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(P1683)
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"A widow since 1932, Carlota Landsberg and her daughter, Edith, stayed in Berlin and endured the horrors of Kristallnacht, Nov. 9-10, 1938, when rampaging Nazis and their sympathizers burned synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses and homes in Germany and Austria. "Immediately after that, people were telling them they better get out, for their own safety," added Bennigson, who often heard the story of the family's escape from Hitler's rapidly expanding empire. Before Landsberg and her daughter fled, she sent the Picasso -- purchased in 1926 or '27 -- for safekeeping to a noted French art dealer in Paris, Justin K. Thannhauser, according to court documents and historical records. With the work vouchsafed in a city that the Nazis had not yet invaded, Landsberg and her daughter began an often frightening journey around the continent. "They fled across Europe, to Switzerland, France, Spain and other places, and I was told there were many close calls," Bennigson said. "At one point, they were in unoccupied France, and my mother [Landsberg's daughter, Edith] was detained on suspicion of being a German national. She had left her curtain open during a curfew, and the authorities suspected that she might be an agent, and that her leaving the curtain open might have been a kind of signal to the enemy." (language: en)
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