Richard Barancik, the final dwelling member of a particular Allied unit whose mission to safeguard the inventive patrimony of Europe amid the destruction and plunder of World Warfare II was dramatized within the Hollywood movie “The Monuments Males,” died July 14 at a hospital in Chicago. He was 98.
His daughter Jill Barancik confirmed his demise however didn’t cite a trigger.
For a lot of his life, Mr. Barancik was referred to as an architect, wanted for the fashionable houses, high-rise house buildings and workplace complexes that he and his agency designed in his dwelling metropolis of Chicago and throughout the nation.
However in his closing years, he got here to renown for his position in a chapter of World Warfare II that had lengthy gone unnoted. For 3 months after the top of the warfare, Mr. Barancik, then a 21-year-old personal top quality within the U.S. Military, assisted within the operations of a unit referred to as the Monuments, Wonderful Arts, and Archives part.
The MFAA — whose members had been identified colloquially as “monuments males,” though after fight ended they got here to incorporate girls — had been established in 1943 to assist the Allies reduce the destruction of art work and cultural websites in Europe in the midst of the warfare. Museum curators and administrators, artists and designers, students and librarians volunteered for service and obtained navy ranks.
“They walked away from established careers to turn into this new sort of soldier — one charged with saving fairly than destroying,” stated Robert M. Edsel, the writer of a number of books on their story and a collaborator on “The Monuments Males,” the 2014 movie directed by and starring George Clooney.
Monuments officers at first helped Allied commanders information bombers away from websites of cultural significance. When such locations sustained unintended injury, the officers helped lead preliminary repairs. Their presence, in response to Edsel, served as a counterbalance to Nazi propaganda concerning the supposed depravity of the Allies, serving to to win over “hearts and minds.”
Because the warfare progressed and was finally received, the unit’s mission developed, as its members grew to become detectives investigating what Edsel described because the “best theft in historical past.”
Because the Nazis superior throughout Europe, that they had stolen huge portions of art work belonging to museums and different establishments in conquered territories and to Jews persecuted and in lots of instances murdered within the Holocaust.
Nonetheless extra artistic endeavors had been hidden in monasteries, castles, caves and salt mines to guard them from Nazi theft or wartime bombs. These treasures included work, drawings, tapestries, sculptures, uncommon books, church manuscripts, works of stained glass, cash and different artifacts accrued over centuries — even prized butterfly collections.
Within the aftermath of the warfare, the monuments officers grew to become guardians of these works and undertook the primary steps towards their restitution. The officers established central assortment and distribution factors. Mr. Barancik, an artwork lover, volunteered for service and was assigned to work as a driver and guard in Austria.
“The Individuals cared concerning the cultural traditions of Europe,” he informed the Los Angeles Instances in 2015. “We did the whole lot we might to salvage what the Nazis had executed. It’s one of the best we might do.”
In all, roughly 350 women and men from 14 nations served with the MFAA, in response to Edsel, the founder and chairman of the board of the Monuments Males and Girls Basis. Of them, Mr. Barancik was the final surviving.
The discharge of Clooney’s film helped convey their story to common consideration, and in 2015, with Mr. Barancik and several other of his former colleagues in attendance, the group obtained the Congressional Gold Medal.
Richard Morton Barancik was born in Chicago on Oct. 19, 1924. His father was a doctor, and his mom, a homemaker, was a classically skilled pianist who supplied musical accompaniment for ballet lessons.
Mr. Barancik was at all times drawn to artwork, his daughter stated. Throughout highschool he developed an curiosity in cartooning, a interest he continued till the ultimate days of his life.
In 1942, after graduating from highschool, he joined the Military Enlisted Reserve Corps, learning engineering on the College of Nebraska earlier than he was deployed in 1944 to England.
On Christmas Eve of that 12 months, he was crusing throughout the English Channel, set to hitch the Battle of the Bulge, when the Germans torpedoed one other Allied ship making the identical journey, killing lots of of U.S. servicemen — together with many from Mr. Barancik’s division — in one of many worst naval disasters in U.S. historical past.
Within the aftermath of the assault, Mr. Barancik was dispatched to France and finally to Austria, the place he discovered of the MFAA and volunteered for service.
“After I arrived in Salzburg,” he stated, “I used to be not solely overwhelmed by the great thing about the city however the high quality of the lads within the Wonderful Arts Part. They had been sometimes older and really nicely educated.”
Mr. Barancik later studied structure on the College of Cambridge in England and on the École des Beaux-Arts at Fontainebleau in France. After returning to america, he studied on the College of Illinois, receiving a Bachelor of Science diploma in 1947 and a second bachelor’s diploma, in structure, the next 12 months.
He was for many years a principal within the Chicago-based agency of Barancik, Conte and Associates.
Mr. Barancik’s marriage to Rema Stone led to divorce. His second spouse, the previous Suzanne Hammerman, died in 1995 after 31 years of marriage. His third spouse, Claire Holland Barancik, died in 2021 after twenty years of marriage.
Survivors embrace three youngsters from his first marriage, Robert Barancik of St. Petersburg, Fla., Michael Barancik of Bainbridge Island, Wash., and Cathy B. Graham of New York; two youngsters from his second marriage, Jill Barancik of Chicago and Ellie Barancik of Los Angeles; 4 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Practically 80 years after the top of World Warfare II, the return of Nazi-plundered art work goes on, each to museums and to the heirs of Jewish collectors who had been robbed of their treasures. Some works won’t ever be returned, having been burned or damaged or in any other case destroyed within the warfare.
In an interview, Jill Barancik stated that her father was “reluctant to be held up as a hero” as a result of he knew that many monuments officers had been “far older and extra achieved.”
A number of years in the past, an Italian interviewer requested Mr. Barancik the way it felt to be the final survivor of their group. “I’m neither unhappy nor proud,” he replied. “I merely really feel honored to have served my nation.”
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