WARSAW, Poland (AP) – In a gesture welcomed in Poland, the son of a Nazi official has returned three artworks that his family had looted from the southern Polish city of Krakow during World War II.
Polish officials said Monday they hoped the gesture by Horst von Waechter of Austria would inspire other Nazi descendants to follow suit.
In the ceremony Sunday in Krakow, von Waechter returned an 18th-century map of Poland, built into a small table, and two historic drawings that his mother, Charlotte von Waechter, had appropriated there in late 1939. It was shortly after her husband, Otto von Waechter, had become governor in the southern Polish city occupied by German and Austrian Nazis during the war.
The handover took place at the office of the Krakow provincial governor and was the result of efforts by Polish historian and politician Magdalena Ogorek, according to Krzysztof Marcinkiewicz, spokesman for the governor.
He said one of the paintings had Charlotte von Waechter’s handwritten pencil inscription saying it came from the Potocki Palace in Krakow, where the Waechters resided during the war.