Titled Empty Frames, the initiative was unveiled by Deputy Prime Minister and Culture and National Heritage Minister Piotr Gliński, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Meeting the media in the Museum of King John III’s Palace in Wilanów, Warsaw, Gliński said: “We are launching a nationwide campaign, Empty Frames, which is intended to remind the Polish people about the works of art and historical treasures stolen during World War II, both by the German and Russian occupiers.”
Under the project, “special plaques will be placed in twelve museums across the country, highlighting Poland’s war losses in the field of culture,” the deputy PM added.
Gliński noted that out of all the countries involved in World War II, Poland “suffered the biggest losses, also in the field of arts and culture.”
“To this day, in many Polish museums you can find empty frames - a symbol of Polish war losses,” he stated.
Detailed information about the art stolen from various Polish museums can be found on the campaign's website, reporters were told.
'No statute of limitations on looting of cultural assets'
The deputy PM stressed that “there is no statute of limitations on the looting of cultural assets, neither in the sphere of ethics and morals, nor in international law.”
“The Polish state will never stop searching for the cultural assets stolen during World War II and retrieving them,” Gliński declared.
Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk added that Poland “will be actively demanding the return of what is rightly ours, of what represents the property of the Polish state.”
New requests for return of looted art from Russia
At the news conference in Wilanów, Gliński also unveiled seven new requests for the return of artworks looted by the Soviet Red Army during World War II, the PAP news agency reported.
The requests will be handed to the Russian government, he said.
They concern seven paintings stolen from Poland and now included in the collections of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, according to officials.
Poland has already sent twenty similar requests to Russia, relating to more than ten thousand stolen artefacts, reporters were told.
“So far, the government of the Russian Federation hasn’t looked into any of the claims,” the deputy PM said.
(pm)
Source: PAP, gov.pl