There was no ‘Woman in Gold’

68 years later . . .

36 years later . . .

ISN’T IT amazing how something we all learned back when we were five years old can dress itself up in every manner of violation? I refer to the simple ethical dictum: Don’t steal.

And if you did, return it.

Simple, no? Not, it seems, for the country of Austria, whose citizens stole thousands of pieces of art from its Jewish citizens, then had the gall to regard them as “national treasures.”

I just saw the movie, “Woman in Gold.” I am sure that most of you know the story about Gustav Klimt’s now famous painting, “Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” which wasn’t a “national treasure,” wasn’t “Austria’s Mona Lisa,” but a privately owned painting hanging in a private home — a Jewish home.

Comment via the IJN blog posting, “To sell or not to sell? Woman in Gold“

The larger background here is the fact that, to this day, Austria has not repented its key role in the Holocaust. Not repented its having given birth to Hitler himself; not repented its having welcomed the Nazis and enthusiastically joined them in persecuting the Jews, then facilitating their murder. Instead, Austria still officially lives the lie that it was Hitler’s first “victim.”

If anything, it was a victim of itself. Hitler, as mentioned, was from Austria; not to mention, Austrians only too enthusiastically welcomed the Nazis and joined them in their genocide against the Jews.

True enough, Austria was not alone in making the Holocaust possible.

Add in most of the nations of Western and Eastern Europe. Repentance, it seems, does not love company. And so, it took years of court battles to force Austria to do what every five-year-old knows: return a stolen, or a lost, object.

But Austria’s road to perdition long ago violated that by committing the first and in some ways the worst, act of theft: the theft of identity.

There was no “Woman in Gold” — no universal, Austrian “woman.” There was Aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer, whose niece, Maria Altmann, as an 84-year-old woman in Los Angeles undertook the heroic effort to reclaim not only her rights to this painting, but her auntidentity.

And by extension, the identity of Austrian Jewry destroyed in the Holocaust.

The identity that Austria tried to erase, a step at a time, one of the first being the erasure of the name of the “Woman in Gold.”

IN DIAMETRICAL opposition, I heard a most remarkable story this ?week.

Rabbi Yaakov Chaitovsky of BMH-BJ was going through an old bag of belongings at the synagogue. In it, among other things, were a perfectly fit pair of tefilin, with a name attached.

He thought he recognized the name as that of a Chabad adherent, and the next time Rabbi Mendel Popack came to shul, Rabbi Chaitovsky asked him about it.

Yes, Rabbi Popack knew the person with that name.

He placed a call.

What a gasp on the other end of the line!

It turns out that these tefilin were lost in Denver in 1979 — 36 years ago! All that the overjoyed, incredulous owner of these sacred objects knew was that he had been in Denver and returned home, somehow, without his tefilin.

A pair of tefilin, a multi-million dollar piece of art, a jacket, an envelope, any object, it really makes no difference. If it’s not yours, return it.

Just like the Denver Art Museum did without any resistance, without any court battles, without any Austria-type lies about “national treasures” and invalid wills that supposedly bequeathed the Klimt painting to a gallery in Vienna.

CASE WESTERN Reserve University in Cleveland now builds the study of ethics into all of its courses.

In the dental school, for example, a dental student is presented with this dilemma: A poor patient shows up with a severe problem. The tooth, however, can be saved. The patient wants it extracted because he does not have the money to pay for all the treatment to save the tooth.

Ethically, what is the dentist supposed to do? Extract the tooth, or save it?

This kind of real-life ethical dilemma is now built into the Case Western curriculum.

The alumni magazine of the university notes that it is very easy to agree on ethical basics such as “do not murder” and “do not steal.” To apply these basics, however, can be very complicated. End-of-life issues, for example, complicate “do not murder.”

Yet, sometimes ethics is simple indeed. Sometimes, one needs to know nothing more than what one learned at age five. Rabbi Chaitovsky does.

Most people do.

Austria doesn’t.

“Woman in Gold” was returned to its rightful heir only after long court battles — all the way to the Supreme Court of the US, and beyond.

Alas, on the larger question — admitting its collaboration with the Nazis — we’re still waiting for Austria to do what Germany has done: Confess. Fess up. Remember. Hang your head in shame. Repent.

The Holocaust, and Austria’s role in it, is about a lot more than stolen paintings.

Hillel Goldberg may be reached at hillel@ijn.com.

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