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Show HITLER'S SHAME Historic Church Mlm Stolen By Germans, Returned to Poles (EDITOR'S NOTE: Pauline Frederick. WNU Foreign Correspondent, was the only American correspondent to accompany the historic mission of returning re-turning the Wit Stwosz altar, the largest In Europe, to the Polish church from which the Germans, on ill tier's orders, bad stolen It. Here Is her exclusive story.) By PAULINE FREDERICK WNU Features. CRACOW, POLAND. It was after midnight when a special spe-cial train pulled out of the loading yards at Nuernberg, Germany, Ger-many, and headed east. There were two passenger coaches on it, one of them formerly the private car of Joachim von Ribbentrop. There were 22 freight cars, carefully sealed, bearing warnings in English, German and Polish that anyone trying to pilfer the train would be shot. Armed G.I.s stood on guard. I - i NV 1 i s tsf A I V ? " 1 Cf J This was a train to bring shame to any German with a conscience. It was to bring tears of joy to the eyes of many Poles. For aboard was Poland's greatest art treasure, the Wit Stwosz altar, being returned to its home, the Church of Our Lady, in Cracow, from where the Germans had looted it. This trip was the end of a mission begun in 193". In August of that year the international situation had reached such a critical stage that Prof. Charles Estreicher of the fine arts department of the University of Cracow decided that steps should be taken to safeguard the altar from possible looting. Consequently, he supervised the packing of the sculptures sculp-tures in great wooden cases which were placed on barges and then floated down the Vistula to Sando-mierz. Sando-mierz. By mid-September, however, the Germans had found all the boxes. Hitler ordered them conveyed to the Eeichsbank in Berlin. Hitler Orders It Set Up. Meantime, Burgomeister Leibel of Nuernberg conceived the idea of establishing es-tablishing a Veit Stoss center in his city. Veit Stoss is the German spelling of Wit Stwosz. Both Germans Ger-mans and Poles claim the artist as one of their nationals. The fuehrer fueh-rer ordered that the altar should be set up in St. Lawrence's Lutheran church in Nuernberg. That meant that the framework which had been left in the Church of Our Lady in Cracow had to be torn out and brought to Germany. The pieces were unpacked in Nuernberg. Then it was found that the Germans had miscalculated again the altar was too large for St. Lawrence's church. It now became necessary to find a safe place in which to store the unpacked un-packed treasure. There was an ancient an-cient tunnel beneath Nuernberg cas- NATIVITV SCENE . . . From one of the panels of ihe Wit stwosz altar. tie. Silesian miners were brought in to lengthen the corridor which begins in an obscure little house near where Albrecht Durer lived and slopes downward until the passage cut through the solid rock is some 100 feet under ground. The Polish . underground kept track of the altar, reporting its whereabouts to Professor Estreicher who had gone to London. There came the all-out raid on Nuernberg and Poles waited anxiously to know whether the altar had been destroyed de-stroyed as the castle above it had been. The tunnel had been a safe place and the Wit Stwosz work was 1-'' . -! i x I I . 1 k Li J unharmed. Last October, Lt. Frank Albright of the monuments and fine arts division divi-sion of military government, and a former professor of archeology at Johns Hopkins, began supervising, with the help of Professor Estreicher, Estrei-cher, the long task of preparing the altar for shipment to Poland. Carries Art Treasures. On April 28, 1946, the train was ready to leave for Cracow with the altar, furniture and typewriters that had been stolen from the University of Cracow; 2.000 chalices and monstrances mon-strances from which the gold had been looted; da Vinci's "Lady With Ermine," and Rembrandt's "Landscape," "Land-scape," together with other treasures treas-ures that had been taken from Poland Po-land by Nazi Governor-General Frank. I had had nothing- to do with bringing back the altar to Poland. But I wore an American uniform, and that was enough to include me in the little group on whom the Polish Po-lish people lavished their gratitude. I was handed bouquets of flowers. The children clapped and cheered as 1 walked by. They sang. One handsome young blonde boy, about 14. reached his hand through the crowd and taking mine, said in English: Eng-lish: "You're a reporter. Please tell the American people how grateful we are." TOO LARGE . . . The Wit Stwosz altar in Church of Our Lady. The Germans found this too large to place in their own St. Lawrence church. |