About lost national symbols - Nazis plundered Belarusian State Picture Gallery from June to September 1941

Today, while reflecting on the concept of "genocide," experts agree that it is not only the extermination of the people, but also their history. The echoes of the Great Patriotic War are still sweeping through the funds of Belarusian museums. Fascists plundered the national heritage without remorse. Tons of icons, pictures and sculptures were taken to Europe. 

Thus even before the beginning of the war the fascist authorities prepared a special program for the confiscation of cultural and art values in the occupied territories. From June to September 41, they looted our State Picture Gallery. 

Three thousand collected items, including fifty Slutsk belts, two hundred Russian paintings, half a thousand pieces of unique porcelain, and furniture from the 17th century - all was taken away by the Wehrmacht. The National Historical Museum suffered the same fate. 

Liberation from captivity 

Boris Lazuko, head of department of the Center for researches of Belarusian culture, language and literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus: 

The loss of many values is an irreplaceable loss. The policy of the Nazi invaders was based not only on the destruction of the population, but also on the destruction of all memory.

 By 1941, the collection of the art gallery included 2 thousand 711 objects of art. However, the fund was looted in just three months. In summer, the Dresden gallery director, the Commissioner for the Inventory of Valuables and Himmler "expertly" operated there.  In 1944 the museum workers failed  to find 48 Slutsk belts, 60 icons of the 16th - 18th centuries, 223 works of Russian painting, 800 pieces of Western European porcelain and about one thousand works of Belarusian painters.

The Nazis attacked the funds of the gallery thoughtlessly. Vice Fuhrer of Germany Goering (who was passionately fond of antiques) and SS Reichsfuhrer Himmler competed for the Belarusian "stuff". 

Elena Karpenko, Head of the Department of Old Belarusian Art of the National Art Museum of Belarus:

“We know from the records, surviving memoirs of German officers who so bitterly write to their superiors in the Wehrmacht that, unfortunately, the art gallery is ruthlessly stolen. Some works hang in the offices of German officers. They even threatened to punish the thieves, who without permission, so to speak, proceeded to this barbaric affair.”

The total damage of the art gallery later estimated extraordinary state commission on the establishment and investigation of the atrocities of the invaders amounting to 12 million 867 rubles. They took out almost 3,000 canvases including the paintings of Repin, and Aivazovsky, Kramskoy and even Michelangelo.

Nadezhda Savchenko, researcher at the National Historical Museum of Belarus:

“Before the war began, the Minsk Historical Museum had about 60,000 exhibits. There was even such an exhibit as a saber of the famous French marshal Michel Noah and keys to the Bobruisk fortress. We all know it from sources, from some books, catalogs and magazines of that time.”

Nadezhda Savchenko, researcher of the National Historical Museum of Belarus:

“A major removal took place in 1944, when already the Germans began to understand that the Soviet army was coming very close here. And the objects were evacuated and saved from bombshelters. And so they had to be taken deep into Germany. These items were loaded into 4 wagons.”