engleski

Monuments Men - “Operation Zara”

Operation Zara started at 9 am, on August 28, 1945 in the rooms on the first floor of the Doge's Palace in Venice. The entire operation was organized and managed by the MFAA (Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives) officers who were in charge of the Venice region in cooperation with the Office for Galleries of Venice. Although this was an official, military document one can almost feel the drama and the atmosphere in the room while the boxes with treasure from Zadar were opened. MFAA officer for the region of Venice Basil Marriott, an architect from England, wrote a record entitled Zara: Report on War damage on Monument and movable works of Art known to be stored in Italy. Captain Basil Marriot considered that it exceptionally important to make a detailed record with all known facts because of political circumstances related to Zadar (Zadar was a part of Italy before the war) and also because of the lack of reliable information about the condition of works of art in Zadar. This thirty-page document consists of an explanation of the circumstances in which the report was written, known facts about the movable works of art and war damages on the monuments in Zadar, q report on the review of 14 boxes located in Venice and a list of relevant bibliography. The treasure (which includes the almost complete movable collections of the Museum S. Donato in Zara and other artefacts collected from city) was removed from Zadar not in 1943 (as the Italian side was claiming and the Croatian side repeated for the past 70 years) but in spring 1944, during the German occupation and after the Italian capitulation. The boxes were closed after examining and making lists, and they were sealed on September 9, 1945 in presence of Basil Marriott. They were ready to be sent to Zadar, which in the opinion of Basil Marriott should have been done as soon as possible. These boxes have never been sent to Zadar from Venice. Their destiny remained mysterious until the discovery of this documentation. The Monuments Men mission was never finished and the Italians subsequently put those treasures in restitutions negotiations so those artefacts are still in Venice and Murano, displayed as Collections Archaeological Museum s. Donato, Zara. Decisions on Restitution were adopted at the national level ; the public had no insight into the negotiations and in past times almost nothing was written about this subject, which is why this subject captures the public imagination very intensively even today

Monuments Men, “Operation Zara”, Museum St. Donatus, restitution, provenance research, 20 Century, WW II, Zadar, Croatia

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