Spain wants Himmler’s gifts back
have been competing for influence in the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
There are also concerns that hundreds of Uzbek nationals fighting for Isis in Syria and Iraq could launch a bid for power in their homeland. In the 1990s Uzbekistan’s security forces defeated an armed insurrection by Islamist gunmen, with the survivors fleeing to Afghanistan.
Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, the younger of Karimov’s two daughters, said her father was in intensive care. ‘‘It is too early to make any predictions about his future health.’’
Security forces formed a threekilometre cordon around the hospital in Tashkent, the capital.
Muhammad Salih, an opposition politician based in Turkey, said Karimov had suffered a stroke after drinking vodka at a banquet in honour of Uzbekistan’s Olympic medal winners at the weekend.
Karimov’s eldest daughter, Gulnara Karimova, was once touted as a successor to her ailing father, but the 44-year-old socialite and aspiring pop singer has not been seen in public since she was charged with corruption by Uzbek prosecutors in 2014.
Gulnara Karimova, who was previously Uzbekistan’s envoy to the United Nations, fell out with her mother and younger sister after accusing them of plotting against her father. American and Swiss prosecutors have also accused her of involvement in a multi-million-dollar moneylaundering ring.
In 2005 the US State Department described her as the ‘‘single most hated person in the country’’. When Heinrich Himmler visited Spain in 1940 on a mission to prove his theories about the Aryan race he was presented with a gift of precious artefacts from an ancient Visigoth cemetery.
The Reichsfurher-SS returned to Germany with six gold cups and necklaces from the 400 relics that had been identified by archaeologists. Now Spain is trying to reclaim the pieces which were given to museums in Germany and Austria.
The National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid wants to demonstrate that the gift was ‘‘temporary’’ and that the items should be returned to Spain. The collection was not well catalogued, so it is expected that Spain will struggle to prove that the relics belong to Madrid.
The Visigoths were nomadic Germanic people who invaded the Holy Roman Empire between the 3rd and 5th centuries and ruled much of Spain until they were ousted by the Moors in 711.
The artefacts were dug out of graves in a Visigoth cemetery in Castiltierra, a village in Segovia province, north of Madrid. Julio Martinez Santa-Olalla, an archaeologist who was a member of the Falange, a political party that supported General Franco’s National Catholicism, shared Himmler’s interest in the Visigoth period.
Francisco Gracia, professor of prehistory at the University of Barcelona, said that Santa-Olalla and Himmler wanted to use the artefacts to show that the migration of the Visigoths demonstrated racial links between Spain and Germany.
‘‘Castiltierra was an essential support in the Nazi ideology,’’ he said.
The Spanish archaeologist, who spoke German, accompanied Himmler on his visit to Spain in which the leader of the SS also went to the monastery at Montserrat near Barcelona in search of the Holy Grail.
The party had been due to travel to Castiltierra and before the visit Santa-Olalla gave orders for ‘‘tall, blond workers’’ to be found to show the area had links to the Aryan past of the region when it was inhabited by Visigoths, but the visit was cancelled.
Sergio Vidal, head of medieval antiquities at the National Archaeological Museum, said that Castiltierra was one of the most important examples in Spain of the Visigoth period.
‘‘They took dozens of pieces and sent them to Germany and they never returned.
‘‘Now we are trying to find proof to the show the material went to Germany on a temporary basis,’’ he said.
A small part of the collection was returned to Spain in 1973.