'Monuments Men' Honored with Congressional Gold Medal...
'Monuments Men' Honored with Congressional Gold Medal
Oct 23, 2015 | Before Richard Baranick was a successful Chicago architect, he helped safeguard some of Europe's most valuable pieces of Western culture plundered by the Nazis.
'Monuments Men' Honored with Congressional Gold Medal
Oct 23, 2015 | Before Richard Baranick was a successful Chicago architect, he helped safeguard some of Europe's most valuable pieces of Western culture plundered by the Nazis.
Seventy years later, it remains difficult for him to fathom the theft of millions of paintings, sculptures, drawings, pieces of furniture and other objects at the close of World War II, detailed by Robert Edsel in his 2009 book, "The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History." The book was later made into a film by George Clooney. "All for their own selfish pursuit," said Baranick on Thursday, before he and three of the surviving "Monuments Men" -- Harry Ettlinger, Motoko Fujishiro Huthwaite and Bernard Taper -- were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation's highest civilian awards.
They were members of an Allied armies unit assigned to recover the works of art stolen from homes, museums, churches and elsewhere. The roughly 350 civilian soldiers -- mostly middle-aged men and women who were historians, architects and museum personnel before the war -- were part of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section. Baranick, born in 1924, served in the Army in France and Austria before signing up to help move looted materials to the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point in Germany. "The Americans cared about the cultural traditions of Europe," he said. "We did everything we could to salvage what the Nazis had done. It's the best we could do."
The Congressional Gold Medal ceremony is presented to the World War II "Monuments Men" at the U.S. Capitol
According to Edsel, more than 5 million cultural objects were seized by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. "Their initial responsibility was to mitigate combat damage, primarily to structures _ churches, museums, and other important monuments," Edsel wrote of the Monuments Men. "As the war progressed and the German border was breached, their focus shifted to locating movable works of art and other cultural items stolen or otherwise missing."
In May 2014, Congress voted overwhelmingly to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the unit for their heroic role in preserving works of cultural importance. Relatives of deceased Monuments Men also attended Thursday's bipartisan ceremony, along with members of Congress. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the Monuments Men, some of whom descended hundreds of feet into salt mines to recover pieces, saved the "creativity that connects us to the heritage of civilization." "They are truly heroes," said Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, who sponsored the bill awarding them the medals.
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