The Rape of Europa

USA 2006 / 117min.
Directors Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, Nicole Newnham / Producer Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, Nicole Newnham

Joan Allen narrates this breathtaking chronicle about the battle over the very survival of centuries of European artistic heritage in a journey through seven countries, the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare during the Third Reich and the Second World War. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But young art professionals as well as ordinary heroes, from truck drivers to department store clerks, fought back with an extraordinary effort to safeguard, rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures.

The Rape of Europa is an epic story of systematic theft, deliberate destruction, and miraculous survival. It begins and ends with Gustav Klimt’s famed Gold Portrait, stolen from Viennese Jews in 1938 and now the most expensive painting ever sold. Today, more than sixty years later, the legacy of this tragic history continues to play out as families of looted collectors recover major works of art, conservators repair battle damage, and nations fight over the fate of illgotten spoils of war.

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