Family Sues Auschwitz Museum for Holocaust Watercolors
The daughters of Dina Gottliebova Babbitt have filed a lawsuit in California against the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, seeking the return of seven watercolors that their mother created while imprisoned in the Nazi camp.
During the 1940s, Babbitt was forced to paint for Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz Nazi physician known as the "Angel of Death." She created watercolors of Roma prisoners who were subjected to forced experiments by Mengele.
The paintings remained at the museum after the end of the war. Babbitt spent her whole life trying to retrieve them, but the museum refused, arguing that their historical and educational value outweighed her right to the works.
In 2009, just months before her death at age 86, Babbitt expressed her desire to hold them once again: "I want to hold them in my hands. I want them here. I need them."
Now, her daughters are legally seeking the return of the artwork, bringing back into focus the painful history of art created under violence and captivity during the Holocaust.
The Auschwitz Memorial and museum said in 1999:
Former Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner Dina Gottliebova visited the Museum in the company of her daughter, her lawyer, and an NBC television crew. She is demanding the return of watercolors of Gypsies that she painted on orders from Dr. Mengele.
The stance of the Museum is unwavering: these works (purchased legally and in good faith in the 1960s as the work of an unknown artist) should remain in the Museum as part of the camp heritage and as documentation of the criminal activities of Dr. Mengele; the author deserves all property rights in them (copyright and royalties). The position taken by the Museum has received the support of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, the Museum Council, and the Auschwitz Preservation Society (see also "News" in the January-June 1999 Bulletin).
Main Image: Copyright Dina Gottliebova Babbitt