MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Today we went to a museum that we had never seen before. It is the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme. They have a very good permanent collection, but we went to see the temporary exhibition entitled "À qui appartenaient ces tableaux?" or "Looking for Owners." It deals with paintings that were taken by the Nazis from France during the war. Of the approximately 100,000 works taken, about 65,000 were returned to France and about 45,000 were returned to the rightful owners or heirs. Of the remaining 15,000, all were sold at public auction except 2,000 which were entrusted to national museums. The exhibition we saw contained quite of few of these pieces including works by Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Delacroix, Ingrès, etc.

The museum is located in the former Hôtel de Saint-Aignan. In the inner courtyard, there is a statue of Alfred Dreyfus, a captain in the French Army who was wrongly convicted of treason mainly because he was a Jew. He was later exonerated largely due to the efforts of Émile Zola, the French writer.



We returned home for supper. After supper, we walked up to the Café Européen. We each had what the French call "une noisette" which is an expresso with a few drops of milk. Here they served the expresso with a small pitcher of warm milk and you make your own noisette. Very good. And as usual there was lots to see.