Bob Sredersas

Bob Sredersas (born Bronius Šredersas; 4 December 1910 – 26 May 1982) was a Lithuanian-Australian art collector. Sredersas came to prominence after donating his private art collection of over 100 works to the City of Wollongong. The collection, which included pieces by artists such as Arthur Streeton, Grace Cossington Smith, Margaret Preston and Norman Lindsay, assisted in establishing the Wollongong Art Gallery.

After his death, details of Sredersas's involvement with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in Nazi-occupied Lithuania were publicised and have led to questions surrounding his legacy.

Life in Lithuania Sredersas was born in Simferopol, Crimea on 4 December 1910 to a middle-class family and grew up in Lithuania. After graduation from a high school in Ukmergė in 1933, he worked as a police officer for the Lithuanian Department of Security in the criminal section. In 1938, he attended training on informative news and a three-month chemical defense course. He worked on the surveillance of Soviet military movements.

It was previously believed that following the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940, Sredersas stopped his police work. At risk from both Nazi and Soviet occupiers, he fled for Germany where he worked as a labourer. Kwiet suspected that Sredersas can be identified as the SS leader from other historical research who participated in the capture and murder of an escaped Jewish prisoner in 1943. Due to the uncertainty around the incident, Kwiet was reluctant to publicise the information. According to Kwiet, Sredersas may have led a Hitler Youth group to a forest to capture the escapee after which the Jewish person was taken to a police station and murdered. Kwiet believed that this event could have led to criminal charges for accessory to murder.

Life in Australia

After the war, Sredersas was registered as a displaced person in Flensburg, Germany. In contrast to the other steelworkers, Sredersas took no interest in sport or spending time or money at the pub. Instead, he spent his time gardening at his one-bedroom fibro cottage in Cringila and fishing. He used McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art to assist with his buying and spent much of his time-off at Sydney auction houses. thumb Wollongong Art Gallery, where Sredersas's collection is now homedAs a result of his philanthropy, Sredersas was honoured with guest lectures, an exhibition space and several exhibitions in his name. The council said it was inappropriate for them to comment on the allegations. A spokesperson stated that "standard industry processes were followed for the donation of these artworks. As a result, these artworks were accepted in good faith."

In April 2022, the council engaged Sydney Jewish Museum to carry out an investigation, led by historian and Holocaust survivor Konrad Kwiet, into Sredersas's association with the Nazi party. In June 2022, following Kwiet's findings that Sredersas served as a Nazi intelligence officer from 1941 to 1945, Wollongong Art Gallery removed a plaque honouring Sredersas.

Art collection Sredersas donated 76 or 88 paintings, 31 pieces of china, 11 artefacts from New Guinea, and 11 miniatures. The bequest has been nicknamed "The Gift" by the media and was valued at $1.5 million in 1990. The collection included works by the following artists: