Rose Valland, the Woman who saved Art

Rose Antonia Valland was a French Art Curator, member of the French Resistance, and one of the most decorated women in French history. She secretly recorded details of the Nazi Plundering of National French and Jewish-owned art from France. Working with the French Resistance, she saved thousands of works of art.

Early life
Valland was born the daughter of a blacksmith. Like many gifted pupils from humble backgrounds, she received a scholarship to a teacher school. She graduated in 1918, with the plan of becoming an art teacher. She studied art and graduated in 1922. Valland then topped the competitive exam for art teacher training and underwent two years of training in Paris, graduating in 1925. She then began to study art history at the University of Paris.  She also worked as a high school drawing teacher. She graduated in 1933 with a special diploma, and engaged in graduate studies at the Collage Dee France. In 1932, Valland became a volunteer assistant curator at the Jeu Pe Paume Museum.

World War II
In 1941, Valland was put in paid service and became the overseer of the Jeu Pe Paume Museum at the time of the German occuption of France. Through the Sonderstab Bildende Kunst  Special Staff for Pictorial Art of the  Institute for the Occupied Territories, or ERR, The Germans began the systematic looting of artworks from museums and private collections throughout France. They used the Jeu Pe Paume Museum as their central storage and sorting depot pending distribution to various persons and places in Germany.

While the plundering was being carried out, Rose Valland began secretly recording as much as possible of the more than 20,000 pieces of art brought to the Museum. Valland kept secret from the Germans the fact that she understood German.  In fact, she never formally studied the language, but her partner who knew and spoke the language, helped her understand German.

Sje gatjrtrd critical information from the conversations of drivers, guards, and packers, which she relayed to Jaujard and the French Resistance. Had the Nazis caught her and they came perilously close on two separate occasions she would surely have been shot as a spy.

Valland would converse with truck drivers employed by the Germans, and she was thus able to learn about artwork being ransacked and taken directly to the railway stations. Valland regularly informed the Director of the Musėes Nationaux, about the status of the art looting.

 In addition, for four years she kept track of where and to whom in Germany the artworks were shipped and risked her life to provide information to the French Resistance about railroad shipments of art so that they would not mistakenly blow up the trains loaded with France's priceless treasures. The museum was visited by high-ranking Nazi officials, and Valland was there when Hermann Goering  came on 3 May 1941 to personally select some of the stolen paintings for his own private collection.

On 1 August 1944, a few weeks before the Liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944, Valland learned that the head of the ERR in France, was planning to remove to Germany as much artwork as he could, including many of the modern paintings which they had hitherto neglected. Valland learned that the trucks which had collected the artworks were heading to the train station on the outskirts of Paris. By the 2 August 1944, 148 crates of paintings containing in total 967 paintings, including works by Braque, Degas, Dufy, Gauguin.
Modigliani, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec and Utrillo had been loaded on five goods wagons waiting to be hooked up to another 48 goods wagons containing confiscated furniture and personal possessions of deported citizens. Fortunately, these other goods wagons had not yet been loaded which meant the train never left the station on schedule.

Valland was able to give Jaujard a copy of the Nazi shipment order, which listed the train and goods wagon numbers, the contents of each crate and the destination of each goods wagon either to Kogl Castle at Sankt Georgen in Attergau in Austria or the Nikolsburg depository.  This information Jaujard passed on to the Resistance. By 10 August, the train was ready to depart, but by then the French railway workers were on strike. However, two days later the tracks were cleared and being delayed by higher priority trains carrying fleeing Germans and their personal possessions. The train which had the designation 40044 departed. The overloaded train reached Le Bourget before it suffered a mechanical breakdown. By the time the Germans had fixed the problem 48 hours later, the French Resistance had derailed two trains which blocked the tracks up ahead leaving the train stranded.

Following the arrival of the Second Armored Division of the French Army in Paris, a small detachment under the command of lieutenant André Rosenberg was sent on 27 August to check out and secure the train. After ejecting some old German soldiers who were escorting the shipment, they opened up some of the crates and found many paintings which Rosenberg had last seen hanging on the walls of his family's apartment in Paris. Finding two crates pillaged and an entire collection of silvers missing, it was arranged for 36 crates to be sent to the Louvre for safekeeping. However, to Valland's frustration, it was another two months before the remainder of the crates were removed from the train and transferred to a secure location.

Following the liberation of Paris by the Allied Forces, Valland was initially arrested as a suspected Nazi collaborationist, because she had been employed at Jeu de Paume. She was soon released once her conduct had been vouched for.

Trusting no one but Jaujard, she initially hesitated to share her records. After Jaujard had put her in touch with the Captain of the Monuments fine Art Archives it took months of relationship building before she decided to turn over her most important records. The information Valland was able to supply led to the discovery of multiple looted art in Southern Germany, most prominently at Neuschwanstein Castle  in the Bavarian Alps, where more than twenty thousand works of art were found. She oversaw the return of 1,400 crates of artwork from direct to the Jeu de Paume. Valland's records would later assist in speeding up the return of looted artworks to their rightful owners. To assist in her efforts to locate stolen works of art and return them to France, Valland applied for and received a commission as a Captain in the French First Army on 4 May 1945. She served in Germany for eight years, initially as a member of the "Commission for the Recovery of Works of Art" where she was the French government's liaison of the occupation zone in Germany.

Displaying initiative, Valland approached German military staff (whose names she had recorded while at the Jeu de Paume and was able to confirm the location of several additional, previously unknown repository sites. Valland was a witness at the Nuremberg trials in February 1946 where she confronted Hermann Goering about the artworks he had stolen. In 1946. Valland was put in charge of the Fine Arts activities for the French Oversight Board where she assisted in the recovery of numerous paintings, sculptures, precious coins, and tapestries belonging to France. In a 2013 report to the French Senate, it is estimated that due to the efforts of Valland, it had been possible for the Commission de Récupération Artistique and the Allies to locate approximately 60,000 works, with three-quarters of them returned to France before 1950.

Rose Valland recoverd more than 60,00 art pieces for France. I wonder just how many artworks the public would not be aware of if not for her brave efforts.