Free Republic

Germany and Nigeria are set to venture into an agreement to pave way for the return of centuries-old sculptures known as the Benin Bronzes that were taken from Africa in the 19th century and displayed in German museums and elsewhere.Governments and museums in Europe and North America have increasingly sought to resolve ownership disputes over objects looted during colonial times. A British colonial expedition stole the bas-relief Bronzes along with many other treasures in 1897 from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in what's now southern Nigeria. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, an authority that oversees many of...

I remember our daily food always coming from a long, long line at the end of which was a loaf of bread, a liter of milk, a stick of butter, a bottle of murky cooking oil, or a kilo of bones with traces of meat and fat on them. [...] If we wanted to eat, we learned at a very young age that we had to stand in long lines every day, often in bitter cold at 4 a.m. in hopes that the store would not run out of bread or milk by the time we made it to the...