Predator. The Looting Activity of Pieter Nicolaas Menten (1899–1987)

Abstract

The Nazi looting of works of art and cultural goods during 1933–1945 is usually divided into institutionalized and unauthorized, that is, wild one. The former was conducted by state and party special organizations and authorities, while the latter, widespread extensively in the east, was practiced by many Germans on their own account. The author suggests introducing a separate category of “specialized
 looting”, encompassing those who engaged in looting with full awareness – on their own account and/or on commission – and who were proficient in evaluation of the artistic goods and knew where and in whose possession they could be found. In the Reich and in occupied France and Holland there were many such expert robbers. In Poland their number remained small after the initial wave of official confiscations. The most notable exception was the Dutchman, Pieter Nicolaas Menten (1899–1987), who after the war became one of the wealthiest citizens of Holland and owner of a private art collection unavailable to the public.
 The scope, character, and methods of the looting conducted by Menten for his private use in Kraków and Lvov during the German occupation between early 1940 and the end of 1942 make him a very special case in the history of Nazi looting. These aspects are analyzed on the basis of extensive archival materials and evidence collected in Holland and Poland during the investigations and trials against Menten (the first one took place in the late 1940s and was followed by next ones in the late 1970s), who was accused of collaboration with the Germans and the massacre of Jewish inhabitants of the Galician villages of Urycz and Podhorodce in the summer of 1941. Menten was never sentenced for the looting of works of art in Kraków, where he was an appointed forced administrator of four Jewish artistic salons, or in Lvov, where he appropriated art collections and furnishings of several Lvov professors murdered on 4 July 1941. He was never found guilty even though when in January 1943 he left the General Government and went to Holland he took – with Himmler’s special permission – four railway carriages of valuable works of art, gold and silverware, antique furniture, and Oriental rugs. The post-war collection of works of art in Menten’s possession wasn’t liable to confiscation under Dutch law and has become dispersed.