Grave Robbery as Old as Humanity Atwood

Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World, by Roger Atwood. 2004

Grave Robbery and Looting of Valuables: As Old As Human History. Not “Poles Did It to Jews”

The phenomenon of exploitation of the dead has recently been brought to public attention by media publicity surrounding Jan T. Gross and his ZLOTE ZNIWA (GOLDEN HARVEST). Gross, virtually ignoring the wartime context involved, selectively dwelled on Poles who exploited the properties of Jews killed by the Germans. He practically went as far as portraying Poland a nation of thieves.

Is this really so? Hardly

Grave robbery is in no sense something distinctively Polish. Atwood makes this vividly clear as he comments: “Grave robbing is an old phenomenon, some will argue. The Romans looted the tombs and temples of the Greeks, the Vandals looted Rome, the then European colonists looted nearly everyone. Most of the tombs in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings were robbed within a hundred years of their sealing, and even the famously pristine tomb of Tutankhamen had been penetrated at least twice in antiquity before Howard Carter found it in 1922.” (pp. 11-12).

THE LOOTING OF VALUABLES IN GENERAL. NOTHING REMARKABLE

This book focuses on another form of exploitation of the dead–that of archeological treasures, and in recent years. Note that looting of architectural treasures involves not only a looting of the dead but also a destruction of one’s historical and cultural heritage.

STEALING OF VALUABLES ALL OVER THE WORLD

To begin with, it would be a mistake to regard looting as primarily the work of western presumably-imperialist peoples. Consider Peru: “The tombs were all dug up, the place tapped out. It all happened very fast and very recently, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, a period which will be remembered as one in which more Andean historical heritage was lost than in the previous four centuries…” (p. 24).

It would also be a mistake to regard looting of archeological artifacts only as the work of professional thieves and profiteers. As an example, Atwood writes: “Back in Sipan [Peru], villagers had overrun the burial mound and were sifting the backfill left by the looters for scraps of metal or anything else that looked valuable…People from nearby villages had come, too, all hoping to strike it rich.” (p. 51). The crushing poverty of the villagers was a major motive behind their looting. (p. 54). [So also was the crushing poverty of WWII- and post-WWII Poles in the looting of Jewish properties.]

Massive looting of archeological treasures took place after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Without exaggeration, some 13,000 objects were stolen. (p. 1). This has been a problem all over the world, as manifested by headless Buddhas in Cambodia, and nameless places where one can see such things as “…giant holes that show where looters gouged out tombs.” (p. 243). [The latter is reminiscent of the looter’s holes at Treblinka, begun by members of the Soviet Army using explosives, and blamed by Jan T. Gross on the Poles.]

This work elaborates on some remedial measures to reduce the extent of global archeological looting. It is not easy. For instance, it is difficult to even prove that an object in question had been looted. (p. 195).

STOLEN JEWISH ART…ONLY NOT ONLY JEWISH ART WAS STOLEN

Atwood writes: “The rise in the 1990’s of the issue of Holocaust art added to pressure for more transparency in how they acquired art. Paintings, sculptures, and prints that had been stolen by the Nazis and their allies from Jewish Holocaust victims wound up in the U.S. art market, and sometimes in American museums. The Holocaust art controversy exposed an amorality in 1940s acquisition policies that was so complete as to seem almost unbelievable by current standards.” (p. 149).

Unfortunately, Atwood has plainly adopted a Judeocentric view of the matter of art theft. Fact is, large numbers of non-Jewish-art was also pillaged by the Nazis, ending up in Allied position. Quite a few items of originally German-stolen Polish art have not been found to this day.