Posted in: Comics | Tagged: marvel, neal adams

Neal Adams Calls For Auschwitz Museum Return Paintings To Dina Babbit

Neal Adams writes for Bleeding Cool:

Well, by golly… the other night was pretty nifty with the big award and all in Washington DC! I was awarded the 2017 IP Champions Award for Excellence in Creativity from the Global Intellectual Property, US Chamber of Commerce in honor of yours truly for my lifetime support of intellectual properties.

James Rosen, Chief Washington Correspondent for Fox News Channel, presented me the award. Rosen loves comics, so it was a real thrill for him to be able to talk about my work and present the award. He said it was within his top ten best nights ever. Sitting at table 8, the Neal Adams table was David Bogart from Marvel Comics, as well as Tom Brevoort from Marvel. Marilyn, my wife, and Kris Stone, my daughter. Troy Dow from the Disney Company and a gentleman with his daughter from Commerce.

After receiving the award, I decided to take this moment in Washington to discuss a very important issue that I have been currently working on in trying to get the return of Dina Babbit's artwork from the Auschwitz Museum.

In Nazi Germany before World War II, 17-year-old Dina Gottliebova Babbitt insisted that she, an art student, had to accompany her mother when her mother was taken to Auschwitz.

Now doomed, Dina was asked by other doomed teenagers to draw cartoons to "entertain" the younger children.

She drew and colored Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on the walls, to children's temporary smiles.

The camp Commander Dr. Josef Mengele, "The Angel of Death", discovered her and told her she must paint for him. Gypsies, to show that they were inferior to "Aryan" people for the world to see.

Dina agreed — only if her mother was kept alive.

And so she painted, very slowly, to the war's end — and liberation by the Americans.

She came to America with her mother and settled in California to become an animator in Hollywood.

She married Arthur Babbitt, the Disney animator who had animated Dopey in the Snow White Disney film.

44 years ago, the Auschwitz museum in Poland contacted her to come and identify "certain paintings" that had "come into their hands".

Signed "Dina", they were hers — and when she asked to have them back, the Auschwitz museum in Poland refused, saying they now belonged to the museum.

Bad guys often think they are good guys because they are doing "Good Things". But we must have ethics, principles, and morality in the world.

Does the Auschwitz Museum think Dina and her daughters will not "loan" the work, for times, to the Museum — and/or display copies, as they do now in place of the originals? Must the state always win over the individual, even now?

I need your help getting those paintings back into the hands of Dina's surviving daughters.

What I didn't get to talk about was the Work Made for Hire Provision of the Copyright law. This is a really big issue and really needs everyone's full attention. The time is coming when the freelance community and the publishers and the creative community need to strike down the Work Made for Hire provision of the Copyright law. You will be hearing more about it, and if I have my way, it will be done with good will and good intentions on everyone's part and to the benefit of all. It is a long time coming, and only good will come of it.

Back to the Gala.

Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top was also given an Award for Excellence In Creativity, as well. We then were delighted by four performances of the best of ZZ Top.

Novartis/Kristen Harrington Smith won for Excellence In Innovation. First Gene Altering Leukemia Treatment. Immune cells called T-cells are taken from the patient, genetically altered to target the Leukemia cells and then rein fused back into the patient.

Could a night be better? I don't think so. Best to everyone!

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