Life-saving paintings may return to Auschwitz survivor’s life

Judy Odierna

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2002 | 9:55 a.m.

When Dina Babbitt was 20 she met Nazi exterminator Dr. Josef Mengele, who kept her alive at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp to paint portraits of Gypsies for him.

The paintings saved Babbitt's life, and the 79-year-old Holocaust survivor has spent the last three decades trying to get them back from the Polish government.

Babbitt believes she may soon be able to hold the portraits again, thanks to Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

"Many people have come forward to try to help me but it all fizzled out," Babbitt said. "Then came (Berkley). I still can't believe the work she has put in."

Berkley authored legislation in Congress to instruct the State Department to negotiate with the Polish government to return the paintings to Babbitt. The bill was signed by President Bush in September, and Berkley recently sent letters to Bush and the Polish ambassador to the United States in hopes of expediting the process.

Berkley became involved in 1998 when Babbitt's daughter, Las Vegas resident Michele Babbitt-Kane, called Berkley's office hoping she could help her get a visa to join her mother in Poland as she tried again to get the paintings back.

"For her not to have the artwork is a disgrace," Berkley said Tuesday at a news conference at the offices of the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas.

Babbitt and her mother were taken to Auschwitz, Poland, in 1943. A fellow prisoner knew Babbitt was an artist and he wanted her to paint a mural of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for the children's barracks.

"I saw the movie seven times illegally," Babbitt said. "I had put my Jewish star into my pocket and went into the movie, so I knew the characters well."

Ironically, Babbitt went on to to marry one of the animators of the film.

The mural was discovered by the infamous Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death," who performed experiments on human twins and was known as "the selector" because he decided which Jews would live or die as they arrived in Auschwitz.

"Mengele wanted me to paint portraits of Gypsies," Babbitt said. "He was sort of an anthropologist and he wanted the exact skin tones and believed portraits were better than photographs. That is why we were kept alive."

Babbitt painted nine pictures. She said she drew slowly because once the portrait was finished, Mengele would kill the subject. Babbitt and her mother were two of 22 Czechoslovakians who walked out of the camp alive in 1945.

In 1973, the Polish government contacted Babbitt and wanted her to identify artwork found in storage at the death camp. She said she cried upon seeing the art that saved her life and was devastated when she was told she couldn't have them.

"The Polish government had the audacity to say if it was so important to her she should have taken them with her when she left," Berkley said. "How ridiculous is that?"

Babbitt, who lives in Santa Cruz, Calif., has tried diligently to retrieve the works of art that now hang in a building off the normal museum tour in the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum. Babbitt and her family believe the ones that are on display are not originals but replicas of her art.

"The original paper was yellow, these were on white paper," said Babbitt's son-in-law Jon Kane. "They said they were restored but you can't restore water colors."

Babbitt is optimistic that Berkley's efforts will pay off, and she will own her originals again one day.

"No matter what happens I am so grateful to everyone" she said. "Hopefully one of these days I will hold them in my hands again."