He found a label and started reading aloud, “California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco....”
I thought he was joking. But not at all. There was the printed label of my museum. And there too in my own handwriting appeared the words “Portrait of a Young Woman, by Paris Bordone”! No wonder the portrait had looked familiar. I had borrowed it from a New York art dealer for a special loan exhibition of Venetian painting in the summer of 1938. I learned from the mine records that the dealer had subsequently sold the picture to a Jewish private collector in Paris. The Nazis had confiscated it with the rest of his collection. It was a weird business finding it seven years later in an Austrian salt mine.
After supper that evening Shrady asked us to go down to Alt Aussee with him. Some Viennese friends of his were having an evening of music. The weather had cleared and the snow on the mountains was pink in the afterglow as we drove down the winding road from the mine. The house, a small chalet, stood on the outskirts of the village. Our host, his wife and their two daughters, had taken refuge there just before the Russians reached Vienna.
He introduced us to Dr. Victor Luithlen, one of the curators of the Vienna Museum, who had driven over from Laufen. Many of the finest things from the museum were stored in the salt mine there. Dr. Luithlen was the custodian.
Both he and Shrady played the piano well. Luithlen played some Brahms and Shrady followed with the music he had composed for a ballet based on Poe’s “Raven.” Shrady said that it had been produced by the Russian Ballet in New York. It was a very flamboyant piece and Shrady performed it with terrific virtuosity.
Afterward coffee and strudel were served. The atmosphere of the household was casual and friendly. I was reminded of what an Austrian friend of mine had once told me: “In other countries, conditions are often serious, but not desperate; in Austria they are often desperate but never serious.”
Thinking that George Stout might have returned from Munich, Lamont and I went back up to the mine that night before the others. George had just come in. He brought exciting but disturbing news. We were to continue the work at Alt Aussee for another ten days. Then we were to transfer our base of operations to Berchtesgaden. Our job there would be the evacuation of the Göring collection! On our way through Salzburg we were to pick up the pictures and tapestries from the Vienna Museum. These were the paintings by Velásquez, Titian and Breughel which had been highjacked by the Nazis two months ago and later retrieved by our officers. The disturbing part of what George had to tell was that he was going to leave us to carry on alone at the mine. He would try to join us at Berchtesgaden. But there was a possibility that he might not be able to make it.
Months ago George had put in a request for transfer to the Pacific. He felt that things were shaping up on the European scene and that others could carry on the work. There would be a big job protecting and salvaging works of art in Japan. He didn’t think that a program had been planned. He had offered his services. He had already told us that he had asked for this assignment, but we had never considered it as a possibility of the present or even of the immediate future. Now it looked as though it might materialize at once. In any case he was going up to Frankfurt the day after tomorrow to find out.
“As senior officer, Tom,” George said, “you will take over as headman of the team. I’ll take you down to see Colonel Davitt before I go. He is responsible for the security guard here at the mine and has been extremely co-operative. You should go to him if you have any complaints about the arrangements after I am gone.”
Back in our rooms that night Lamont said, “I have a hunch that this is the last we’ll see of George. It’s not like him to talk the way he did tonight if he hasn’t a pretty good idea that he won’t be coming back.”