§ Mr. Hopkinsonasked the Secretary of State for War whether he has now any further statement to make in regard to looting and wanton destruction by the Germans of works of art in Italy.
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§ Sir J. GriggYes, Sir. Instances of the plundering of churches by German soldiers continue to be reported. From the church of San Pietro in Cori they stole one important picture and the crucifix presented by Pope Pius V1; they looted the cathedral treasury at Terracina and the church of Santa Maria at Itri, Sant' Annunziata at Roccasecca and the monastery church of Badia Morronese, where they used the nave as a garage and the convent as stables; they stole three valuable paintings from Santa Maria del Calle at Pescocostanza, a Madonna of the school of Duccio and an alter-piece by Sano di Pietro from the Abbadia a Isola. At Terracina, they planted mines in the church of San Salvatore. One incident deserves special mention. A camp for British prisoners of war had been established near the Badia Morronese and certain prisoners had escaped and were supposed to have taken refuge in the church of Sant' Onofrio on a neighbouring hilltop; the Germans fired 50 shells into the church. The important 13th and 14th century frescoes in the chapel of San Pietro di Morrone suffered severely.
As regards museums, the Germans stole the coin collections from Terracina, Arpino, and the Abbadia di Valvisciolo, and the small antiquities from Vetralla and San Clemente a Casauria; the museum at Minturno they mined and deliberately destroyed.
From the art deposits in Tuscany the Germans have taken their toll. From Montegufoni they stole part of a triptych by Filippo Granacci; from Montagnana' the majority of the pictures; and from Grotti a number of the ancient archives at Siena including some of the famous Tavolette di Biccherna with 14th and 15th century miniatures. From Castel Oliveto two pictures, the Adam and the Eve by Lucas Cranach, were taken on the pretext that they were by a German artist and therefore belonged to Germany.
Perhaps the most damning of all the cases of theft that can be charged against the Germans is that from the Monte Cassino deposit. A mass of art objects from Naples and other South Italian Centres had been stored in the abbey. Before our advance, the Germans moved all this to Rome, and their propaganda described the handing-over of so much treasure to the keeping of the Vatican authorities. In fact, of the 187 crates 778W removed from Monte Cassino, only 172 were delivered to the Vatican; 15 were retained by the Germans. And of the 172 crates, some had been opened (and opened by people who had the inventories at their disposal and knew very well what they were doing) and the best of their contents removed, generally to be replaced by something that the experts did not consider worth taking.
The pictures secured by Germany in this haul included the famous Peter Breughel "The Blind Leading the Blind" from the National Gallery of Naples, a Filippino Lippi, a Luini, two Titians, a Raphael, a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo, a Joos van Cleve triptych, a Tiepolo, a Barnstello, a Panini, a Palma Vecchio, a Claude Lorraine, a Colantonio, a Ligozzi and others. All the gold objects from Pompeii and Herculaneum are missing; missing too are famous bronze statues from the excavations there—the Mercury resting, the Female Dancer, the Apollo from Pompeii and the two deer from Herculaneum; the suit of armour of the Emperor Charles V was also taken.
Where national treasures are thus carried off as spoil, private property is not likely to be respected. A curious case is that of a "palazzo" at Velletri which had been requisitioned by the Germans. The owner presented to the German authorities in Rome a demand for the restitution of objects removed when the building was vacated—furniture, pictures, and the contents of a large and valuable library. The official reply (now in our possession) was to the effect that the plundering was the work of Italian civilians; the Germans further published in the Italian and German newspapers a propaganda story that the library had been removed by them for safety and restored intact to its owner; in fact, 3,000 out of 10,000 volumes had been restored. Quite independently we know that the books were carried off to Nemi and hidden; some at least were in the private luggage of a German Major in the S.S. who was a personal friend of Himmler; he left Nemi in too great a hurry to remove his loot.
Much worse was the case of wanton destruction at' Pescocostanza. There a Professor Sabatini had a private library of some 20,000 volumes (many in MS. dating back to the 15th century) dealing 779W with the history of the Abruzzi, which he proposed to bequeath to the State. In November, 1943, the German unit occupying the town deliberately plundered and burnt the entire collection; of the 20,000 volumes about two dozen survive, the remainder are torn pages and ashes.