Government Commissioner for the Inventory and Safekeeping of Artworks Sequestrated from Jews, 1944-1945

Collection description

Holding institution (official language):: Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára

Title:: Government Commissioner for the Inventory and Safekeeping of Artworks Sequestrated from Jews, 1944-1945

Title (official language):: A zsidók zár alá vett műtárgyainak számbavételére és megőrzésére kinevezett kormánybiztos, 1944-1945

Creator/accumulator:: Government Commissioner for the Inventory and Safekeeping of Artworks Sequestrated from Jews

Scope and content:: The collection holds the fragments of records created by the Government Commissioner for the Inventory and Safekeeping of Artworks Sequestrated from Jews. Fascicles 1-3 hold the inventories taken by the local bureaus of the Commissariat (no. 1 to 452) on the artworks confiscated from Jewish individuals as well as the correspondence between the central bureau in Budapest and the provincial offices and correspondence with various state agencies, including financial directorates, law enforcement agencies and public collections. Fascicles 3 also includes invoices, letters of carriage and receipts as well as documents pertaining to the implementation of Prime Minister’s Decree 4450/1945 on the protection of private art collections issued in July 1945.

Archival history:: The surviving records of the Ministry of Religious and Educational Affairs were taken to the Hungarian National Archives in 1962.

Administrative/biographical history:: According to Prime Minister’s Decree 1830/1944 on Inventory and Safekeeping of Artworks Sequestrated from Jews, a commissariat was established on 22 May 1944 within the Ministry of Religion and Education, whose main task was to explore and inventory of all artworks sequestrated from Jews, select the “artworks of special value for national culture”, supervise the process of declaration, investigate the artworks that had not been declared and ensure that the artworks are stored and safeguarded properly. The commissariat was headed by painter Dezső Csánky, the general director of the Museum of Fine Arts. The commissariat was also active in the process of evacuation at the end of 1944, when Csánky and his associates transported a trainload of artworks, including many of those confiscated from Jews, to Germany. The transport was captured by American troops on 3 May 1945.

Subject terms:: Art; Holocaust; Holocaust--Collaboration; Plunder; Plunder--Aryanisation; Real estate

Finding aids:: An alphabetical index is available for the collection (Vol. 4.)