Hunt Museum founders cleared of traffiking Nazi loot
The Hunt Museum was today formally cleared of handling art stolen from the Jews by Nazis.
The Nazi-hunting group, the Simon Wesenthall foundation had made claims that the late John and Gertrude Hunt, founders of the Hunt Museum, were Nazi spies and were engaged in the traffiking of stolen artwork.
However, a report, which is the culmination of a three year long investigation, not only clears the Hunts of any wrong doing, also criticised the Wesenthall foundation for making claims based on threadbare evidence.
The report was written by renowned UK based expert Lynn Nicholas, who has written books such as “The Rape of Europe” was published today by the Royal Irish Acadamy.
The wesenthall foundation were also criticised for making baseless personally abusive statements against the Hunts.
The sole basis for the claim by the Wesenthall foundation was a single file on Gertrude Hunt, which the Irish Army had collated on her. Such files were kept on all Germans in Ireland during World War II and are accessible by the public now.
The file, which was the only document in the posession of the Wesenthal foundation, contained absolutely no evidence that the Hunts had purchased any art which had been stolen from Jewish Holocaust victims.
The full story on this can be found here.
The Nazis pilfered the possessions, including art, from the six million Jews who lost their lives during the holocaust. The fact that none of it ended up in the wrongful possession of John and Gertrude Hunt comes too late for their son John Jr., who spent the last year of his life trying to clear his parents’ name.