Rose Valland

Rose Valland was an art historian. She began working at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris as an unpaid volunteer, but soon was promoted. During the Nazi occupation the Jeu de Paume Museum was converted it into the headquarters of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) and served as storage place for paintings and other works of art stolen from private French collectors and dealers, many of whom were Jews. Jacques Jaujard, Director of the French National Museums, instructed Valland to remain at her post in the museum to spy on the Nazi theft operation. Valland did so by keeping meticulous notes on the destinations of train car shipments filled with looted art that eventually lead to the discovery of multiple repositories of looted art, most prominently at Neuschwanstein Castle in the Bavarian Alps. On 2 November 1943, she witnessed the transfer of the Schloss collection to the Jeu de Paume and its subsequent shipment to the Führerbau in Munich.

After the war she worked as a representative for the Commission de Récupération Artistique (the French Commission on Art Recovery). In 1954, she was named Chair of the Chef du Service de protection des oeuvres d’art (Commission for the Protection of Works of Art).