2003-03-12

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Glasnost on War's Looted Art

For more than 50 years the Soviet Union hid them in museum basements and secret repositories, one reportedly in a monastery wall. Now, reflecting increased glasnost, Russia's Ministry of Culture is posting images and descriptions of them on a new Web site. They are thousands of paintings, archives and rare books looted by Soviet forces in Germany and Eastern Europe during and after World War II and taken to Russia as so-called trophy art. (Now the preferred term in Russia is "displaced cultural treasures.") Hitler's forces had previously pillaged many of the works from Jewish owners and other Nazi victims.