An exhibition in Holt in Norfolk, England, includes a portrait of a Dutch girl with a large slash through her left cheek and neck—evidence of a border guard’s bayonet in Nazi-annexed Austria.
The guard stabbed the packing case containing the painting to make sure that no people were hiding inside, the BBC reported. (The show, “German Expressionists and The Third Reich,” contains works that the Nazis deemed “degenerate.”)
“It’s extraordinarily unusual in the sense that many people would have thought it’s a damaged painting and either disposed of the painting because it’s not the greatest work of art ever, but also it might have been something that made them unhappy,” James Glennie, who co-curated the show, told the BBC.
“They don’t celebrate it, but being thinking people they decided the best thing to do was to keep it so that it showed the aggression of the Anschluss,” he said.