The history of art heists

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.

It's 30 years since Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream, was stolen from the national gallery in Oslo, Norway. We hear from the man who helped to recover it.

Our expert guest is historian and author, Susan Ronald, who explores the history of art heists in the 20th century.

Plus, a first hand account from Kampala terror attacks in 2010 and the mystery of St Teresa of Avila's severed hand.

Finally, we hear about the last World War II soldier to surrender. Hiroo Onoda was an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who spent nearly 30 years in the Philippine jungle, believing World War Two was still going on.

Contributors: Kuddzu Isaac - DJ and Kampala terror attack survivor Charley Hill - Scotland Yard art detective and private investigator Susan Ronald - historian and author Sister Jenifer - the Mother Superior of the Church of Our Lady of Mercy, Ronda Hiroo Onoda - Japanese WWII soldier Christos and Ioanna Kotsikas - residents of Thessaly, Greece

(Photo: The Scream. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson
0:09.8	the past brought to life by those who were there. This week the man who solved one of the
0:15.2	most notorious art thefts of all time. There was a trapdoor down going down and he said
0:20.8	it's down there you want to go get it I said no I don't want to go get it you go get it I'm it's down there, you want to go get it. I said, no, I don't want to go get it.
0:23.7	I'm not walking down there and, you know, coming out next Christmas.
0:27.1	Also, how rural lives in Greece have been changed by the shifting fortunes of Lake Kla, the story of St. Teresa and the relics she left behind,
0:36.4	relics which remain among the most important to the Catholic Church. Plus the still astonishing story of
0:42.0	Hiru Onoda, the Japanese Second World War soldier who only stopped
0:46.8	fighting in 1974.
0:49.1	Within a few weeks of his return, Onodar would receive a hundred proposals of marriage from awestruck women.
0:54.8	To a nation still coming to terms with the shame of defeat, here was a man who had defiantly
0:59.6	proclaimed no surrender.
1:01.6	That's coming up later in the podcast.
1:04.0	First though, we're heading to the Ugandan capital Kampala,
1:08.0	which fell victim to a devastating terror attack in 2010.
1:13.7	For much of the late 20th and early 21st century, the Horn of Africa had been haunted by the threat
1:19.0	of destabilization emanating from Somalia. Foreign interventions had failed to end the civil war between the internationally recognized government
1:28.0	and rebel groups including al-Shabaab.
1:31.0	And it was in response to those foreign interventions that al-Shabab eventually struck outside
1:36.1	Somalia's borders. George Craver has been hearing about the 2010 Kampala Attack.
1:45.0	The numbers were huge.
1:47.2	Music was blaring out loud, people were happy.
	...

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