Former student of Jewish artist decries removal of art from Ukrainian flat
N style=”mso-spacerun: yes”> – In a secret operation, Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial has smuggled out of Ukraine fragments of murals by Polish‑Jewish artist Bruno Schulz, sparking an international controversy.
Yad Vashem maintains it was merely exercising its right to preserve the works of a prominent Jewish writer, artist and Holocaust victim, but Ukrainian and Polish officials say their removal was a crime.
Drohobych, a Polish town that became part of Ukraine after World War II, shows few outward signs of the tempers flaring around its most famous son, who was slain by the Nazis in 1942.
On Shevchenko Street, where Schulz was shot to death by an SS officer, children play and housewives walk, carrying shopping bags. There is no monument to the shy art teacher who immortalized their town in eloquent, mystical prose.
Alfred Schreyer, a former Schulz pupil, recalls how he and German filmmaker Benjamin Geissler discovered the murals in a tiny pantry of a three‑story house that once belonged to the town’s chief Gestapo officer, Felix Landau.
On the dirty walls, under layers of beige paint, they detected traces of the wall paintings, illustrations of Grimm fairy tales that Schulz created to decorate the nursery of Landau’s young son.
“I was stunned. To see them … ” Schreyer said, his voice filled with emotion. “There was a princess, a king on high heels, a clown, a jester and on the other wall a coach driver, illustrating Grimm fairy tales.”
“This is his last work. This man was painting while people were being killed and dying outside and maybe he wanted to make his last message,” said Geissler, who is preparing a documentary on Schulz.
Schulz was known to have painted several murals at Nazi orders. Some were destroyed and attempts to find those at the Landau villa had proved futile – until last winter.
In mid‑February, a group of Ukrainian and Polish art experts came to the villa – which today houses five families – and pronounced the murals Schulz originals.
“The experts were not even needed. There could be no mistake,” Schreyer said. “Always, everywhere, Schulz put in his own triangular face. The coach driver had the face of Schulz.”
What happened next is like a chapter from a spy novel.
Yad Vashem official Mark Shraberman arrived in Drohobych in March, telling authorities he was there to research Holocaust history in the town where nearly 15,000 Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis.
“They spoke of research involving World War II victims. I could not have suspected anything,” said Drohobych Mayor Oleksy Radzievsky, who denies Yad Vashem suggestions he cooperated with Shraberman.
On May 25, Ukrainian authorities learned that fragments of the murals had disappeared.
Working in secret, Shraberman and his assistants had removed segments of the mural from the pantry wall, located in an apartment now occupied by a former communist bureaucrat, Mykola Kalyuzhny, and his wife.
Gluing cloth to the outer layer of paint, they cut the fragments off, along with the entire paint coating down to the brick walls, then mounted it on plywood sheets, Drohobych officials said.
Shraberman had a certificate from the Kalyuzhny family giving him permission to remove the fragments, but Ukrainian officials say it has no judicial power. Ukrainian law bars any pre‑1945 cultural objects, art work or antiques to be removed from the country without a special permit.
No one knows how and where Shraberman smuggled the fragments – the largest measured 1,262 square inches – across the Ukrainian border.
A Ukrainian‑Polish commission appointed to assess the damage said more than 70 percent of the murals were removed.
In Poland the removal sparked a public outcry. The government issued official protests and intellectuals voiced dismay.
For Geissler, it amounts to “new violence against Schulz.”
“It could never even cross my mind that the generally respected Yad Vashem institution could be capable of such a criminal act,” said Jerzy Ficowski, a Polish poet and the country’s leading expert on Schulz.
“This is an unprecedented, scandalous violation of all moral grounds. Imagine if I went to Jerusalem and cut off a piece of the Wailing Wall,” said Ukrainian culture department official Roman Lubkivsky.
There are plans to remove the remaining murals and store them in a museum until Yad Vashem returns the rest – which Yad Vashem says it has no intention of doing.
Yad Vashem spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg says Drohobych authorities agreed the house owners could donate the murals, which she said were “in a most neglected condition.”
“The correct and most suitable place to commemorate the memory of the Jewish artist, Bruno Schulz – killed by an SS officer purely because he was a Jew – and the place to house the drawings he sketched during the Holocaust is Yad Vashem,” Rosenberg said in a statement.
Shreyer, the Schulz pupil and one of a handful of Drohobych‑born Jews still living in the town, says the murals must come back.
“An outrage has occurred. First of all, I blame Yad Vashem,” he said. “The only place for them is Drohobych.”
Monika Scislowska in Warsaw contributed to this report.
