Steel metropolis Wollongong, and its artwork gallery boasting one among regional Australia’s most prized collections, is wedged in the midst of an unenviable ethical quandary over the obvious Nazi previous of its prime benefactor.
Can the gorgeous artwork works Bronius “Bob’’ Sredersas gave town be distinguished from his involvement in potential Holocaust crimes, ought to it's decided that he labored (as archival paperwork strongly recommend) for the intelligence service of the Waffen SS, referred to as the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), through the second world warfare?
And if it’s additional decided Sredersas did in all chance work for the SD in Lithuania, will Wollongong, having formally hailed Bob as a benevolent metropolis hero in quite a few methods for many years, be obliged to publicly retell his full malevolent story?
Additional, how may any public acceptance by town and its residents, and by the gallery, that Sredersas was concerned in Holocaust crimes in opposition to Lithuanian Jews, alter the best way guests view the aesthetically stunning artwork he donated?
Ought the artwork nonetheless be exhibited in any respect?
These are simply among the thorny moral questions Wollongong and the directors of its gallery are actually asking themselves, having lastly requested that the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies and the Sydney Jewish Museum assess the documentary proof about Sredersas’ previous.
The council’s choice to behave is definitely higher late than by no means. Wollongong-born Michael Samaras first raised Sredersas’ suspected Nazi previous with town in January however the council didn’t act till the Guardian revealed the proof in late March).
Nonetheless, there are not any straightforward solutions right here.
In current days the gallery has introduced it's now formally concerned in a course of that may “inform future steps with regard to the gathering and illustration of the Bob Sredersas story and background”.
Hindsight within the case of Sredersas and the way town feted him whereas seemingly unaware of his suspected Nazi previous, is tough, although hardly pointless. No person evidently knew, when the mild-mannered retiree donated the artworks within the Nineteen Seventies, that he might need been concerned within the Nazis genocidal actions in Lithuania. Instructively, nonetheless, after he grew to become a public determine, Sredersas’ caginess about his wartime actions might need – or even perhaps ought to have – raised some considerations.
Those that knew him effectively within the Wollongong group (and there would look like few) will certainly now be asking themselves what they could have missed and maybe how so.
Equally, the references in media and elsewhere to his opaque wartime experiences (not least those who accompanied the fortieth anniversary of the Wollongong Artwork Gallery) now appear freighted with a darker prescience.
Sredersas lived merely. Averted consideration. His reward – “The Reward”, because it was reported within the Illawarra – was lauded. The standard former steelworks crane driver was immediately elevated to people hero. He grew to become the topic of nationwide and worldwide profiles. The gallery named an exhibition area after him, devoted a posthumous exhibition to him and nonetheless honours him with a wall plaque.
The gorgeous works he spent his meagre earnings on by, amongst others, Grace Cossington-Smith, Arthur Streeton and Norman Lindsay, kind the nationally recognised nucleus of the gallery’s prized assortment.
In 1976 when Sredersas donated 100 artworks to town, the bequest was graciously taken at face worth – as a beneficiant act of appreciation to an industrial metropolis that took him in from war-torn Europe, afforded him alternatives and accepted him as a part of its group.
That the bequest might need, certainly, been a real act of appreciation (or, certainly, a part of some private quest for redemption – as not possible as that will be to achieve given Sredersas’ potential crimes in opposition to humanity) aren't mutually unique from who he may very well transform.
Certainly, the Sydney Jewish Museum’s training officer Rebecca Kummerfeld referenced the acute ethical complexity of the state of affairs for Wollongong and different communities in regards to the capability of people that do good to additionally “do actually atrocious issues”.
“If it does come out that this man did commit crimes and he was concerned in genocide, it'll be a chance for dialogue and asking some actually difficult questions,” she stated.
“It is very important perceive the individuals who contributed to this nation. And to grasp the sunshine and shade of their contribution, no matter which will imply.”
This goes to the center of questions surrounding Sredersas. Can The Reward be distinguished from any evil he could also be related to? It’s an age-old cultural query that may perpetually vex artistic industries: can artwork, literature and efficiency be differentiated from the really appalling individuals who typically create and make it in any other case potential?
That’s the gray space. Focus on.
Some within the Wollongong group are already calling for any hint of Sredersas to be expunged from the official story of town, for his title to be stripped from the gallery area that honours him and for the plaque bearing his title and photograph to be taken from the wall.
Others, together with Samaras, insist this is a chance for town to rewrite the Sredersas story – to inform the reality about him and The Reward as soon as and for all, and to determine how a group that so embraced him, could have recognized so little or no about him.
Keep tuned. There's a philosophy lesson – maybe a textbook – on this one.
Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist
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