MJH | “Plunder and Survival” Book Talk

Writer, art historian, and Holocaust survivor Suzanne Loebl, whose life paralleled much of the events revisited in Plunder and Survival, takes a new look at the Nazis ruthless attack on modern art and at their unprecedented looting of private, mostly Jewish art collections in Austria, Holland, and France. Eighty-five years after the end of the hostilities, the book examines a sizable fraction of the art that miraculously survived, especially in American art museums. In addition to art, leading artists, art professionals, scholars and architects, fled Hitler’s realm; their contributions to their new homeland helped to shift the center of art world from Europe to the United States.

Suzanne Loebl will be in conversation about the book with Abigail Wilentz.

Suzanne Loebl is the author of fourteen books, most recently America’s Medicis: The Rockefellers and Their Astonishing Cultural Legacy. She was born into an art-collecting family in Germany and escaped the Nazis as a teenager by hiding in Belgium. Her other books include America’s Art Museums: A Traveler’s Guide to Great Collections Large and Small and a memoir on her experience during World War II, At the Mercy of Strangers: Growing Up on the Edge of the Holocaust. In 2012, Loebl received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Abigail Wilentz has developed books on art, design, photography, fashion, lifestyle, and other topics as an editor at Universe Publishing, a division of Rizzoli International Publications, at Watson-Guptill Publications, and independently with agents and authors. She has written several books commissioned by publishers and directed a custom publishing line for the luxury fashion brand Brioni.

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