450 Cartoonists Urge Poland to Return Auschwitz Paintings

Kansas City infoZine News has the story, and keep reading to see some of the folks who have signed so far, including my pals Stan Lee and Michael Chabon: "Four hundred and fifty cartoonists and comic book creators from around the world have signed a petition urging a Polish museum to return eight portraits to the elderly California artist who painted them in Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp.

The petition is the latest development in an ongoing international conflict over the paintings.

Mrs. Dina Babbitt, 83, now of Fenton, Calif., was deported to Auschwitz as a teenager in 1943, but her life was spared after the war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele learned of a mural of Snow White that she had painted in the children's barracks. Mengele ordered her to paint portraits of some of the victims of his savage medical experiments. In the 1970s, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, a Polish government institution on the site of the former death camp, acquired eight of the paintings, but refuses to give them back to Mrs. Babbitt.

Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which organized the cartoonists' petition, said: 'Holocaust survivors have a right to reclaim their belongings. Four years ago, Congress declared that the paintings belong to Mrs. Babbitt, and instructed the State Department to intervene. Yet Poland refuses to budge, and the State Department has not acted. This must change.'"