During World War II, when Nazi Germany invaded Europe, in the name of "degenerate art", national art collections were confiscated and looted from Jewish hands and major European museums. In fact, they were storing collections for the Führer's Museum that Hitler planned to build in Linz, Austria. According to a secret German official report, as of July 1944, 137 railroad wagons had been transported to Germany from Western Europe, with a total of 4,174 boxes and 20,973 pieces, including 10,890 paintings alone. It includes thousands of amazing masterpieces by famous artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Picasso, Klimt, etc. And those works of modern master art that do not conform to the spirit of the Nazis, such as Picasso, Klee, Max, Ernst, are destroyed on the spot.
"You can wipe out a generation, raze their homes to the ground, but you can start all over again. But if you destroy their history and achievements, then wipe away all traces like floating dust. We will never allow it This is the manifesto of a group of people who believe in defending human history and civilization. This is an "Allied Treasure Team composed of art historians, historians, and architects. They are from Harvard, Yale, Oxford. The campuses, art galleries, and museums went directly to the battlefield, and threw themselves into the urgent war with non-military bodies.
"When I first accepted the mission, I was a little skeptical, whether we were real soldiers, whether we would risk fighting like soldiers, this is really worth asking. It turns out that we are no longer observers of war, but real participation. It hurts like any other soldier. When we lost Donald Jeffrey, we won the right to wear military uniforms, and now we have lost a second person. At first, I said that human life is more important than any art, and few The events of the past few months have proven me wrong. They are our history and cannot be stolen or destroyed, only praised or celebrated, like these warriors. Now, it is our commitment to them to get things done.”
Although they did not face the enemy tit-for-tat at the forefront of the war, they faced the same guns, landmines and the shameless maliciousness of the Nazis to "destroy if they didn't get it". They must arrive at every city liberated by the Allies as soon as possible, search for the artworks that need to be rescued and protected before the Nazis destroy them, and assist in emergency placement and repair. Moreover, they have to accept their own people's incomprehension and lack of support, and even beware of people with ulterior motives taking advantage of the situation. There is a scene in the film that stuck out to me. One second Jane Claude Claremont and Garfield were frolicking with their horses on a picturesque meadow, and the next they fell into the enemy's hideout in the trees. Bullet rain gun forest. Civilization and war, beauty and cruelty... The artist who should have had a brush in his hand fell under the barrel of a robber who desecrated art.
The Altausee salt mine in the Salzkammergut region of Austria is still in production today. During World War II, more than 6,500 world-famous paintings, a large number of statues, furniture, ancient coins, and books (including the Ghent altarpiece and the Madonna of Bruges) hidden by the Nazis have all been returned to their owners. And those art treasures and the heroic stories of the "Allied Treasure Team" that have been displaced here are still told there in the form of electronic media. Perhaps this is the meaning of works of art and cultural relics, recording everything that should not be forgotten, those folds of history, the twists and turns of human civilization, the darkness and light, good and evil, beauty and ugliness... Time and space motto that affects our culture and way of life.
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