History Thriller about Art, Good and Evil

In mid-March 2026, at the annual TEFAF Maastricht art fair of the best fine art on the market, a very meaningful acquisition of the great work by the fantastically talented pupil of Rembrandt was made by the superb The Leiden Collection. 

As it happens in art, behind one painting , in a far-reaching panorama of history, people, choices and deeds, a dizzy historical thriller had been happening before, during and after the Second World War. 

Historical Art Thriller: 1936 – 2026

I got acquainted with Linz a long time ago, over 30 years or so. Not with Linz as a capital of Upper Austria, with its enchanting Danube views and famous Bruckner Music Hall, but as a Hitler-place, both literally and metaphorically. 

My dear friend and senior colleague Simon Wiesenthal had told and shown me many things about Linz, practically at every meeting which had been happening for many years quite regularly and often. From Simon’s perspective, as from the perspective of any of the survivors of Mauthausen, which were a half of the prisoners of that infamous ‘extermination camp by labour’ as it was designated by the Nazis, Linz was an ever-present menace. 

To see it for myself, I went to Linz many times, researched and filmed there. Every time, the impression was surreal, born by the contrast between an idyllic landscape and the terrible history. 

Half a century after the end of the Second World War, Simon Wiesenthal was still emotional when he spoke about the places connected and being important for both Eichmann and Hitler. 

“It Was All for the Hitler’s Museum in Linz”

Many times in our conversations Simon Wiesenthal came to that Hitler’s obsession with the idea for the Fuhrermuseum, that he planned to build in Linz namely.  

There is no surprise in this for those who knew Wiesenthal well. He was a diploma-architect who drew well and did it a lot. It was his prism to see the world before WWII. When the disaster struck, and Simon went through ten concentration and extermination camps, it was his ability to draw that saved him. 

Exactly as it happened with Primo Levy who did survive thanks to the portion of a soup which has been brought to him by the person who was able to do it in the camp during the period of a half of a year, Wiesenthal also survived thanks to the extra portion of a soup that he received for his drawings made in the camp on the Nazis’ request. 

Immediately after the liberation of Mauthausen Simon also made the other kind of drawings, which are a screaming first-hand real-time testimony of the very nature of the Nazism in a perception of the victim who is also an artist. 

Many people have been surprised over the years that after the end of the war, Wiesenthal did not re-start his architect practice. He just could not get himself involved in the art world and profession as if nothing ever........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)