Latest news with #GermanNazis
NZ Herald
3 days ago
- NZ Herald
Decades after a Nazi captain stole an erotic Roman mosaic, it returns to Pompeii
A preliminary analysis of the panel by archaeologists suggests it may have originally adorned the floor of a bedroom in a villa, although its exact provenance is not known. The analysis dated the mosaic to the Vesuvian era, which takes its name from the period around 79 AD, when an eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii with volcanic materials. The mosaic was delivered to Pompeii under the supervision of the Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, a specialist Italian police unit founded in 1969 to combat illicit trafficking of the cultural artifacts and known colloquially as the Carabinieri Art Squad. At a news conference, the squad's Major General Francesco Gargaro said the mosaic was seized by an unidentified Wehrmacht captain, referring to Germany's wartime fighting forces, although the exact chain of events surrounding its theft may never be known. According to Gargaro, the looter was tasked with administering logistical supplies in wartime Italy and gave the piece to another person in Germany. For decades, its existence remained unknown to Italian authorities - until they received a call from the heir to the person who received the mosaic. 'I must emphasise the enormous sensitivity of this gentleman,' said Gargaro, who described how the unidentified man realised the panel's historic significance when he inherited it from his father. The mosaic was then delivered to the Italian consulate in the German city of Stuttgart, he said, which organised its repatriation. Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, said the repatriation of the artifact 'heals a wound'. He said that where the mosaic originally came from may never be known, but that his team will conduct scientific analysis on the artifact to date it as precisely as possible. According to art historians, German Nazis and Italian fascists alike were fascinated by Ancient Rome - believing their modern empires to be its symbolic heirs. Researchers have chronicled examples of Nazi officials requesting gifts of Roman antiquities from Benito Mussolini's regime. Other ancient artifacts were stolen or illegally exported throughout the wartime period by a network of art dealers, troops and civilians - much of which was undocumented and untraceable. The exact route by which this mosaic made it to Germany remains unclear. The mosaic will be temporarily displayed in Pompeii's Antiquarium Museum, which displays artifacts from the site, as it undergoes further study and analysis.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's Own Intel Official Just Blew up His Mass Deportation Excuse
The head of the CIA undermined the president's excuse to enact the Alien Enemies Act during a House Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday. 'To invoke this law, the president must demonstrate that the United States is under invasion by a foreign nation or government,' Representative Joaquin Castro said. 'They have alleged that we are under invasion by the Venezuelan government.' 'The idea that we are at war with Venezuela would come as a surprise to most Americans,' he continued. 'You would think our nation being at war would merit at least a small reference in [a] threat assessment. Director Ratcliffe, does the intelligence community assess that we are currently at war or being invaded by the nation of Venezuela?' 'We have no assessment that says that,' CIA Director John Ratcliffe responded. Earlier this month, the White House made a spontaneous decision to defy a court order by deporting more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador by invoking the Japanese internment-era wartime policy. Five of the men sued the Trump administration in response, attempting to prevent their 'imminent removal.' But even after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered that the immigrants should remain in the U.S. as they await trial, Trump officials thwarted the law and sent them skybound regardless. Donald Trump justified the infraction by claiming Venezuelan immigration into the country constituted an 'invasion,' and described the current era as a 'time of war.' The men were taken to a notorious El Salvador prison known as CECOT. The Trump administration pledged that every man it had deported to CECOT was a member of Tren de Aragua, a criminal organization, but family members and friends of the deportees claimed that's not true. Some of the men that had been forced to board the planes had no criminal record. On Tuesday, a U.S. circuit judge purported that the Trump administration's actions were wildly unprecedented, and that the nation's current use of the Alien Enemies Act was treating asylum-seekers worse than it treated actual German Nazis during World War II.
