Auschwitz artwork, and Gypsy victims

Re “Art or a part of history?” Column One, Nov. 29

Thank you for an informative and emotional article, which still haunts me. Valuable paintings of museum quality were taken from my mother’s home in Krakow, Poland, at the beginning of World War II, but without proof of provenance, she has no power to claim them. It is not the worth of the art, but the principle that they belonged to her and were stolen goods, along with stolen lives and stolen futures.

Dina Gottliebova Babbitt deserves to keep her paintings because they represent a part of her, of what she had to go through to survive -- they are a symbol of her struggle.

As an illustrator, I have found that high-quality laser prints are quite wonderful inventions. I would suggest that the Auschwitz museum invest a few zloty, make some copies for its exhibition and return the heart-wrenching but important pieces of art to their rightful owner.

MONA SHAFER EDWARDS

Los Angeles

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Once again, no thoughts for the Gypsy victims. Their massacre during the Nazi Holocaust was as significant relatively as the Jewish losses and the Armenian Holocaust, and yet nobody seems to consider them victims to be remembered and memorialized. Are the Gypsies to be forgotten?

Since the models and their families -- who paid with their lives just because they were Gypsies after their portraits were made -- are all dead, may I suggest that the true home for this art is in a museum dedicated to Gypsy victims.

GREGORY T. PARKOS

Venice