Blogging is amazing, to be sure, but it’s not the most worthwhile or even the most thrilling of my life’s experiences.  Certainly not. My work with the Monuments Men–now, that was work that made me proud.  One would say I was a Monuments Woman, although we women did not get the credit we deserved.  Yet another recurring theme in the story of my life.  Yet, living the life has made up for it.

I’d finished up at Cambridge in the late 1930s and gone up to London to study at the Courtauld Institute. Back then some called the Courtauld a finishing school for young women whose parents wanted them to acquire a basic knowledge of art–one requisite, or useful tool, toward the goal of becoming a proper wife.  I, of course, having read art history at Cambridge, scoffed at this and instead applied myself with great determination; I yearned to be a curator, you see.   The Warburg Library, Aby Warburg’s vast art trove, had shifted from Germany to London when the Nazis surfaced, and its relationship to the Courtauld lent more gravity to the courses and reputation.  And Anthony Blunt, then young and promising but not yet seasoned enough to be the Courtauld director, had begun to influence the direction of the institute, which was founded in 1932 with the grand gift of Sir Samuel Courtauld’s collection.  No doubt, you’ve heard of Blunt?  The gifted teacher and curator that I knew–it is hard to imagine him as a spy for the Russians all the time.

Anyway, I do go on…so sorry.  The war was coming, and we knew it, of course, for weeks ahead, that summer of 1939.  It was no secret that Hitler had already looted the great collections of every country where his legions had stomped their boots.  And a vicious air assault was expected. Everyone attached to a museum pitched in to evacuate the national treasures out of London to the countryside.  Like sending the children away, which was called Operation Pied Piper.  Fortunately, the paintings didn’t bawl as much as the children.  That work consigned me straight into the military as an attaché in the cultural section.  By 1943 we were actively preparing our own landing on the Continent to search out the troves stolen and hidden along the Nazi path of tyranny and destruction.  Within months after D-Day we art historians arrived in France, as well.

We veered in and out of the boundaries of enemy lines until the war’s end the following spring.  Then we plunged in, especially in Germany and Austria, the last hold-outs of the Nazi regime.  Imagine the sight of an American G.I. carrying up an El Greco from an underground cave in the Alps?  Or a priceless Greek sculpture?  This was routine.  The Nazis, of course, were unfailingly systematic, what with their lists, so we could tell which cities and even which families items came from.  The tricky part, alas, was finding the people, if they didn’t make claims.  Were we to assume that they perished?  Sadly, yes, that was so often the case. Our procedure then was to return art to its country of origin, not that the Russians went along with that, of course.

Important and high-level as that work was, it didn’t matter when I returned to Britain.  Who was I to think that a Jewish woman who had served her country so nobly would qualify for a curator position?  My only option was teaching art history in a girls’ school.  In doing so, I became yet another cog in the process of imparting to young women that scintilla of culture that would make them proper society matrons.  My revenge: a few really latched onto it, told me I’d inspired them, and went on to open galleries and even land museum positions.  Times had changed, you see.

But the Monuments Woman work stayed with me.  We hadn’t solved all the mysteries or safely returned everything to rightful owners.  We’d disbanded only two years after the war’s end; there was only so long for art to remain a priority.  There were war criminals to be tried, displaced persons to be settled, countries to be rebuilt, the Cold War–and just plain cold, hunger, and austerity all over Europe, especially here in England.  It was easy to push empty-handed art owners away.

Yet, I knew survivors and their heirs would resurface looking for their treasures.  I hoarded as many documents as I could, kept my ear to the ground among collectors and curators I knew and remained in contact with my cohorts among the Monuments Men.  Once I retired from teaching, in 1984, I parlayed this into working as a consultant to people seeking looted art still missing.

Which is how Lily Kovner came to ring me up and make me a character in Secrets of the Afikomen.