The suitcase in question has long been displayed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland. Last year, the museum agreed to lend it to the Foundation for the Remembrance of the Shoah (Holocaust) in Paris, for an exhibit entitled "The Fate of French Jews during World War II." The Paris-based group pledged to return the suitcase to the Auschwitz museum by June 30, 2005.
The situation then took an unexpected turn: A visitor to the Paris exhibition - 66-year-old retired engineer Michel Levi-Leleu - made the dramatic discovery of his father's name, Pierre Levi, on the suitcase.
"It was February, 2005," Michel later said. "I took the train with my daughter to see the exposition... I walked quickly past a suitcase displayed behind a window. Claire stopped. Then she called me back to show me that there was an identification tag, on which was written Pierre L?vi, which was my father's name. We did not know what to do."
The suitcase lid had disappeared and the handle was broken, but it still carried the address of the family's last home in Paris on Blvd. Villette, as well as Levi's prisoner reference, "48 Gruppe 10."
Background
The story behind the suitcase began after Germany took over France in 1940 and began rounding up Jews. Pierre Levi, a former diamond trader, found work as a farmhand, hiding his wife and their two sons, including Michel, elsewhere in France. He told them to use the surname of Leleu, visited them in the fall of 1942, and was on his way to visit them again the following April when he was arrested at the Avignon railroad station - carrying the very suitcase in dispute. He later took it with him through the Orgeval and Drancy transit camps in France, and finally to Auschwitz when he arrived there on July 31, 1943 - after which he was never heard from again.
The suitcase was taken from the death camp after the war, and two years later, was put on display in the Auschwitz museum.
"Understandably shaken by the discovery of this precarious link to his father" the International Herald Tribune reports, Michel decided the suitcase should remain in France. He has also undertaken to re-assume his original surname of Levi, as part of his new post-Holocaust awareness.
Michel does not want to keep the suitcase for himself, but rather to leave it on display closer to home, "so it could be shown to everyone in Paris," he told Le Monde.
Thus began a long legal battle, not yet resolved. Though the French foundation had promised to return the suitcase to Auschwitz, it now proposed that the relic remain in Paris until the family might be persuaded to agree not to demand its restitution. The Auschwitz museum finally agreed to extend the loan until this past January - but one month before the new deadline, Levi-Leleu obtained a temporary court order preventing its return to Poland.
The final court decision on his ownership claim is expected only next year - and in the meantime, the suitcase remains in Paris.
The Auschwitz museum argues that, with the passage of time, it has become all the more important to preserve physical remnants of the death camp in order to safeguard the memory of the attempted genocide.
The Tribune sums up: "On the one hand, it seems heartless to deny Levi-Leleu repossession of this poignant relic, one that might help him to assuage a loss suffered more than six decades ago. On the other hand, the collective memory of the Holocaust has been partly constructed in Auschwitz by personal effects - clothing, shoes, combs and hairbrushes, eyeglasses, razors and buttons as well as suitcases - left by victims."
Gypsy Paintings
Another similar case, which has not - yet- been brought to court, involves seven paintings by a former Auschwitz prisoner that are now hanging in the same Auschwitz museum. The evil Dr. Yosef Mengele forced a young Czechoslovak Jewess to paint the portraits of Gypsy prisoners in 1943. The painter, 83-year-old Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, now wants them back, saying they are "part of my soul, part of my being, part of me."
Some of the paintings can be seen here.
The museum, though under great pressure from various quarters to return them, refuses. An official said, "Taking into consideration the fact that there are very few objects documenting the extermination of Roma [Gypsies] at Auschwitz-Birkenau, these portraits have great importance as historical documents."
The museum also claims that the paintings were "commissioned" and are not the painter's personal property - but Dina counter-claims that they were "commissioned" under the threat of death and that normal conditions of ownership should therefore not apply.
The situation then took an unexpected turn: A visitor to the Paris exhibition - 66-year-old retired engineer Michel Levi-Leleu - made the dramatic discovery of his father's name, Pierre Levi, on the suitcase.
"It was February, 2005," Michel later said. "I took the train with my daughter to see the exposition... I walked quickly past a suitcase displayed behind a window. Claire stopped. Then she called me back to show me that there was an identification tag, on which was written Pierre L?vi, which was my father's name. We did not know what to do."
The suitcase lid had disappeared and the handle was broken, but it still carried the address of the family's last home in Paris on Blvd. Villette, as well as Levi's prisoner reference, "48 Gruppe 10."
Background
The story behind the suitcase began after Germany took over France in 1940 and began rounding up Jews. Pierre Levi, a former diamond trader, found work as a farmhand, hiding his wife and their two sons, including Michel, elsewhere in France. He told them to use the surname of Leleu, visited them in the fall of 1942, and was on his way to visit them again the following April when he was arrested at the Avignon railroad station - carrying the very suitcase in dispute. He later took it with him through the Orgeval and Drancy transit camps in France, and finally to Auschwitz when he arrived there on July 31, 1943 - after which he was never heard from again.
The suitcase was taken from the death camp after the war, and two years later, was put on display in the Auschwitz museum.
"Understandably shaken by the discovery of this precarious link to his father" the International Herald Tribune reports, Michel decided the suitcase should remain in France. He has also undertaken to re-assume his original surname of Levi, as part of his new post-Holocaust awareness.
Michel does not want to keep the suitcase for himself, but rather to leave it on display closer to home, "so it could be shown to everyone in Paris," he told Le Monde.
Thus began a long legal battle, not yet resolved. Though the French foundation had promised to return the suitcase to Auschwitz, it now proposed that the relic remain in Paris until the family might be persuaded to agree not to demand its restitution. The Auschwitz museum finally agreed to extend the loan until this past January - but one month before the new deadline, Levi-Leleu obtained a temporary court order preventing its return to Poland.
The final court decision on his ownership claim is expected only next year - and in the meantime, the suitcase remains in Paris.
The Auschwitz museum argues that, with the passage of time, it has become all the more important to preserve physical remnants of the death camp in order to safeguard the memory of the attempted genocide.
The Tribune sums up: "On the one hand, it seems heartless to deny Levi-Leleu repossession of this poignant relic, one that might help him to assuage a loss suffered more than six decades ago. On the other hand, the collective memory of the Holocaust has been partly constructed in Auschwitz by personal effects - clothing, shoes, combs and hairbrushes, eyeglasses, razors and buttons as well as suitcases - left by victims."
Gypsy Paintings
Another similar case, which has not - yet- been brought to court, involves seven paintings by a former Auschwitz prisoner that are now hanging in the same Auschwitz museum. The evil Dr. Yosef Mengele forced a young Czechoslovak Jewess to paint the portraits of Gypsy prisoners in 1943. The painter, 83-year-old Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, now wants them back, saying they are "part of my soul, part of my being, part of me."
Some of the paintings can be seen here.
The museum, though under great pressure from various quarters to return them, refuses. An official said, "Taking into consideration the fact that there are very few objects documenting the extermination of Roma [Gypsies] at Auschwitz-Birkenau, these portraits have great importance as historical documents."
The museum also claims that the paintings were "commissioned" and are not the painter's personal property - but Dina counter-claims that they were "commissioned" under the threat of death and that normal conditions of ownership should therefore not apply.