Minister of culture denounces removal of murals from Ukraine (07/08/01)

Minister of culture denounces removal of murals from Ukraine

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - Ukraine's Minister of Culture Yurii Bohutskyi characterized the secret removal from Drohobych to Israel of murals painted by Bruno Schulz as "shameful" and promised to press for their return to Ukraine.

The fact that fragments of the murals painted by the Jewish-Polish writer and artist in a private home in Drohobych were smuggled out of Ukraine earlier this year in a secret operation by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial had caused an official uproar in Poland, but Mr. Bohutskyi's comment was the first high-level reaction by a Ukrainian government official.

A report about the artworks' removal was published in The New York Times on June 20, while Mr. Bohutskyi was visiting Washington.

Asked to comment on the matter, he repeatedly stressed that local government officials were to blame for failing to register, as the law requires, those murals, which have historical and cultural significance. He said his ministry had raised the matter with the Security Service of Ukraine, the procurator's office and other appropriate agencies.

"It is now under investigation and, as soon as I return to Kyiv, I'll receive the results of this investigation, and then we'll take appropriate action in order to have these items returned," Mr. Bohutskyi said. He returned to Kyiv on June 22.

Mr. Bohutskyi also stated that he had called on the Lviv Oblast administration to bring to account those "who did not do what they were supposed to do." Otherwise, he added, the ministry will, itself, demand judicial action.

According to an Associated Press report, Bruno Schulz painted these murals in the early years of World War II in what was then a nursery for the son of the Gestapo chief in Drohobych. He was later killed by the Nazis.

The murals, which had been painted over since the war, were discovered last winter and authenticated by Ukrainian and Polish art experts in February. The secret operation of their removal began after the arrival in March of a Yad Vashem official, Mark Shraberman, who said he was researching the Holocaust history of the town, which lost some 15,000 of its Jewish population during the war.

In the days following the publication of the report, The New York Times also published a number of letters in reaction to the story.

Some letter writers, like Eli Zborowski, chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem, supported the clandestine operation.

"Leaving Bruno Schulz's artwork shrouded in a pantry in Ukraine," he suggested in a letter published June 22, "is tantamount to posthumously victimizing this Polish-Jewish artist who perished in the Holocaust."

Others, among them Poland's Ambassador to the United States Przemyslaw Grudzinski, criticized their removal.

"Bruno Schulz was a renowned Polish Jewish writer. His works grew in the soil of Drogobych [sic], Ukraine, part of Poland between the wars. As such, they are an inseparable part of that cultural and historic environment. Could they tell their story in a different environment? Wouldn't that be a lifeless existence?" the ambassador asked. He concluded with his own answer to the question: "Schulz was an artist of a universal dimension whose works were unique because of their local character and roots. Without them, he would seem to be deprived in death of true greatness."

During Minister of Culture Bohutskyi's stay in Washington, he participated in an informal meeting of a bilateral Ukrainian American committee charged with helping preserve the cultural heritage of minorities - primarily Ukrainian - in the United States, and - primarily Jewish - in Ukraine.

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