The Monuments Men (23 page)

Yours,

George

CHAPTER 18

Tapestry

Paris, France

November 26, 1944

M
ore than 250 miles away in Paris, a more traditional art museum—the Louvre—was finally alive with artwork. The pieces were mostly the classical sculpture collections, and not nearly as much as James Rorimer would have preferred, but Rorimer knew what an extraordinary accomplishment even this much was. The French government was finally closing the void in leadership that had developed after the Nazi departure, but the bureaucracy was a nightmare. And everyone, at every level, seemed to be pushing their own agenda. Rorimer had been pushing everywhere as hard as he could; he was, as one observer would later note, “not by talent much of a diplomat.”
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The staid French were often mystified by his bravado and more than one had complained of his “cowboy tactics.”
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But even with his bulldog tenacity and take-no-prisoners attitude, Rorimer hadn’t been able to make much headway.

He was convinced it had something to do with his rank. He wouldn’t trade his infantry training if he could, but coming in as a private put him at a tremendous disadvantage. He was a second lieutenant, and he was never going to be promoted, even though many of those around him felt he deserved a rank of major for the work he was doing. It chafed him. He couldn’t help it. And it wasn’t just personal pride, although that was part of it. His lowly rank was interfering with his work.

He thought of the day, back in September, when he learned that General Eisenhower’s office in Versailles was being furnished with items from the palace and the Louvre. Jaujard, the patrician director of the French museums and hero of the Louvre, knew of the “loans,” but had acquiesced in the interest of Allied cooperation. Rorimer did not. He raced to Versailles—Eisenhower’s office was in a house in the surrounding town, not the palace—and found soldiers moving furniture. A beautiful Regency desk sat on top of an ancient Persian rug from the Mobilier National. A terra-cotta statue was in the corner, while paintings and etchings from the Museum of the Palace of Versailles leaned against the wall.

The captain in charge, the delightfully named O. K. Todd, had personally selected the items, and he was not taking the opportunity to ingratiate himself with the Supreme Commander lightly. When Rorimer began to argue with him, Todd simply stepped out of the room and called Colonel Brown, Eisenhower’s headquarters commandant. Rorimer had argued with him, too: impractical, expensive, unguarded. Was it necessary? Was it wise? “General Eisenhower would be personally embarrassed,” Rorimer had said, “if it should leak out that he was using protected works of art for military purposes contrary to his explicit orders. And wouldn’t the German propaganda office have a holiday if it could report that General Eisenhower had appropriated art objects from Versailles for his personal use?”
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He had gone too far. “Let’s see what your General Rogers has to say about this,” Brown thundered, seizing the phone and dialing Rorimer’s commanding officer.
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As luck would have it, General Rogers was out. Colonel Brown was in no mood to wait. The next morning, the cultural objects were returned. O. K. Todd received a commendation from the city of Versailles for this selfless act. Eisenhower, arriving a few days later, found even the stripped-down office too large and grand, so he ordered a dividing wall installed and gave half the space to his secretaries. In the end, it was a small event, a piece of trivia perhaps, but except for a lucky break it might have cost Rorimer his commission. And that was the problem: too many toes to step on, too many egos to stroke, too much time wasted. It was almost as frustrating as museum work!

Rorimer banished the thought. He had spent much of the last month in the Île-de-France region, at a series of ancestral estates that ringed Paris. The great rooms of many châteaux had been blackened because neither the Germans nor the Americans knew how to use the old fireplaces. Four lovestruck American soldiers had given important paintings to young women from a local village. At Dampierre, the Germans had installed a cocktail bar in front of
Golden Age
, one of France’s most celebrated murals. But all in all, it had been a good trip. Damage was minimal; spirits still high. Another story from Dampierre seemed to epitomize the situation. The Germans had used the library’s renowned Bossuet letters for toilet paper, but after they left, the caretaker found the letters in the woods, cleaned them off, and returned them to the library. Now that was dedication. That was service!

Besides, this was no time to be negative. It was November 26, 1944—the Sunday after Thanksgiving in America—and James Rorimer had much to be thankful for. After weeks of demands, arguments, and supplication, the military trucks had been moved from the Jardin des Tuileries, and the garden was officially opened to the public. And now the Louvre was open, too. Voices were echoing where, two months ago, Rorimer’s footsteps had been the only sound. The Bayeux Tapestry, which he had discussed with Louvre director Jacques Jaujard so many weeks before, was on display in Paris for the first time in almost 150 years. He had accompanied General Rogers to the opening two weeks before; he was back now to walk the halls. The heart of Paris was coming to life, and Rorimer couldn’t help but think of his contribution.

He needed that encouragement because the rest of his work was slow. On the surface, the city of Paris looked majestic and indestructible, but underneath the Nazis had hollowed out catacombs of theft and destruction. The French national collections had been preserved through the cunning of Jacques Jaujard and the “good” Nazi Count Franz von Wolff-Metternich, but the collections of private citizens had been ransacked. Before the war, much of the artistic wealth of Paris had rested in the hands of its prominent citizens and art dealers—the Rothschilds, David-Weill, Rosenberg, Wildenstein, Seligman, Kann—all of them Jewish. Under Nazi law, Jews weren’t allowed to hold property, so the collections had been “appropriated” by the German state. When the looters had exhausted those collections, the confiscations trickled down to the lower-level Jewish aristocracy, and then to the Jewish middle class, and finally to anyone who even had a Jewish-sounding name—or possessed something the Gestapo wanted. In the end, it had been a mass pillage, as Gestapo officers broke down doorways and hauled valuables away—artwork, desks, even mattresses. Jaujard estimated that 22,000 pieces of important artwork had been stolen.

So far, Rorimer had been able to find information on approximately none of it. The Nazis had taken or destroyed almost all their records. The victims were usually absent, having fled the country or disappeared into the Nazi work camps. Witnesses were reluctant to speak. The wave of terror had subsided—no more forced public haircuts of young women or summary executions of suspected collaborators—but confidence in the new order was still dangerously low. There was too much risk and not enough reward, at least for the time being, in speaking out. It was best, most ordinary Parisians believed, to sip the champagne of celebration and keep your mouth shut.

The French museum establishment wasn’t faring much better. The first meeting of a group calling itself the Commission de Récupération Artistique (Commission for the Recovery of Works of Art) had occurred on September 29, 1944. The commission’s leader was Albert Henraux, the art patron and one of Jacques Jaujard’s key contacts in the French Resistance. The secretary was Mademoiselle Rose Valland, the assistant in charge of the Jeu de Paume museum. This was enough to prove to Rorimer that, no matter who took the lead, considerable power would always lie in the hands of his friend Jaujard. And yet, with all of Jaujard’s influence, the commission had only been formally recognized by the government two days ago, on November 24. As far as Rorimer knew, they had not made much headway in the recovery of artwork either.

So at the end of his tour of the Louvre—perhaps his first afternoon of sightseeing, he realized, since his arrival in Paris three months before—Rorimer stopped by his old friend’s office. It was almost time for closing, the last patrons being hustled swiftly out of the museum, but Jaujard, as always, was still at his desk. The man was indefatigable.

“Quite a success,” Rorimer said, referring to the opening. The crowds had been lining up and waiting hours to see the Bayeux Tapestry despite a ten-franc charge (about 20 cents U.S.); only the military was being allowed free entry.

“The public is happy to have an exhibition again,” Jaujard replied. “It is an important step.”

“And yet no one understands, outside the museum community, how much work went into making this exhibition possible.”

“It’s like that all over, James. I’m sure the dairy farmers complain about how little we understand the difficulty of getting milk to the market.”

“And the American soldiers complain about how difficult it is to chase Parisian women and buy perfume. Some merchants have even started charging for it!”

Jaujard laughed. “Only you Americans could joke about your presence here. We Parisians… we complain, but our memories of the occupation are too fresh not to appreciate you. Even if we no longer give everything away for free.”

They chatted a few minutes more about the exhibition and the city. They were friends now, bonded by circumstance and mutual admiration. Eventually, when he sensed an opportunity, Rorimer brought up the commission.

“I’m glad you asked,” Jaujard said. “There’s a matter you might be able to assist us with.” He paused, as if trying to find the right way to explain the situation. “You know about the Nazi looting of the private collections, of course.”

“Twenty-two thousand works of art. Who could forget?”

“Oh, it might be even more than that. They stole from all over Paris and the surrounding area. To track down every source, as you know, is next to impossible. So why not start instead at the end? Before leaving Paris, the looted artwork was all brought to one spot for cataloguing and crating: the nearby Jeu de Paume. And we had a spy inside.”

Rorimer felt himself edging toward Jaujard. A spy? Was this the break he had been hoping for?

“Who?” he asked.

“Rose Valland.”

Rorimer thought of the Jeu de Paume administrator he had met almost two months before in Jaujard’s office. He had seen her several times since then, and yet he found it hard to remember much about her besides her drab outfits, small wire-rimmed glasses, and ever-present grandmotherly bun of hair. Matronly. It was still the word that came to mind. She left the impression of a harmless spinster.

And yet… he had always believed there was more to her. And it wasn’t just the fire and intelligence in her eyes. Or that he had begun to suspect the depth of her involvement in Jaujard’s world. Because he hadn’t, not until now. She had, over the weeks of their occasional acquaintance, remained as inscrutable as at their first meeting. She rarely spoke, and almost never revealed anything of interest. She wasn’t afraid to challenge his assumptions, often with a dry sarcasm, but never in a way that left him dwelling on it later. He could never, in fact, remember much of what she said at all, which in itself, he now realized, should have made him suspicious. She wasn’t just a frumpy, anonymous museum employee. Or perhaps because she was a frumpy, anonymous museum employee, she was also something else. She was the ideal spy.

Jaujard smiled. “I told you she was a hero, but you didn’t understand. No one ever does. Rose Valland is not young or particularly attractive, but both qualities served her well in her duties. She is middle-aged. Simple in her manner. Imminently forgettable. What are you doing, James?”

“Middle aged. Simplicity in her manners… ” Rorimer repeated, taking quick notes on a few torn-out sheets of paper.
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“Self-reliant. Independent,” Jaujard continued. “Not reliant on her feminine charms, but as inscrutable as the cat in a game of cat and mouse… if the cat could make you think she was the mouse. But a playful sense of humor when you know her. A way of sighing before speaking, almost a womanly affectation, but never anything but cheerful. And yet she never values her feminine wiles over her strong will. She always wanted to carry her own suitcase, you know, no matter how heavy. Let’s see. Sensitive. Indefatigable. Painstaking… Is that enough?”
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Rorimer looked up from his notes. “More than enough,” he said. “Especially since I don’t know why I’m writing it down.”

“Because we want you to talk to her, James.”

“Why?”

“You’ve been in Paris for three months and in that short time you’ve seen what’s going on… the absence of trust, the difficulties of restarting government, the bureaucratic delays with which we must contend. It’s not surprising that after spending four long years inside the Jeu de Paume with the Nazis, Mademoiselle Valland is reluctant to turn over all her records and information.”

Rorimer took his pieces of paper and stuck them into the Louvre’s exhibition pamphlet on the Bayeux Tapestry, which he had picked up at the door. “Maybe she doesn’t know anything,” he said.

“That’s what your British colleague Monuments officer McDonnell thinks. He’s been investigating the matter, and he thinks there’s nothing there. But he’s wrong.”

Rorimer thought for a moment. “It doesn’t make sense. If she had information, why wouldn’t she share it?”

Jaujard leaned back in his chair. “She has shared it… at least some of it… but only with me. You must consider the experience of living with the problem of collaborators during the four years of Nazi occupation. Even today it is a very real concern for all of us. That well-known fact makes trusting your fellow countrymen very difficult. You don’t know who you can trust—even now.”