The Reasons Behind the Destrution of Art in Ww

Skip Nav Destination

Articles | September 01 2016

Cultural Heritage and Preservation: Lessons from Earth War II and the Gimmicky Disharmonize in the Middle East

The American Archivist (2016) 79 (2): 320–338.

Abstract

The collective efforts of librarians, politicians, scholars, and ordinary citizens to resist the Third Reich'due south broad-scale conquering and destruction of European cultural heritage is an object lesson for contemporary disaster management in wartime, both in its power to remind librarians and others of the persistence of archival looting and destruction every bit a tactic of cultural dominance and to provide models for contemporary practices by which such losses tin be prevented. A review of cultural preservation efforts during World War 2 illustrates the value of collaborative prevention, preservation, and recovery strategies. This article examines cultural preservation efforts during recent conflicts in the Eye Eastward confronting this properties. It argues that the cultural heritage of humanity threatened during times of conflict or war can be preserved if professionals in the field and other groups, such every bit governmental and nongovernmental regime, scholars, and citizens, cooperate.

War is a fact of life in many countries throughout the world today. In addition to the tragic loss of life that attends these wars is the annexation or destroying of humanity's cultural heritage at libraries, museums, and other cultural sites. Civilization is inextricably linked with its history and its artifacts. Hence, it is of import for scholars, librarians, and others to consider what tin can be done to salvage cultural heritage, in both current and hereafter conflicts.

In this article, I examine two cases in parallel: the collaborative strategies implemented for the preservation of cultural heritage endangered by the Nazi occupation before and during Globe War 2 and like efforts past contemporary scholars, archaeologists, librarians, the authorities, and nongovernmental organizations to preserve an important cultural heritage site in war-torn Syrian arab republic. Together, these cases illustrate that preserving cultural heritage in a conflict zone requires a group attempt amid scholars, librarians, archivists, arts history specialists, the international community, the public, and others, supported by policy and the active participation of political and institutional leaders. I conclude the commodity with lessons derived from the example studies and suggestions for archivists designed to help protect our cultural heritage from being destroyed in conflict zones.

Destruction of Libraries during Times of Conflict

According to Hansel Melt, in times of conflict, cultural heritage institutions, such as libraries, are sometimes simply destroyed every bit collateral damage. All the same, intentional destruction occurs too and may serve a number of purposes, including appropriating cultural and material wealth and underscoring the power of the conqueror. In some cases, looting is rationalized as a form of preservation, equally in Napoleon'south "rescue" of the artwork of Arab republic of egypt. Near notably, though, Melt told us that "destroying the cultural institution that carries people'south identity is like destroying the people themselves" and is considered a form of indigenous cleansing. ¹

The destruction of cultural heritage is of current business organization in the Middle Due east. The wars that started in 2001 in Afghanistan, 2003 in Iraq, 2010 in Yemen, 2011 in Syrian arab republic, and 2012 in Libya present tragic cases of both loss of human life and devastation of cultural heritage. In this commodity, I focus on the destruction of cultural heritage, simply do not thereby intend to diminish the loss of life.

Unfortunately, about libraries and archives in the Center Due east exercise not take disaster management plans that can help to preserve cultural heritage. I constitute, in a survey conducted in 2022 of eighty-six academic, national, and public libraries and athenaeum in xix Middle East countries, that these institutions are woefully unprepared to preserve materials in the event of human or even natural disasters. ² The majority of institutions that responded, 84 percent, did not take a written disaster management plan in place. ³ But thirteen institutions responded affirmatively, and another five respondents said that they were in the process of preparing disaster management plans. Of the thirteen positive responses, only seven (53%) reported having disaster management plans for times of both state of war and natural disasters (the other vi institutions have disaster management plans only for natural disasters). ⁴ This report suggests that, in times of conflict, near of the Middle Eastern libraries and athenaeum surveyed would be at high risk of losing part or all of their collections.

Although no like study could be found that surveyed museums and other cultural sites in the region for the existence of disaster management plans in times of conflict, information technology is reasonable to suspect in that location are few, if any, such plans in identify. For example, in 2011, during the Arab Leap, the Egyptian Museum was attacked and looted. It appears that the museum did not have an emergency plan. Instead, people in the street formed a man chain to protect the museum, and the public was able to prevent the looting of all its items. ⁵

The potential for devastation of cultural heritage to be used as a tool of political domination calls for librarians, museum curators, archaeologists, and archivists to assume responsibilities that may broaden electric current definitions of their roles. Rather than merely preserving and archiving materials, the professional in the field tin accept an agile role in protection and recovery. At the aforementioned time, however, the complex nature of armed conflict and the limitations of national boundaries, likewise as historical precedent, propose that professionals in libraries, museums, and archaeological sites cannot attain these goals without the assistance of the international customs, including local governments, nongovernmental organizations, scholars, and citizens "on the ground."

A look dorsum at the history of U.Southward. policy regarding the protection of cultural heritage sites and artifacts suggests that neither assigning responsibleness to librarians, archivists, and other professionals, nor collaboration between the academy and the military machine, are specially radical ideas. Rather, U.South. government intervention on behalf of cultural heritage during times of conflict, and that of archivists and ordinary citizens, predates the United States' entry into World War 2. Information technology was non until World War Two, still, that the idea of preserving cultural heritage during war emerged. Every bit the Nazi occupation of Europe began, the High german army seized cultural objects, library materials, and artworks, and destroyed what the government did not need. Many museums and libraries were destroyed and their collections looted, while other museums and libraries were able to move their collections into condom storage. The destruction of cultural heritage in the Center East since 2001, peculiarly in Syria during the war that began in 2011, has been compared with what happened to cultural sites during World State of war Two.

Implementing the suggested strategies, then, is not as formidable as it might appear, merely is rather a creative redeployment of strategies proven effective in an actual case of state of war. In the following section, I will examine the collaborative strategies utilized during World State of war Ii and the major players in their deployment.

Case Study from Globe War II

Although the losses of both human life and cultural heritage during World War Two are beyond comprehension, my focus in this section is on the loss of cultural heritage. Evidence suggests that as many as fourteen libraries were lost equally a result of the German occupation of diverse European countries betwixt 1939 and 1945. ⁶ For example, the National Library in Warsaw lost virtually 700,000 volumes, including all of its manuscripts and its map collections. ⁷ On the "eve of liberation," the German ground forces burned the principal stacks of the Warsaw Public Library and approximately 15 million of the 22.5 million volumes in all Shine libraries were destroyed. ⁸ The Germans besides took possession of 24,000 volumes after they burned the Jewish Theological Seminary in Lublin. In France in 1944, German troops blew up the Dieppe Municipal Library, and the Municipal Library of Douai lost over 95 percent of its holdings. Moreover, because the extent of losses of private libraries and collections is unknown, these numbers represent just a fraction of the total European losses during the 2nd World War. ^nine

The Harvard Group and the Creation of the Monuments Fine Arts and Annal (MFAA)

While the world lost untold numbers of books and manuscripts during Globe War Ii, a significant number were preserved and repatriated through the collective efforts of librarians, scholars, and ordinary citizens. Past 1940, poet and recently appointed librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish was already rallying librarians in the United States to wage their own war against fascism through the preservation of European cultural heritage. In his essay "Of the Librarian's Profession," MacLeish argued that "[i]n such a time as ours, when wars are made against the spirit and its works, the keeping of these records is itself a kind of warfare." ¹⁰ MacLeish'southward statement is significant in that information technology proposed an explicitly activist role for librarians against the subversive power of the 3rd Reich. Merely MacLeish conspicuously understood that librarians, however committed, could not fence with broad-calibration political conflict on their own. During this catamenia, he also actively lobbied the Country Section to engage in recovery efforts in Europe and called for the collaborative relationship between archivists and the armed forces that ultimately came to laissez passer.

While MacLeish was highly instrumental in the U.S. government's protection and recovery of European cultural heritage sites and artifacts, he was non alone in his efforts. Rather, he was a fellow member of a commonage known as the American Defense Harvard Grouping, known equally the Harvard Group. In 1940, this organization of artists, librarians, professionals, and scholars, including many who were members of the Harvard University faculty, alerted the American authorities to the potential destruction of European cultural heritage sites and artifacts in the wake of the Nazi occupation of Europe. ¹¹ Paul J. Sachs and George L. Stout from the Fogg Museum led the group, whose goals included obtaining a commitment from the federal authorities to protect European cultural sites and collecting and providing intellectual resources and expertise to the army to support this endeavour. In a letter to the government, Stout argued for the importance of the preservation of cultural heritage, in part considering of its unifying force:

Equally soldiers of the United nations fight their way into lands in one case conquered and held past the enemy, the governments of the United nations will encounter manifold problems. . . . In areas torn by battery and burn down are monuments cherished by the people of those countrysides or towns: churches, shrines, statues, pictures, many kinds of works. . . . To safeguard these things will non affect the course of battles, but information technology will bear upon the relations of invading armies with those peoples and [their] governments. . . . To safeguard these things will show respect for the beliefs and customs of all men and will bear witness that these things belong non but to a detail people but also to the heritage of mankind. ¹²

The Harvard Group's success in influencing regime policy and harnessing the power of a diverse array of determination makers and agents underscores the power of collaboration among librarians, scholars, and policy makers in the service of cultural preservation. Through their personal contacts, the members of the Harvard Group were able to reach out to and piece of work closely with politicians and other government officials. In his role as librarian of Congress, MacLeish had personal contact with key officials inside the regime, including members of the Supreme Courtroom, the State of war Department, and the Country Section. Along with his colleagues, he worked to expand the preexisting authorities policy for cultural preservation, originally established by the Land Department in the 1930s with the creation of the Division of Cultural Relations and National Archives. David Finley, manager of the National Gallery, approached the War Department and other regime offices to reach President Franklin Roosevelt with the Harvard Group's plan. In 1943, at the request of Chief Justice Harlan F. Rock, President Roosevelt established the American Commission for the Protection and Salve of Creative and Celebrated Monuments in War Areas, collectively known as the Roberts Commission. ^thirteen The Roberts Committee contained the seeds of the Monuments Fine Arts and Archive (MFAA), the agency that brought together American and British troops in a shared mission and that gave rise to the creation of the specially tasked soldiers known as the Monuments Men.

Under the auspices of the Roberts Committee and in accordance with the mandate of the MFAA, the Monuments Men were assigned the post-obit tasks: to minimize looting and identify looted items, to give beginning aid to art and books, and to engage in the recovery and restitution of cultural materials. To achieve these goals, the Roberts Committee worked to identify and assign officers and enlisted men with the necessary qualifications and created two committees tasked with preparing the information required by the armed forces in the field. The American Quango of Learned Societies and the Harvard Group provided the army with maps indicating the locations of cultural sites and monuments to avoid during Allied bombing raids. The MFAA as well provided information to familiarize troops with the local culture, with the understanding that such cognition would help them effectively protect each country'southward cultural heritage. For example, in Italia, where the MFAA began operations, the Monuments Men prepared a summary of the organizational structure of the Italian Ministry of Culture to help identify and locate officials in positions of responsibility who could assist their operations. ^xiv The two groups further gave MFAA officers the names and locations of repositories to employ for storage during the war. Within a brusque time, the MFAA deployed more than 350 men to thirteen countries around the globe on "the greatest treasure hunt in history." ^fifteen

General Dwight D. Eisenhower'southward message to the troops in June 1944 on the eve of the invasion of Normandy is likewise the fruit of the Harvard Grouping'south labor. In his voice communication, Eisenhower charged American soldiers with a specific and vitally important responsibility: non but must they defeat the Centrality powers, they must besides protect the cultural heritage of Europe:

Presently we will be fighting our way across the continent of Europe in battles designed to preserve our culture. Inevitably, in the path of our advance will be institute historical monuments and cultural centers that symbolize to the globe all that we are fighting to preserve. It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols whenever possible. ¹⁶

In his reference to the ability of cultural artifacts to "symbolize . . . all that we are fighting to preserve," Eisenhower pointed to the inextricable relationship betwixt civilization and its productions (to preserve ane, nosotros must preserve the other) and, more than important, to his acceptance of the armed forces' responsibleness for the protection of both.

Eisenhower'southward message and the Harvard Group'due south efforts to mobilize archivists and the armed forces in the protection of European cultural heritage were not in vain. Past the end of the war, the number of librarians and archivists working in Europe and the Mediterranean had increased, and both American and Allied forces were actively involved in locating thousands of looted items hidden by the Nazis in an estimated 1,500 repositories. ¹⁷ The work of the MFAA did not terminate with the end of the war, however. For example, after the fall of the 3rd Reich, MFAA officer Captain Robert K. Posey discovered many Nazi art repositories in common salt mines southward of Salzburg and helped recover paintings equally well as books. In the years later on the war, through the efforts of the MFAA, Rome received a total of 26,568 repatriated items, the Netherlands received 78,000 items, 700,000 items were sent to the Prussian State Library in Berlin, and 153,000 items were sent to French republic. ¹⁸ By the end of 1949, the MFAA, in partnership with the Allied forces and local governments, had returned a total of 2.eight million items to their owners in fourteen nations or to responsible institutions or persons if the original owners were unknown or deceased. ¹⁹

The overwhelming success of the MFAA demonstrates the power of collaborative effort and serves as a model for the preservation of cultural sites and materials afflicted past conflict. Simply the cooperation of the MFAA with American archivists and academics was not the only effort of its kind; the effectiveness of such partnerships is evident in the protection of the YIVO Library by the Paper Brigade and in the preservation of the Seminary of Pelplin past the British Museum, which, in different ways, demonstrate the ability of broad-scale participation in the protection of national archives.

The YIVO Library and the Newspaper Brigade

The formation of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), or Rosenberg Special Task Forcefulness, in 1939 established the German "annexation" of archival materials every bit an explicit tactic of ethnic cleansing. Anne Rothfeld characterized the ERR equally "a commando organization of cultural robbery." ^xx Under the auspices of the Third Reich, the ERR ambassador systematically collected Jewish books, documents, and manuscripts from libraries, schools, universities, and individual collections. The looted materials were after destroyed or spread among German institutions for what they described equally "scholarly" purposes. ²¹

In June 1941, the German army captured the town of Vilna and began a similar campaign in that location. One of its showtime conquests was the YIVO Library, which, at the time of the invasion, was the largest and most important repository of Jewish culture in the earth. Established in 1925 and funded by the city'southward Jewish scholars and intellectuals, the collection contained materials focusing on all aspects of Jewish life from approximately three hundred synagogues and diverse private collections from all over Eastern Europe. The Nazis sent the nearly valuable materials from the YIVO Library to depots such as the Insitut zur Erforscung der Judenfrage (Institute for the Written report of the Jewish Question) in Frankfurt. ²² While other Lithuanian national institutions and individual collections were appropriated, Jewish materials were clearly targeted: a week after the capture of Vilna, a High german official by the name of Dr. Gotthard began to visit the city'southward museums, libraries, and synagogues in search of Jewish collections and scholars. ²³ By July, Gotthard had ordered the Gestapo to arrest three Jewish scholars and so that they could compile lists of incunabula and rare books: Noyekh Prilutski, the Yiddish folklorist and the director of the YIVO Institute during Soviet dominion in Vilna; Eliyohu Yankev Goldschmidt, a Yiddish veteran journalist and director of the Ansky Jewish Ethnographic Museum; and Chaikl Lunski, the head of the Strashun Library, Vilna's Jewish communal library. ²⁴ In Feb 1942, Dr. Johannes Pohl, who had studied Judaism in Jerusalem, joined Gotthard in Vilna to help seize the Jewish books on the list, too as other collections. Considering the materials looted from the city were too numerous to exist sent to Frankfurt equally the Nazis had washed previously, Pohl hired twelve Jews from the Vilna ghetto for their ability to read Yiddish and Hebrew to sort, organize, and ship the seized materials to the Institute for the Report of the Jewish Question. Herman Kruk, the caput of the Vilna Ghetto Library and Zelig Kalmanovich, who had been ane of the directors of the YIVO Library, supervised the operation. This grouping worked nether the direction of Dr. Pohl at Universiteska3, a high-priority edifice previously belonging to the Vilna University Library. ²⁵ There the collection was separated, with part of it sent to Frankfurt and the rest slated for destruction at the local paper manufacturing plant. ²⁶

Betwixt 1942 and 1943, the twelve Jewish scholars pressed into service past Pohl were able to smuggle thousands of books and tens of thousands of documents from the YIVO collection out of the hands of the Nazis. They came to be known as the Paper Brigade. The bravery and resourcefulness of the Newspaper Brigade illustrate the vital role that local groups and ordinary citizens can play in the preservation of cultural heritage. Co-ordinate to historian David Fishman, the Jewish workers used various tactics to save the books and documents from destruction. Those who helped procedure the books sent to Universiteska3 too helped rescue books marked for pulping at the paper mill. Many of those materials were smuggled out of the facility within the workers' clothing and subconscious inside walls, floors, and attics in the Jewish ghetto or in the houses of not-Jewish friends. Others were subconscious inside materials beingness shipped to Frankfurt. Occasionally, Newspaper Brigade members were able to obtain permission from the Germans to accept "wastepaper" back to the ghetto and instead took priceless and irreplaceable letters and manuscripts. Through these methods, the Paper Brigade was able to save from destruction the works of prominent authors and scholars, such as Tolstoy, Gorky, and Bialik. ²⁷

Members of the Newspaper Brigade who survived the Holocaust returned to Vilna after the state of war and recovered many of the items they had hidden or redirected. Twenty tons of YIVO papers were discovered intact at the paper mill, and 30 more tons were constitute in the courtyard of the Trash Assistants. ²⁸ Some of the YIVO materials sent to Frankfurt by the ERR and stored at the Offenbach Archival Depot were also recovered after the state of war. While the MFAA repatriated a number of materials from the Offenbach depot, they did not redistribute most of the Jewish materials, instead sending them to the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Bureau (JCR), which organized the allocation of the materials to European and American Jewish communities. The JCR sent 158,000 items to American libraries such as the Library of Congress, Harvard University, Hebrew University, New York University, Brandeis University, and the Jewish Constitute of Religion. ²⁹ After the war, a group of Jewish scholars likewise reestablished a museum in Vilna, in that location housing 25 Yiddish and Hebrew texts, 210,000 volumes of Judaic texts in European languages, and 600 bags filled with commentary materials from the YIVO archives. ³⁰ Thousands of other books and documents survived the war through the efforts of Lithuanian librarian Antanis Ulpis, who hid materials in the basement of the Lithuanian National "Book Bedchamber," a onetime church building where they were rediscovered in 1953. ³¹

The Seminary of Pelplin

Like the collections of Italian republic, Germany, and Lithuania, the athenaeum of the Seminary of Pelplin, Poland, was spared from destruction through the cooperation of archivists, civilians, and the regime. The core collection of the seminary'southward library came from a Cistercian monastery established in 1274; by 1927, the library had thirty,000 volumes, including 316 manuscripts. In 1939, the seminary librarians carried out a plan to relieve most of its holdings and assisted other churches in cataloging and hiding their own of import archival materials, such every bit photographs, religious books, and artifacts. ³² The seminary librarians stored some of the most valuable books in a bank vault, and, when the war began in Poland, 2 of the bank officers transported the books to safe, first to Romania and after to Paris, where the Polish government was established in exile. The exiled Polish government attempted to collect and shop the library treasures in Paris, but the progression of the war beyond Europe required their repeated removal to safer locations. Once Germany attacked France, Smooth officials decided to motility the books again, this fourth dimension to London. A wartime trip by bounding main was a risky proposition, simply everything arrived safely in London, where many British museums and libraries were already relocating their valuable holdings to castles, country houses, and underground slate quarries. ³³ Smooth officials one time again had to move their materials out of the path of the state of war, finally settling them safely in Canada for its duration.

The commonage attempt of librarians, politicians, scholars, and ordinary citizens to resist the Third Reich's broad-scale acquisition and destruction of European cultural heritage is an object lesson for gimmicky disaster management, both in its power to remind librarians of the persistence of archival annexation and destruction as a tactic of cultural dominance and to provide models for contemporary policies and practices to prevent such losses. The sheer volume of materials preserved, protected, and recovered during and afterward World War II through the efforts of librarians working in partnership with the Allied military forces, local authorities, and international nongovernmental organizations argues powerfully for the effectiveness of their strategies.

Later Globe War 2: International Organizations

Later World War II, international organizations recognized the demand to create conventions or laws to help protect cultural sites and materials in conflict zones, so that the devastating devastation would not happen once more. In 1954, the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Disharmonize was created to assure the protection of cultural heritage around the world in time of war. New organizations were too needed to follow upwards and implement laws created to preserve cultural heritage.

The United nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural System (UNESCO) was created in 1945 in response to the destruction of cultural heritage during World State of war Two. ³⁴ UNESCO is an organisation focused on preserving cultural heritage around the world. The goal of the organization is to aid countries that demand to preserve their educational and cultural resource. It originally focused on museum and archaeological sites but afterwards included Oriental studies, the study of prehistory, and finally established "the Documentation and study middle for the History of Art and Civilization in Aboriginal Egypt." The organization has 195 fellow member states, 2,000 professional staff members, and hundreds of advisory nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). UNESCO's advisory bodies include the International Marriage for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Holding (ICCROM). ³⁵

Unfortunately, UNESCO cannot take direct action due to its limited funds. UNESCO partners with other affiliated international bodies that cover dissimilar areas in preserving cultural heritage. ³⁶ These bodies include the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), the International Council on Museums (ICOM), the International Commission of the Blue Shield (ICBS), and the International Eye for the Study of Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Belongings (ICCROM). These organizations work together to protect cultural heritage in conflict zones. For example, the International Council on Monuments and Sites is a nongovernmental organization "dedicated to the conservation of the world's monuments and sites." ³⁷ About of ICOMOS's work focuses on celebrated architecture. Additionally, the arrangement helps the World Heritage Commission (WHC) evaluate the nomination list of cultural heritage sites to receive UNESCO'south protection. ³⁸ Another UNESCO partner is ICCROM, an intergovernmental organization that serves primarily as a research center offering region-specific training on conservation of paper, mosaics, and archaeological monuments. ³⁹

The International Council of Museums aims to ensure the conservation and protection of cultural sites. ICOM is comprised of 136 member countries and 35,000 institutes and professionals. ICOM's priorities include disaster hazard management activity and pedagogy and outreach to help ordinary people learn about the value of their heritage. ⁴⁰

The Ruby Cross of cultural heritage preservation is the International Committee for the Bluish Shield (ICBS). With a protected emblem condition similar to the Cerise Cantankerous, ICBS personnel are supposedly protected from attack when they are on the footing helping during wartime. ⁴¹ ICBS was established in 1996 to protect the world'south cultural heritage from the threats of natural disaster and war. ICBS works with different heritage types that include books, monuments, cultural sites, museum objects, audiovisuals, and archives. ICBS is composed of five organizations: the International Council on Archives (ICA), the International Quango of Museums (ICOM), the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Programme for Preservation and Conservation (PAC), and the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Athenaeum Associations (CCAAA). The managing director of IFLA's cadre Programme for Preservation and Conservation, Marie-Therese Varlamoff, suggested that "we need to fix upward a disaster plan including preventive measures to take, long before the disaster strikes, and relating to the edifice, the equipment, the staff training, the emergency response." ⁴²

In 2008, the Clan of National Committees of Blue Shield (ANCBS) was created to encourage the safeguarding and respect for cultural sites and to promote risk preparedness. The organization trains professionals in how to control the extent of harm and to assist in the recovery process. ⁴³ The ANCBS cooperates with the International Military machine Cultural Resources Working Grouping (IMCURWG) to provide support for antiquity authorities in the prevention of looting and harm. ⁴⁴

IFLA focuses on libraries more the others and has several initiatives including the Program on Preservation and Conservation (PAC). PAC was established in 1984 with goals such every bit ensuring that library and archives materials, published and unpublished, in all formats, volition exist preserved and accessible. The program conducts different activities, such as raising awareness among professionals, the public, and the government about the need to preserve endangered materials, and translating and publishing preservation literature to assist professionals learn most the field. The program is as well involved in preparing educational materials and organizing grooming courses, workshops, and seminars to help libraries around the world preserve their cultural heritage.

Using the examples of efforts to preserve cultural heritage during and later on Earth War Two as a frame of reference, in the next department, I will examine efforts to preserve cultural heritage amid the contemporary conflicts in the Middle East. In particular, I will explore whether the preservation and repatriation efforts brought to comport with such success in World War 2 have been applied to accost the affect of gimmicky conflicts in the Middle East, and if not, whether they could exist.

Preserving Cultural Heritage amid Conflicts in the Middle East

Much cultural heritage has been lost throughout the Middle East equally wars take raged in that location since the beginning of the xx-start century. According to UNESCO, in 2003, xl percent of the Iraqi National Library's v,147 manuscripts were burned or looted. ⁴⁵ In 2003, over 15,000 items were lost from the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad due to looting and destruction. ⁴⁶ Looters took thousands of aboriginal stamps and cylinder seals, stealing 120,000 out of 170,000 artifacts. The Mosul, Nineveh, and Nimrud museums were too looted. ⁴⁷ Every bit a by-production of internal conflict in Syrian arab republic since 2011, many museums and cultural sites take been looted and destroyed. Over the past several years, the fighting has hindered precise on-the-basis assessment of the extent of the destruction, though satellite images made since 2022 confirm that almost all of Syria's cultural sites have been damaged. ⁴⁸ Information technology remains challenging to estimate the actual number of items stolen or damaged during these ongoing wars.

The destruction of cultural heritage every bit a result of war in many countries in the Eye Eastward reveals a number of parallels to the conditions during World War II, particularly in regard to the vulnerability of libraries and archival holdings to looting and destruction. The parallels between what happened during World War Ii and what is happening now at Iraqi and Syrian cultural sites in particular have attracted the attending of scholars. For example, Dr. Zainab Bahrani, a professor of ancient Near Eastern art and archæology at Columbia Academy, stated, "To go back to Earth War Two, you might retrieve that the biggest tragedy of World State of war Ii was the genocide confronting the Jewish population. Just [the Nazis] didn't just take them to camps and kill them—they did their all-time to destroy any personal belongings and then that there would be no trace that Jewish people had e'er lived in that location and were ever part of the population. What is happening at present is quite similar." ⁴⁹ Bahrani was comparing the Nazis' deportment to those of ISIS, the Islamic Country in Iraq and Syria, confronting the people and their cultural heritage, destroying important sights and killing civilians in both countries. ^l Some other scholar, Dr. Michael D. Danti, a professor of archaeology at the University of Boston, saw similarities betwixt the destruction during the 2d Earth War and the contempo devastation of cultural sites, noting that "the crisis of cultural heritage today is largest since Globe State of war Two." ⁵¹

The determination of individuals in Syria trying to protect their libraries' collections also reminds usa of the ordinary citizens in Globe State of war II who risked their lives to salve YIVO's collection. In 2015, a group of students in Daraa, Syria, rescued xi,000 books, some even from a burning house, and built a library for the entire metropolis to use. Not only did they save the books, they also volunteered to work as librarians and created a organization enabling the citizens of the city to borrow books. They wrote the name of the owner on each book, hoping that 1 24-hour interval the war volition stop and the owners can reclaim them. ⁵²

Many of the international organizations mentioned higher up assistance protect cultural sites in countries such equally Syrian arab republic and Iraq. For instance, in 2013, ICOMOS collaborated with ICCROM and workers for the Advisers-General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) in coordination with UNESCO to provide east-training for Syrian cultural heritage professionals. The goal of the due east-learning course was to give the Syrian professionals information most emergency risk direction, evacuation of collections, damage assessment, and recovery. ⁵³ In 2015, UNESCO organized four grooming courses on illicit trafficking, emergency stabilization of built heritage, the protection of movable heritage, and the recording of intangible heritage. Over a hundred participants from Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey attended the courses. ⁵⁴

These international organizations have admirable goals, simply constraints on their financial resources limit their effectiveness. These financial limitations forestall them from undertaking larger-calibration actions similar to what the Monuments Men accomplished during Globe War II.

Other rescue missions similar to the techniques used during the 2nd World State of war have been undertaken in Syria. In the next section, I will nowadays a brief case written report of a group of international archaeologists and professionals who collaborated with the local regime, international organizations, local archaeologists, librarians, and ordinary citizens to preserve an important site in Syrian arab republic. At the aforementioned fourth dimension, they trained Syrian professionals to protect their cultural heritage. This case will shed light on how electric current conflicts, such equally the war in Syrian arab republic, build on lessons of the past and also create new approaches to aid preserve cultural heritage in war zones.

Case Study: The Operation to Salve the Endangered Ma'arra Mosaic Museum

Syria has a rich and various heritage reaching back millennia; its cultural sites and artifacts date from the Bronze Age, and the times of the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Sassanians, the Persians, the Arabs, the Crusaders, and the Ottomans. The United Nations announced concluding year that nearly three hundred sites, including Palmyra, an ancient city in Syria that contains the monumental ruins of one of the nigh of import cultural centers of the aboriginal earth, have been looted and destroyed during the present conflict in Syria past the government, dissimilar militia groups, and the terrorist grouping ISIS. ⁵⁵ Though not officially an international conflict, many international actors are involved, such equally NATO and the Russian government.

The people of Syria accept learned from the destruction that took place in Iraq as a event of the 2003 war, when many libraries and museums were aggressively looted and destroyed. Many volunteers in Syria accept started to create local networks to protect their unique cultural heritage. They piece of work to provide security for the archaeological sites and guard the museums across the country. The authorities is notwithstanding in charge and it, too, is actively helping to prevent the loss of the country's heritage. For case, in 2011, the Syrian authorization moved some of the items from Aleppo museums to a safer location. However, it did not successfully move items from the museums in Homs, Raqq, or Qala'at Jabar, and they were looted. ⁵⁶ This led an international grouping of archaeologists, art historians, preservationists, and librarians to act together to organize a projection called Safeguarding the Heritage of Syria and Iraq (SHOSI).

SHOSI was established by a group of scholars at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who wanted to protect Syrian heritage during the disharmonize. The Office of the Under Secretary for History, Art and Civilization at the Smithsonian Institution decided to appoint actively in the protection of Syria's cultural heritage and reached out to the Penn Cultural Heritage Center at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Out of this collaboration, the SHOSI projection was created. The team includes Dr. Salam al-Quntar, a Syrian archaeologist who works with the Penn Cultural Heritage Center and who fled the conflict in 2012. The SHOSI squad trains specialists in Syria in emergency packing, protecting a collection that cannot be moved, securing archaeological sites, and deciding when a collection should be evacuated and when it is better left in its present location.

The SHOSI team likewise worked on the ground to help local Syrians save parts of the Ma'arra Museum, located between Aleppo and Homs and occupied by historic buildings dating to the Ottoman period in the sixteenth century. The Syrian team on this project was a grouping of professionals trained past SHOSI in Gizan, Turkey. Their mission was to salve very former and unique mosaics in the museum that had already been partially damaged by the disharmonize. SHOSHI and the Syrian team prepared a plan to protect the edifice, the mosaics, and the remaining collection. The techniques that SHOSI used to save the mosaic site were similar to those the Monuments Men used during World War Ii: they applied water-based gum to the face of the mosaics to protect the tiny stones that line the walls of the old caravansary. The team built a wall of sandbags around the mosaics for extra protection. Later, barrel bombing inflicted all-encompassing damage, merely the successful preventative work done by the Syrian team minimized it. This rescue performance is an example of how successful preservation tin can exist accomplished in disharmonize zones when international organizations and the local customs cooperate. The piece of work to preserve the mosaics in the Ma'arra Museum demonstrates the effectiveness of acting preemptively and establishing a prevention program to protect cultural heritage. The SHOSI Project as well shows the importance of edifice a network of people inside the conflict zone and so that they tin actively safeguard their cultural heritage.

The arroyo to preserving cultural heritage in wartime used in Syrian arab republic demonstrates the value of interim during state of war to preserve cultural heritage. It is not enough to look until later the war to act when the destruction has already taken place. However, action cannot be taken without building a span between stakeholders inside the conflict zone and the broader international community, the preservation experts, local authorities, and the army.

Challenges and Recommendations

Preserving cultural heritage in conflict zones presents a number of challenges. The level of expertise is low among those who work to preserve cultural heritage in the Middle East. The Syrian case study demonstrates that those who work in libraries or preservation both need grooming. The work of preserving library collections remains outside the scope of the international organizations and volunteers, and most publications about preserving cultural heritage in wartime focus on museum and cultural sites. International organizations and funding agencies should realize the importance of library and archival collections and support the grooming of their personnel in matters of preservation just as they support preservation activities around museum and cultural sites.

A number of recommendations emerge from this assay. Individuals and organizations that wish to prepare disaster plans to preserve cultural heritage during wartime should consider the following steps and strategies:

• Promote disaster prevention measures to protect cultural heritage materials and sites.

• Create cost-effective methods to prevent disasters.

• Involve local nongovernmental organizations in educating the public about preserving cultural heritage and helping to terminate the annexation of cultural sites.

• Liaise between civilian experts and the armed forces to identify important buildings and sites to limit damage and annexation.

• Encourage the military to establish a standardized program and response policy to protect property responsively and dependably and to disseminate needed information to the advisable people at the right time.

• Ask the war machine to train personnel before deployment in effective ways to protect cultural sites. ⁵⁷

• Facilitate partnerships between critical groups such equally academic specialists, civilian defense force employees, uniformed military personnel, and nongovernmental organizations to win the support of politicians and ceremonious servants who tin can be a source of support during emergencies.

Tactics that can be helpful during wartime include

• Hiding materials in secure spaces in the building that hosts them or smuggling them into homes and community venues such as churches; and

• Removing collections to remote locations or burying them underground.

Finally, without the collaboration of the public, the protection of cultural heritage will be very challenging. As Carla Grissman indicated, ordinary citizens, as office of the local customs, are oftentimes in a unique position to help when a crisis occurs. ⁵⁸ Thus, information technology would be adept practice to communicate with the public on a regular basis nearly the need to preserve cultural heritage and foreclose looting.

In conclusion, librarians, archivists, international organizations, and others are uniquely situated to cooperate in shaping and carrying out disaster management plans. To flesh out the roles of all involved and the substance of constructive plans, more research needs to be washed in the area of preserving cultural heritage in disharmonize zones. International organizations likewise need to update their goals and approach the preservation of cultural heritage every bit a humanitarian rescue mission. As Jennifer Otterson Mollick pointed out, "None of the BlueShield organizations has done anything to establish a framework for future co-operation between cultural property experts and relevant government and non-government authorities and agencies, including military." ⁵⁹ The development of such a framework is an important next step.

Laila Hussein Moustafa is an assistant professor and the Heart Eastern and Northward African studies librarian at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She also teaches a graduate form on Bibliography of Africa that is open to graduate students in library and information studies, history, and other disciplines. Moustafa holds principal's degrees in Near Eastern studies from New York University and information science from Long Island University. She is active in the Middle Due east Librarians Association (MELA), the Centre Eastward Studies Association (MESA), the American Library Association (ALA), and the International Federation Library Association (IFLA).

Laila Hussein Moustafa is an assistant professor and the Middle Eastern and North African studies librarian at the Academy of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She too teaches a graduate course on Bibliography of Africa that is open up to graduate students in library and information studies, history, and other disciplines. Moustafa holds master's degrees in Near Eastern studies from New York Academy and informatics from Long Isle University. She is active in the Centre Eastward Librarians Association (MELA), the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the American Library Clan (ALA), and the International Federation Library Association (IFLA).

Close modal

Notes

¹

Hansel Cook, "The Deliberate Destruction of Libraries in Wartime: Sarajevo and Beyond," Focus on International Library and Information Work 39, no. 2 (2008): 56–59.

²

Laila Hussein Moustafa, "Endangers Culture Heritage," Library Management 36, nos. six–7 (2015): 476–94, doi: 10.1108/LM-04-2015-0010.

³

The Dictionary for Library and Information Science defines a disaster management programme every bit "as a set of written procedures prepared by the library staff in advance to deal with an unexpected occurrence that has the potential to cause injury to personnel or damage to equipment or to collections and/or to facilities sufficient to warrant temporary pause of services."

⁴

Moustafa, "Endangers Culture Heritage," 476–94.

⁶

Marker Blacksell and Karl Martin Born, "Individual Property Restitution: The Geographical Consequences of Official Authorities Policies in Central and Eastern Europe," Geographical Journal 168, no. 2 (2002): 178–xc.

⁷

The Offenbach Archival Depot was a central collecting betoken in the American Sector of Germany for books, manuscripts, and archival materials looted, confiscated, or taken past the German army or Nazi government from the occupied countries during Globe State of war Two. From the Offenbach Archival Depot, looted fine art and Nazi plunder were sorted and eventually returned to their countries of origin, or otherwise maintained in new collections.

⁹

Hoeven and Albada, "Retention."

¹⁰

Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter, Monuments Men: Centrolineal Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Chase in History (London: Arrow Books, the Random Business firm Group, 2010), 23.

¹²

Ann Rothfeld, "Returning Looted European Library Collections: Historical Analysis of the Offenbach Archival Depot, 1945–1948," RBM: A Periodical of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage six, no. 1 (2005): 14–24.

¹³

The commission was called the Roberts Commission later its chairman Owen J. Roberts, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. President Roosevelt established the Roberts Commission on June 23, 1943, and charged it with promoting the preservation of cultural properties in war areas without interfering with military operations.

¹⁴

Craig Hugh Smyth, Repatriation of Art from the Drove Bespeak in Munich subsequently World State of war II: Background and Beginnings, with Reference Especially to the Netherlands (Maarssen, The Hague: G.Schwartz/SDU: 1988), 25.

¹⁵

Edsel and Witter, Monuments Men.

¹⁶

Eisenhower archive in the National Athenaeum.

¹⁷

Rothfeld, "Returning Looted European Collections," 14–24.

^eighteen

Rothfeld, "Returning Looted European Collections," 14–24

^xix

Hans C. Rasmusse, "Endangered Records and the Get-go of Professionalism Amongst Archivists in England 1918–1945," Library & Information History, 27 no. 2 (2011): 87–103.

²⁰

Rothfeld, "Returning Looted European Collections," xiv–24.

²¹

Rothfeld, "Returning Looted European Collections," fourteen–24.

²²

Rothfeld, "Returning Looted European Collections," 14–24.

²³

Philip Friedman, "The Fate of the Jewish Book during the Nazi Era," Jewish Book Annual fifteen (1957–1958): 9–x.

²⁴

David E. Fishman, "Embers Plucked from the Fire: The Rescue of Jewish Cultural Treasures in Vilna," in The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation, ed. Jonathan Rose (Boston: Academy of Massachusetts Press, 2000), 68.

²⁵

Fishman, "Embers Plucked from the Fire," 66–78.

²⁶

Merle Bachman, Recovering "Yiddishland": Threshold Moments in American Literature (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2008).

²⁷

David E. Fishman, The Rising of Modern Yiddish Civilization (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 2005), 146–47.

²⁸

Fishman, The Rise of Modern, 146–47.

²⁹

Rothfeld, "Returning Looted European Collections," 21.

³⁰

Fishman, The Rise of Modern, 146–47.

³¹

Fishman, "Embers Plucked from the Fire," 75.

³²

Fishman, The Rise of Modern, 146–47.

³³

Fishman, The Rise of Modern, 146–47.

³⁵

UNESCO, "The Advisory Bodies."

³⁶

UNESCO, "The Informational Bodies."

³⁹

International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), "History," world wide web.iccrom.org/almost/history.

⁴³

George MacKenzie, "The Blue Shield: Symbol of Cultural Heritage Protection," in Blue Shield for the Protection of our Endangered Cultural Heritage, xvi.

⁵⁰

The familiar acronyms reflect the English-language names attributed to the system Islamic Country of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Islamic Country of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

⁵¹

Michael D. Danti, "Ground-Based Observation of Cultural Heritage in Syria and Republic of iraq," Near Eastern Archaeology 78, no. 3 (2015): 132–41.

⁵⁴

Salam al Quntar, Katharyn Hanson, Brian I. Daniels, and Corine Wegener, "Responding to a Cultural Heritage Crisis: The Case of the Safeguarding the Heritage of Syria and Iraq Project," Near Eastern Archeology 78, no. 33 (2015).

⁵⁷

Peter G. Stone, "A Four-Tier Arroyo to the Protection of Cultural Holding in the Event of Armed Disharmonize," Antiquity 87, no. 335 (2013): 166–77.

⁵⁸

Carla Grissmann, "The Kabul Museum: Its Turbulent Years," in Art and Archaeology of Afghanistan: Its Fall and Survival: A Multi-disciplinary Approach, ed. Juliette van Krieken-Pieter (Leiden, Neth.: Brill, 2006), 61–75.

⁵⁹

W. Remsen and Unruh Conservation, "Assessment of the National Museum of Transitional islamic state of afghanistan Projection," terminal report (Kabul: Asia Foundation. 2010).

© 2022 Club of American Archivists

2016

sancheznamintaid.blogspot.com

Source: https://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article/79/2/320/24329/Cultural-Heritage-and-Preservation-Lessons-from

Share this post