by Jon Lackman | 9 May 2006 | Uncategorized
Robert M. Edsel, author of the new book Rescuing da Vinci, yesterday wrote for the Dallas Morning News: “Today we celebrate V-E Day, the 61st anniversary of the Allies’ defeat of Nazi Germany and the victory in Europe. It should also become V-I Day: victory over ignorance … How different things were 65 years ago … Before the landings of Allied Forces onto the European continent, American museum directors and art professors appealed to leaders in Washington to take precautionary measures lest the art and monuments of Europe – collectively our Western world heritage – be destroyed in the course of our efforts to defeat Hitler and Nazi Germany. This was the first time in modern warfare that an army attempted to mitigate damage to cultural monuments while fighting a war … The United States created a special group known as the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section, or MFAA. These ‘Monuments Men,’ as they became known by other GIs, were a small group of men and women, mostly Americans, who volunteered for service to help identify and protect Europe’s art and monuments from damage. In civilian life, they were museum directors, curators and art historians. Attached to units on the front line, they designed aerial maps for pilots to use to avoid hitting cultural monuments. They were among the first troops to arrive in war zones to effect temporary repairs to damaged structures and remove art from further risk.”
