Some words about the Czech property of Ivan Šimon, the son of T.F. Šimon

Ivan Šimon (* 1914), now a retired professor in physics in Boston, USA, son of the artist Tavik Frantisek Šimon and his wife Vilma Kacikova left his country Czechoslovakia in 1947. He went with his wife Jarmilla and children Michal and Alena to the USA. In 1948 the communists took over the government and nationalized his property. Nowadays his paintings, drawings and graphic art by his father T.F. Šimon is in the National an Municipal Museum in Prague. You can see an example of the registration of his property. All his property is recorded in this way. After the Velvet Revolution by Vaclav Havel, Ivan had the chance to get his art collection back. He did not fill in forms and did not beg to get it back, so the state kept it until now. Of course the curators of the museums could have the character to give him everything back anyhow, but they didn't. At the moment (2008) the art collection has a value of over 100.000 Euro, in future this will be some millions.  Ivan Šimon also was the owner of at least 1/3 of the house of his father and mother in Bubenec, Prague. Nowadays here is the Algerian consulate. The building is worth at least a million Euro and the house market is booming in Prague. But of course the emotional value is invaluable, and does hurt, too. We can conclude: in 1948 the government of Czechoslovakia stole the art collection and real estate of Ivan Šimon, the son of the artist T.F. Šimon. So the state was a thief. The Czech Republik, the legal successor of Czechoslovakia, decided to give back property, if stolen in or after1948, if you formally asked  it back. If you didn't ask it, you got nothing. Of course this is a strange attitude, why do you have to ask a thief to get your stolen property back. If a thief has conscientious scruple and wishes to return stolen property to the legal owners, the thief has to do his utmost to do so. In Holland the government did for half a century her utmost not to give back to the heirs the property of Jews who were murdered by the Germans during the second world-war. After the war she simply annexed their property. The public opinion was growing against this shameless attitude and finally the Dutch government hired several researchers to hunt down the heirs of the property. Of course it should be wiser and honourable if the Czech Republic also does research to hunt for the legal owners to give them their property back. Now she keeps everything that the proper owners has not asked to get back. Honesty is the best policy!!!

Below you find photos from 2 documents in the Archives of the National Museum in Prague (Kinsky Palace). The documents are 2 of several that prove that some works of art originally belonged to Ivan Šimon. Czech: z propadlého majetku dr Ivan Šimona = from the lapsed property of Dr Ivan Šimon There should be a universal, fundamental right to have property. A state must protect proprietary right. It is the basis of economy and the corner-stone of society.