The+story+of+the+Monuments+Men

=The story of the "Monuments Men"=

Bruges
During WWII, Adolf Hitler had many secret things going on within the ranks of the Third Reich. One was to steal as many cultural treasures from all of the countries that they took over from the families they destroyed or killed. Fourteen nations got together and started a group called the Monuments Men. This was a group of about 345 men and women who were placed in the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) group. Many of these men and women were art historians, educators, artists, curators, museum directors, archivists and architects. Their task was to save as many of the cultural treasures as possible from the destruction of war and theft by the Nazis.

Most of the extraordinary things this group had done to save works of art had largely been forgotten until an art scholar, Lynn H. Nicholas, read the obituary about a French woman who kept records on the Nazis and the art they stole over the years. She singlehandedly saved 60,000 works of art. This made Nicholas research for over a decade into the Monuments Men. She wrote a book in 1995 called //The Rape of Europa//. The movie //The Monuments Men// was loosely based on the book.

One of the largest finds was in a salt mine in the Austrian town of Altaussee, where Hitler stored the treasures intended for his Fuhrermuseum in Linz, Austria. This was the place he had planned for a sprawling museum complex to showcase everything he had stolen. One of the most famous pieces found there was Michelangelo’s Madonna which was stolen out of Bruges, Belgium, by the Nazis in September 1944 as the Allies advanced on the city. We may come across this famous recovered piece of history on our trip as it is located at the Church of Our Lady in Bruges.

Two of the Monuments Men were killed in combat while they were protecting art. After the end of the war, many of the Monuments Men stayed behind in Europe to help catalog and return the stolen items to their rightful owners. The last of the Monuments Men left Europe in 1951, and by then they had helped in the return of several million cultural objects which had been stolen. The very important 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict was based on the work that the Monuments Men accomplished. = =