To the Editors:

The recent removal of frescoes by the Central European artist Bruno Schulz from the city of Drohobych, Ukraine, to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum raises a number of troubling questions. Much of the discussion has centered, so far, on the question of Schulz's identity (Jewish and Polish), and on questions of international law and museum practices. As scholars of the history, art, and literature of Central Europe, we would like to raise a different concern.

The region in which Bruno Schulz lived, worked, and died has for centuries been perceived, by its more developed and more powerful neighbors, as incapable of tending to its artistic, human, or environmental capital. It has long been the lot of the peoples and countries of Central Europe to be assumed backward; too often, outsiders have been determined to impose their own solutions to deficiencies real and imagined.

The removal of a series of priceless frescoes from a private apartment by trained museum professionals is but a small affront after a century of horrors. Like many others who have come to Central Europe, Yad Vashem was acting, we trust, with the best of intentions. Nevertheless, this act represents an unconscionable statement of moral and cultural superiority; indeed, a Yad Vashem spokesperson is quoted (The New York Times, June 20), as asserting a "moral right" to the fragments of Jewish life scattered around Central Europe.

Such a statement is an insult to the people of Central Europe, and to all those who care about the region, and who believe that Ukraine and its neighbors are worthy of giving Bruno Schulz the honor and respect he deserves. The work of Bruno Schulz, after all, reminds us that this region was long one of unique cultural richness and diversity; an effort by any single group to monopolize his memory erases this history of pluralism.

The expropriation of Schulz's art is doubly damaging to the local Jewish population which has remained in Drohobych, and seen both its community and material heritage destroyed and expatriated over the last sixty years. The removal of the murals appears to anticipate that community's extinction, and implies that in this part of the world, religious and ethnic pluralism cannot be reconstituted.

We urge Yad Vashem to return the frescoes to their home in Drohobych. Further, we suggest that the proper role of wealthier artistic and philanthropic institutions is to nurture the respect for artistic heritage they believe Central Europe lacks. We suggest that Yad Vashem join with other institutions to sponsor a Bruno Schulz Museum in Drohobych, a museum to celebrate the many cultural traditions that nurtured Bruno Schulz's work, in the city he loved so much.

Padraic Kenney, University of Colorado, Boulder; István Deák, Columbia University; Gale Stokes, Rice University; John Connelly, University of California, Berkeley; Nicholas Sawicki, University of Pennsylvania; Victor Hugo Lane, Polytechnic University; Brian Porter, University of Michigan; Laurie Koloski, College of William and Mary; Owen V. Johnson, Indiana University, Bloomington; Ronald E. Coons, University of Connecticut; David M. Luebke, University of Oregon; Patrice M. Dabrowski, Harvard University; Mark Pittaway, The Open University, UK; M.B.B. Biskupski, St. John Fisher College; Douglas Selvage, Independent Scholar; Alexander Maxwell, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Anita Shelton, Eastern Illinois University; Rebekah Klein-Pejsova, Columbia University; Sylvia M. Meloche, University of Michigan; Katherine Lebow, Columbia University; Marysia Ostafin, University of Michigan; Samuel Robert Goldberger, Capital Community College, Hartford, Connecticut; Mark Baker, Harvard University; Norman Naimark, Stanford University