Smithsonian 02/08: Monumental Mission
February 18, 2008 by sagefever · 3 Comments
One of my favorite WW2 movies is The Train, with Burt Lancaster and Jeanne Moreau from 1964. The private art loot of a Nazi Col. being moved out of
France on trains and the citizens who stop it from happening~ more for the hate of the Nazi’s than the love of art and antiquities. As always, the true story is so much better.Harry Ettlinger sat shivering in the back of a truck bound from France to the Battle of the Bulge. A sergeant ran to the truck and said, “The following three guys get off the truck and come with me”. His name called, he got off and felt very lucky, and it was his 19th birthday. The Army needed interpreters for the Nuremburg trials and Ettlinger spoke like a native. He was, one of the lucky German Jews who escaped with his parents in 1938, just before Kristallnacht or the Night of the Broken Glass, that night that made the Jews future clear under Hitler. His Nuremburg mission evaporated, without explanation, and he found himself assigned to the “Monuments Men”.
