able to keep the paintings, according to some experts.
Mr. Elicofon said he expected to be.informed by the State Depart-,ment about the question of ownership. He said he was considering a showing of the paintings and would donate the proceeds to Jewish charities as "a form of poetic retribution."
Mr. Elicofon, who.-was born in Latvia, came to New York with his family at. the age of four years. He is a small, stocky, gray-haired man. He graduated from New York University, reports the New York Times, and was admitted to the bar in 1929.
He is a member of the New York County Lawyers Association and the Brooklyn Bar Association. His house contains paintings) bronzes, porcelains, and other objects of art. A widower, he has four children. Ho is a brother of Eliot Eiisofon, the photographer.
Durer> who was born in Nuremberg in 1471, the son of a goldsmith, ranks with the handful of world masters. He died in 1528. About one hundred of his oils have survived.
A Diirer engraving, "The Knight, Death and the Devil," was among-the art treasures appropriated by Hitler for his private collection from a Nuremberg museurn. It was returned when a United States Army officer, not knowing the rightful owner, bought it in Germany and sent it to Washington asking that "proper disposition be made of it."
Thousands of art treasures plundered in World War II are still sought throughout the world. Government agencies in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union are quietly working to track down paintings, sculptures, tapestries, and rare books worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Among the missing items ar% paintings by Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Frago-nard, Van Gogh, and Cezanne. Most of the treasures were stolen by the Nazis. But many, were taken by Russian and American soldiers, says the New York Times, German factory workers. Polish farmers, Italian peasants and other people.
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Surcharges Result Of "Go-Slow" By Haifa Stevedores
I"
A twenty per cent surcharge on shipping between Israel and western Europe went into effect because of congestion in Haif^ harbour resulting from a "go-slow" by stevedores, says the London Times. The surcharge has been imposed by the United Kingdom-Israel and Israel-United Kingdom shipping conferences representing seven British lines and one Israel line. A similar measure was taken by the Continent-Near East and Levant-Continent shipping conferences on behalf of twenty lines plying between Mediterranean and Continental ports.
Transatlantic cargo rates are not affected, but an agent for the American Export Lines said they were to be reviewed in the light of losses due to the strike.
Haifa's 1,600 stevedores have been going slow since April 24 demanding wage increases of some thirty per cent in their new labour contracts. They have been working to rule.
The stevedores are employed by a contracting 'company run by Solel Boneh, a corporation owned by the. General Federation of Labour (Histadrut). The contractors have said the higher wages would necessitate an increase in handling fees but the Government, which owns the port, has opposed it. Port dues were substantially raised in February and a further increase is out of the question.
Histadrut headquarters, which decided earlier this year on a ten per cent limit on wage increases for 1966, has also opposed the stevedores' demands. The port workers, who are an important political force in Haifa apart from sitting astride a vital economic service, already have enviable conditions.
The political power'of the porfr workers derives from their tradi-(Continucd on Page Three)
Thinkers From Nine Latin Countries
.. . i
Protest Soviet Anti-Jewish Bias
. Intellectuals from nine Latin-American countries issued an appeal in Mexico City, Mexico, for ah end of Russian discrimination against Jews living in the Soviet Union. The appeal, which will be communicated to the Soviet Embassy, also requested, says the New York Times, that Soviet Jews separated from their families as a result of Nazi persecution be allowed to rejoin them in other parts of the world.
More than thirty professors, novelists, poets, journalists, and former cabinet ministers from Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico. Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Salvador, and Panama .voted to take this step at a two-day conference.
The meeting was strongly attacked by two left-wing publications in Mexico City and by the Soviet Embassy.
In a message to the conference from London, Rertrand Russell, the philosopher, charged that the anti-religion campaign in the Soviet Union was practice^ with "exceptional vigor against the Jews."
Expressing the virw> of miny of the participants, the conference president, Martin Luis Guzman, a Mexican novelist, dee'.arc-d that the Soviet Jews wore in d?.r.j?er of ethnic, cultural, ai <1 roileuvus extinction if (iiscrimif.it;-.:n ae.ur..-t then; \va< not chevked.
After having fio;:r:<!-.--d a? a minority group ir, R.;--::! i:r.der Lenin, he said. ;ho Je\\s ur.dor St-nl'.r h<v,-ir,::- the v:ct::vs of a persecution that c.-.r.tii'Urs. throv.ch ir. diminished form, savs the Ne\v York Tiir.es. It \v.is chr-rced at the conference thru there .'ire virtually no Jewish theaters, Lbvaries, or *choo)s in th� Soviet Union.
International Researcl -v �/ill Seek Answer Over Seven-Year Period, To Question Of Human Mass Murder By "Whole Societies"
What is it that makes people feel not only justified in destroying others but that they have a duty to do so?
This question of human cruelty and destructiveness, which had its supreme example in the Nazi persecution of European Jewry, is to be studied by an international research group over a seven-year period. Work has already been started in Britain and on the Continent, and it is hoped that large portions of the study will be carried out in the United States.
Details of the pioneering study, to be conducted by a newly established Center for Research in Collective Psycho-pathology and focusing on the processes by which certain social groups come to be regarded as sub-human and hence liable to persecution and even extermination, were described by David Astor, editor of the London Observer, at a luncheon session at the diplomatic reception rooms of the U.S. State Department in Washington., that concluded the 60th anniversary annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee.
Mr. Astor said that many studies of the traditional side of man as an individual existed. However, he deplored the lack of studies of whole "societies which do big killings."
Characterizing the mass murders in Nazi Germany and in Russia under Stalin as "political madness," Mr. Astor declared that "irrational fantasies were an integral part of the whole process whereby World War II came about"
A recurrence of such irrational behavior, he said, "may lead us toward a catastrophic world war."
Involved in the project are specialists in the areas of dynamic psychology, social anthropology, sociology, history, and politics.
They include Dr. Norman Cohn, a historian and a psychologist, who will direct the project in Britain; Dr. Joan Wescott, an American anthropologist; Dr.-Zevedei Barbu, a British sociologist; Dr. Leon Poliakov, a French historian and authority on Nazi crimes; and Anthony Storr, a British psychoanalyst and expert on the psychology of aggression.
Mr. Astor said that Nazi mass-killing was not an isolated phenomenon but rather "the most extreme of a whole gradation of killing processes that were going on at the time." The Nazis, he explained, killed not only Jews but also huge numbers of Poles and Russians, while in more recent times Stalinist Russia killed "thousands upon thousands." Hindus and Muslims "are equally capable of seeing each other murderously," he added.
"AH the.se examples of mass-killing, when the motivation has "been partly or wholly irrational, cannot be without significance," he continued. "Indeed, its significance, when we haveLunderstood it. is bound to throw light on the re^t of politics."
Mr. Astor acknowledged that many studies of the irrational side of man as an individual exist, but pointed to the lack of studies of man within the group.
"This pattern of studies is not at ail satisfactory," he said. "For it is not individuals, acting as individuals. \vho kill many people, they only, at most, kill one or two. N'or is ii delinquent pangs. Their worst riots could only kill people in very small numbers. It is societies which do the big killings. An Kichmann is only a harmless me-
chanic or at worst an individual murderer, until society tells him that he may, and indeed ought, to kill. Then people, even quite ordinary people, seem capable of going to almost any lengths."
Mr. Astor, it has been learned, first broached the subject of such research publicly at a meeting in London in April, 1962, commemorating the Warsaw ghetto uprising of April, 1943. Following publication of his talk, Prof. Norman Cohn, a noted historian of perse-cutory and exterminatory creeds and movements, gave up an aca- . demic appointment to translate Mr. Astor's suggestion into reality. Several years of discussions followed with specialists in dynamic psychology, social anthropology, sociology, history, and politics.
Out of these discussions came the establishment early this year of the Center for Research irt Collective Psycho - pathology, under the auspices of the University of Sussex, in England, and financed by the specially formed Columbus Trust. The funds so far raised, which have come from British sources 'alone, amount to $600,000. This sum was raised by the Trust within a few months.
Lord Butler is chairman of the Trust, other members including: Mr. Astor, Prof. Max Beloff, Professor of Government and Public Administration at Oxford; Lord Fulton, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex; Harold Lever, M.P.; Dr. A.T.M. Wilson, of Unilever and the Tavistock Institute; and Leonard Wolfson, industrialist.
Sol M. Linowitz, chairman of the board of Xerox Corp., who earlier in the day had been elected chairman of the executive board of the Ameruan Jewish Committee, was chairman of the luncheon meeting. In introducing Mr. Astor, Mr. Linowitz explained that the Committee, in the late 1940s, folloNving the end of World War II and of the Nazi regime in Germany, sponsored pioneering research into individual psycho-pathology,
"This research," Mr. Linowitz stated, "was published in the five-volume 'Studies In Prejudice', whose key volume is 'The Authoritarian Personality'. By exposing prejudice as a disease and its carriers as twisted personalities, this work exerted such an effect on American life and thought that today 'the concept of bigotry as a mental health, problem has become a cliche. The study outlined by Mr. Astor may be considered an extension of that pioneering work into the area of group prejudice and hatred, and we here may be learning about another of the great steps forward in the great work to understand and then root out bigotry.
"The American Jewish Committee regards this as a most significant project, and is anticipating cooperation with Mr. Astor and his colleagues in furthering this study, which we feel has major consequences for all of us."
In his luncheon talk, Mr. Astor explained that the studies would proceed along two lines: one, a study of the preconditions of the Xazi exterminations, with "particular reference to how the victims were seen by their exterminators and by large sections of German society; the other, a "compendium of human destructiveness," which he described as "an attempt to bring together all that is now
on Page Three)
CAMPBELL FREE BAND CONCERTS
Under provisions of the Will of the late Charles S. Campbell, K.C., fre� band concerts will be given in public parks for the benefit and enjoyment of the people of Montreal at 8:30 In the evening as follows: �
Sundays � Lafontaine, Dominion Square, Jeanrve
Ma nee and Jarry. :
Wednesdays � Dominion Square and Molson
(Also � in July only � St. Paul de la Croix).
Thursdays � Lafontaine, Dominion Square and Jarry.
(Also � in July only � Jeanne Man<e),
These concerts will be given
from J9th June to 2?st August, 1966.
ANNOUNCEMENTS Of THE CONCERTS WILL BE MADE
OVER STATION "CFCf" ABOUT 7:00 P.M.
ON THE EVENING Of EACH CONCERT.
ESTATE LATE CHARLES S. CAMPBELL, K.C.,
The Royal Trust Company, Trust**.