Polish War Loss Returned: Napoleon Painting from Famous Collection

The news in Polish

1. zabrać
   wziąć coś, co należy do kogoś innego i zanieść gdzieś indziej ↩︎
2. oddać
   zwrócić coś lub przekazać coś komuś innemu ↩︎
3. zadowolony
   czujący radość i satysfakcję z czegoś ↩︎
4. odzyskać
   dostać z powrotem coś, co wcześniej było utracone ↩︎
5. dzieło  (n.)
   ważny wytwór pracy artystycznej lub twórczej, np. obraz lub rzeźba ↩︎
6. kultura  (f.)
   wszystko, co ludzie tworzą w dziedzinie sztuki, muzyki, literatury i tradycji ↩︎

Translation

Text comprehension

Question 1: Who handed the painting over to the museum?

Question 2: How many works of art has Poland recovered from various countries so far?

Vocabulary

Polish	English
zabrać	to take away
oddać	to give back
zadowolony	satisfied
odzyskać	to recover
dzieło  (n.)	work
kultura  (f.)	culture

Read the full story

A painting linked to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in 1812, which was looted during the Second World War, has been returned to a public collection in Poland.

The work originally belonged to Andrzej Rotwand, an engineer, banker, and owner of one of the largest collections of Polish art in the first half of the 20th century. Before the war, it was displayed at the Zachęta gallery in Warsaw. During the German occupation, it was moved to the National Museum and later used to decorate a casino for senior SS officers and police at Pałac Blanka on Senatorska Street.

The painting’s wartime history was established by Ewa Tsonis, with support from Mieczysław Węglewicz and experts from the National Museum. Tsonis then decided to hand the work over to a public collection.

Poland’s Minister of Culture, Marta Cienkowska, welcomed the gesture: “Such attitudes are still rare, but thanks to the fact that we continuously speak about restitution — searching for lost works and trying to recover them — people who hold missing objects come to us more and more often, feeling a responsibility for cultural heritage. Thanks to them, our history comes home.”

Researchers confirmed the work is authentic and noted that it has survived in very good condition, complete with its original frame.

The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage reports that more than 920 cultural goods have been returned to Poland as a result of restitution efforts. The ministry is currently handling over 200 cases across 18 countries.