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Global Catalogue of Nazi Looted Art Records Published Online in World Print E-mail
2011-05-05

On May 5th at the US National Archives in Washington DC leading national
archives and museums, signed a global agreement to provide an
international online catalogue of documentation on looted cultural
artifacts. The project will enable families to research their losses,
provenance, researchers  to locate important documentation, and
historians to study newly accessible materials on the history of
objects taken by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The catalogue
was created through collaboration between national archives and
expert organizations in Belgium, France, Germany, Ukraine, the
UK and USA.
 
The purpose of the project is to extend public access to all records related
to looted cultural artifacts by cataloguing and digitizing the archival
materials and making them available through a single international web
portal hosted by the US National Archives and Records Administration.
To view the web portal go to: http://tinyurl.com/3hytzz4
original url:
http://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/international-resources/index.html
 
A list of the international  participating institutions is on the website.
 
The records date from 1939 to 1961 and  range from seizure orders,
inventories and images of looted works of art, field reports and claim forms
for seized property to interrogation reports of art dealers and reports of
the transfer of looted art works to neutral countries. The portal page is:
http://tinyurl.com/3s9uev7
[Original url:
http://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/international-resources/navigate.html ]
and serves as the project's navigational hub. Each link directs users to
the search interface for the finding aids and records available from each
participating institution.
 
The Portal members plan to launch a wiki to serve as a place to share
information about and research into archival resources related to Nazi-era
cultural property throughout the world.
 
Press release from the National Archives (USA) may be found at:
http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2011/nr11-111.html
 
Thank you to Saul Issroff for alerting me to this agreement.
 
Jan Meisels Allen
IAJGS Director-at-Large
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee