Scarsdale's Westchester Reform Temple Holding Screening of “The Rape of Europa” Film

Editor's Note: The following article was contributed by the Westchester Reform Temple of Scarsdale.

The (WRT) in Scarsdale will present a screening of The Rape of Europa, on Monday, April 30, at 7:00 p.m., followed by a discussion with writer Lynn H. Nicholas. 

The film, based on Nicolas highly-acclaimed book of the same title, details this epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe's art treasures during the Third Reich and the Second World War.  Following the screening, Linda Wolk Simon, congregant of WRT and the Charles W. Englehard Curator and Head of the Department of Drawings and Prints at New York's Morgan Library & Museum, will lead the discussion with the author. Their conversation will touch on the subject of World War II-era provenance of works of art in public collections, and what art museums currently are doing to determine if any of their paintings, sculptures, and objects might have been looted from Jewish owners by the Nazis, and never properly restituted after the war.

For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But young art professionals as well as ordinary heroes, from truck drivers to department store clerks, fought back with an extraordinary effort to safeguard, rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures. Today, more than 60 years later, the legacy of this tragic history continues to play out as families of looted collectors recover major works of art, conservators repair battle damage, and nations fight over the fate of ill-gotten spoils of war.  Joan Allen narrates this breathtaking film chronicle, based on Nicholas's book, about the battle over the very survival of centuries of western culture.

While living in Belgium in the early 1980s, Nicholas initiated what would become 10 years of research for her highly-acclaimed book. The Rape of Europa was a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Nicholas was elected to the Légion d’Honneur by the government of France, and in 2005 released her second book, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web.

This event is free and open to the public at Westchester Reform Temple, 255 Mamaroneck Road, in Scarsdale.

For more information call the Temple at 914-723-7727, or email the temple at office@wrtemple.org