Elliott, Peter Looted!

The Nazi Art Plunder of Jewish Families in France

This is a story about the lives and art collections of four French Jewish families whose artworks were stolen and whose businesses were confiscated during the German occupation of France (19401944). The story is about their lives, their businesses and art collections, and the fate of their paintings during and after the war. The four protagonist families all made important cultural and industrial contributions to France. The Bader/Heilbronn/Meyer families were the founders of the French department store Galeries Lafayette. Their entire art collections were looted by the German ERR and processed in Paris according to a standard procedure; both Heilbronn and Meyer were prominent members of the French resistance movement during the war. Pierre Wertheimer founded Parfums Chanel and also had to flee from the occupiers; a friend offered to save his paintings from looting, but betrayed him. Pierre and Denise Lévy from Troyes were the founders of one of France's largest textile companies and donated their art collection to the French nation after the war. They managed to find refuge in the unoccupied south and were fortunate enough to be able to hide their art from the German occupiers. Georges Lévy (Lurcy), an aviation industrialist and banker, made his fortune in France and also invested heavily in art. During the occupation, he sought refuge in the United States and successfully smuggled most of his artworks out of France to the United States via Portugal. After his death, Lurcy's art collection was sold in what was billed as the greatest auction ever; to this day, the proceeds finance ongoing educational exchanges between France and the United States. Each of these stories of imagination, resilience and determination reveals a different facet of the experiences of Jewish French art collectors during the dark years of the occupation.