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Flashback: 3 Nazi-confiscated works found at Hearst Castle (Helen Thomas' employer)
SF Chronicle ^ | 4/8/09 | Peter Fimrite

Posted on 06/05/2010 8:34:31 AM PDT by jimbo123

Three 16th century oil paintings that have been hanging in William Randolph Hearst's famous castle at San Simeon belonged to a Jewish couple who were forced to give them up during the Nazi reign in Germany, authorities said Tuesday.

Two of the three paintings, visible to guests and millions of tourists at Hearst Castle since 1935, will be returned Friday to the heirs of the rightful owners, both of whom died during the war, one in the death camp at Auschwitz.

(Excerpt) Read more at articles.sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: antisemites; hearst; helenthomas; hitler; nazism
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To: nmh
It's was the birth of Sneakyman Inc., who's smarter now and has learned not to incorporate in any one entity.
21 posted on 06/05/2010 9:05:59 AM PDT by norraad ("What light!">Blues Brothers)
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To: jimbo123

Absurd stretch trying to tie Hitler’s looting of the jews to the Hearst art collection to Thomas. Hearst, Henry Ford, Joe Kennedy, and the rest are long gone.

Helen’s own jew hatred and how it has flavored her reporting the last ten years is the story. Anything else is just a distraction in her favor.


22 posted on 06/05/2010 9:17:02 AM PDT by tlb
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To: tlb

Hearst’s collaboration with Nazis and Hitler is not a distraction in Helen’s favor. It is an insight into why Hearst will not fire Helen. Nazi collaboration apologism is in the DNA of the corporation. It’s a shame you’re trying to pretend it didn’t happen.


23 posted on 06/05/2010 9:23:56 AM PDT by jimbo123
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To: jimbo123
You nailed it, you shown the light on the dark hearted cooperatively evil corpo-collective.
24 posted on 06/05/2010 9:28:18 AM PDT by norraad ("What light!">Blues Brothers)
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To: jimbo123

that is a helluva reach there jimbo..lol


25 posted on 06/05/2010 9:32:26 AM PDT by wardaddy (No mosque at ground zero....are these NYers totally nuts?...what would wake them up?)
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To: UCANSEE2

I think safe to say not of William Randolph Hearst MALE Hollywood friends wouldn’t sleep with her

Not even Fatty Arkbuckle LOL!


26 posted on 06/05/2010 9:32:41 AM PDT by SevenofNine ("We are Freepers, all your media belong to us ,resistance is futile")
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To: nmh
“Hitler had the support of the most widely circulated magazine in history, Readers Digest

"Not when you eliminate the third, fifth and sixth letters, then it's 'Red's Digest', Comrade!"

27 posted on 06/05/2010 9:33:35 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: rockinqsranch
The paintings were at a gallery in Germany. The owners fled to Paris and Hitler's government took over the gallery and confiscated the paintings.

Hearst agents bought the paintings. Whether or not they knew of the story behind them I don't know, but it's less likely that William Randolph Hearst did himself.

When the paintings were returned they were the property of the state of California which now owns the castle. If anti-Semitism were somehow in the DNA, the current governor might not have returned them.

28 posted on 06/05/2010 9:40:32 AM PDT by x
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To: jimbo123
Helen Thomas ...left wing pro-Arab anti-Israel turd...no question.

Now:

Hearst:

Started out in early 30s pro-Nazi because he loathed the Reds more than anything and unlike the revisionism some here indulge in Nazis were seen then as a counter to Reds in Europe.

After Kristallnacht, Hearst abruptly changed course and supported anti-Nazis and was very vocal about the plight of the Jews in Europe.

“When news of the mass murder of Europe’s Jews began reaching the United States in 1941-1942, the Hearst newspaper chain gave it prominent coverage - by contrast with newspapers such as The New York Times, which routinely confined it to the back pages (as Prof. Laurel Leff documented in her definitive study, Buried by ‘The Times’).

In 1943, Hearst served as an honorary chairman of the Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe, which was organized by the activist Bergson Group to demonstrate that rescue was possible - in contrast to the Roosevelt administration’s claim that the only way to rescue the Jews was to win the war.

When the Bergson group in late 1943 initiated a congressional resolution urging FDR to create a government agency to rescue Jewish refugees, Hearst directed his newspaper chain to promote the resolution and he personally authored signed editorials endorsing it. One declared: “Remember, Americans, this is not a Jewish problem. It is a human problem.”

“Hearst was the only newspaper owner who supported us without any qualifications or reservations,” Samuel Merlin, a leader of the Bergson Group, recalled in a postwar interview. ”

All his papers. He gave us pages after pages free. He gave us the whole editorial page - Hearst himself. He gave orders to print our material.”

The group’s leader, Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), noted that he and his colleagues endured some criticism because of their relationship with Hearst. “We were even attacked as ‘fascists’ because we approached William Randolph Hearst several times,” he recalled. But the Bergsonites were not dissuaded. “What right did we have to decide who should save the Jews?” Bergson asked rhetorically. “For God’s sake, we would go to anybody. I mean, would we need a rabbi to say ‘Save the Jews’? We were delighted that we got Hearst to say ‘Save the Jews.’”

The support of Hearst’s 34 newspapers gave the congressional resolution an important boost, helped keep the refugee issue in the public eye, and focused negative attention on the Roosevelt administration’s opposition to rescue action.

By early 1944, the combined pressure from Congress, the Bergson Group and the Treasury Department convinced FDR to establish the War Refugee Board, a government agency devoted to rescuing Jews from Hitler. During the last 15 months of the war, the board played a major role in the rescue of an estimated 200,000 Jews.

In the minds of many Americans, William Randolph Hearst will be forever associated with the greedy and dishonest main character in the 1941 film, Citizen Kane.

But whatever his unflattering traits, the real life Hearst had other qualities as well, including genuine compassion for the persecuted Jews of Europe and a determination to help rescue them from the Holocaust.

Rafael Medoff is director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of Blowing the Whistle on Genocide: Josiah E. DuBois, Jr. and the Struggle for a US Response to the Holocaust. and author of and Struggle for a U.S. Response to the Holocaust.”

Hearst did not know the paintings were stolen from the Oppenheimers when he bought them at auction.

Like I said...this assumption Hearst are Nazis...especially today is ridiculous. They will likely not fire Helen because she like them are TODAY leftists...imagine a time when a media giant was anti-leftist?...hard to believe now

29 posted on 06/05/2010 9:42:08 AM PDT by wardaddy (No mosque at ground zero....are these NYers totally nuts?...what would wake them up?)
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To: jimbo123

The Hearst Csstle isn’t owned by the Hearst Corp. The family donated it to the state of California, and it has been a state park for over 50 years.


30 posted on 06/05/2010 9:44:42 AM PDT by GrootheWanderer
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To: Baynative
Where do you get your information?

The British Empire

Jewish Virtual Library-Pre-1948 Maps

Just asking...

31 posted on 06/05/2010 9:47:18 AM PDT by Sarajevo (You're jealous because the voices only talk to me.)
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To: Navy Patriot
“Of course the SF Communist exonerates Hearst and his empire of urinialists, because Hearst, one of the top ten most informed people on the planet, and world's leading yellow journalist, would not know that Nazis were confiscating Jewish property.”

Every country in the world, including the USA, confiscates property and sells it. If Herst bought these paintings in 1935, he bought them from a legitimately recognized government.

The NAZIs lost the war, and that was a very good thing, but if there were any justice in the world, we would be prosecuting people who bought things from the Communists as well. They committed crimes every bit as bad as the NAZI regime, if not worse.

32 posted on 06/05/2010 9:49:36 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: GrootheWanderer

TRUE.

With the family’s right to use a part of it IIRC.


33 posted on 06/05/2010 10:06:59 AM PDT by Quix (THE PLAN of the Bosses: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2519352/posts?page=2#2)
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To: jimbo123

You can’t put this accident on Hearst, he lost the castle long before that ‘art’ found it’s way to the State of California.


34 posted on 06/05/2010 10:09:30 AM PDT by STD (Oil-Bambi's Revenge and econ 101 by the Father of Facist capitalism)
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To: Michael.SF.
I am not sure this would clear up the dispute, but I worked for a company years ago in New Jersey the owner / president of which left Germany as a child with his (Jewish) family in 1933 upon Hitler becoming Chancellor. They lost everything but the clothes on their backs. So by 1935 I would think there was quite a lot of high quality confiscated art available to Nazis and their sympathizers (I'm talking about you, Mr. Hearst) even if the concentration camps weren't fully operational.

I am supposing the owners of the art mentioned in the article were not clever or lucky enough to get out in '33. By '35 the US was no longer as accepting of Jewish refugees from Germany (thanks, FDR) and the Nazis had also tightened things up, deciding apparently it was preferable to isolate, humiliate, rob, and kill Jews rather than letting them leave.

The guy I'm talking about, by the way, was named Otto (I won't include the family name) and he changed it to Jack when, in a packed office in Manhattan three days after Pearl Harbor, the recruiting sergeant told him "there ain't no Otto's in the US Army". He later on was pushed through OCS, and became an intelligence officer with Third Army on Patton's staff. He had the photos to back up his story and at around 5'4" seeing one of him in line having his hand shaken by "Old Blood and Guts" at 6'4" is an image I will never forget.

35 posted on 06/05/2010 10:16:47 AM PDT by katana (For what is an Irishman ? But a .......)
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To: wardaddy

Hearst bet big on Hitler and knew what was Hitler was doing to the Jews in 1934 and even talked to him about it.

Yet Hearst continued to collaborate with Hitler and the Nazis with propaganda and access to his media empire for many years later.

It’s not surprising the Hearst would run away from his friend Hitler in the early 40’s after the death camps were running at full speed.


36 posted on 06/05/2010 10:27:05 AM PDT by jimbo123
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To: Baynative

I thought Israel came about because of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 but that it wasn’t enforced completely until after WWII?


37 posted on 06/05/2010 10:28:48 AM PDT by chris_bdba
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To: Michael.SF.

Don’t forget that they began rouding up and forcing into ghettos during the early years. If someone was forced from their home likely they would not be able to take the art with them at the time of removal.


38 posted on 06/05/2010 10:30:23 AM PDT by chris_bdba
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Comment #39 Removed by Moderator

Comment #40 Removed by Moderator


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