Almighty painter

Chapter 775 True History

"Historians have so far found it difficult to find any signed orders for the Holocaust signed by Adolf himself. Maybe even he knew that genocide was a bad thing and was unwilling to leave clear written records."

"But are you, dear Miss Irene, going to tell me with your eloquence that Adolf has nothing to do with the Holocaust?"

"It's ridiculous, isn't it?"

The scene did not seem to be Anna interviewing Brother Hao, but rather Brother Hao interrogating Anna.

"Or are you going to tell me now that your statement that all the money was acquired through commercial purchases can completely erase all the blood that has seeped out of your family's colonial history?"

"Irena's family opposed the Emperor's establishment of the Austrian East India Company, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the only European power that had almost no overseas colonial territories." Anna replied calmly.

"How noble." Brother Hao said sarcastically.

Anna shook her head slightly: "I would not describe it as a choice made for some noble moral reasons rather than for profit reasons."

"It is true that this policy was more due to the need to focus on the interior of Europe and to counter the threat of the Ottoman Empire. However, at least in this regard, my ancestors really had nothing to do with colonial politics, at least, not much -"

"——Evil is evil, regardless of whether it is big or small. This is what Mr. G said."

Chen Shenglin said with a smile.

"Would it make you feel better if you bought the land from the British or French?"

"Every penny and every gold coin your ancestors spent to buy land from other colonists, wasn't it fueling the bloody history of the colonial era?"

"Well, then I won't talk about stories from hundreds of years ago."

"That doesn't mean much. Let's talk about your great-grandfather, the saint of the art world, the last officially conferred Earl Irene, a role model who bravely confronted Adolf. Your Irene family likes to brag to others about his several confrontations with Adolf in the concentration camp, saying that he suffered all kinds of difficulties and tortures..."

“I’m very proud of it.”

Anna leaned back in her chair.

She straightened her back, with her left calf gently resting on her right calf, and her tone was as firm and firm as a densely woven curtain of thick woolen cloth, airtight and airtight.

"No matter what you say, I am deeply proud of him. I don't think it's bragging to tell others the stories of a person's true experience."

"Then why don't you tell the whole story to others? Why only tell what happened to the old earl?" Brother Hao asked.

"What do you mean by all?"

Chen Shenglin didn't say anything. He hummed a few lines of a song mysteriously, with an old-school jazz melody.

"You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store."

"..."

A middle-aged man sang such a men's song with an overly thin and gentle voice, which seemed to lack strength and was not very pleasant to listen to.

Anna still managed to tell what it was from the absurd melody.

"Sixteen Tons" is an old English song about the daily life of British coal workers in the old days.

"Miss Elena, as you can see, the moth in the shadow hopes to see what the life of the noble earl, who is so beautiful and brilliant in the candlelight, is like. So, it is my personal interest. I have collected information for many years. The 'great' history of your family surrounded by the mountains of the Alps over the past six centuries - there are many big and small events that I can retell without thinking."

Brother Hao said slowly.

"If there was a quiz in the world about Elena's family with prizes, I think I would be able to get a high score."

"Oh, I should be a very strict examiner. I hope you don't misjudge the difficulty of the test questions." Anna spoke into the receiver of the phone.

"Okay, then I'll give you some more difficult questions, and please see if I answer them correctly."

Chen Shenglin seemed to smile again.

"According to the information I have obtained——"

"The Oil Painting is not the most valuable core asset of the Elena family. It may be the most influential, but it is not the most valuable. Even the art collection may not be. It is easy for the newly rich to pretend to be rich, but old money families like yours act low-key and pay great attention to hiding their wealth."

"There's one thing that Forbes and Fortune magazines, those people who do asset rankings, always get wrong. Apart from the manor and land, the core assets of the Elena family have always been in the industrial sector. It's just that they are restricted by various trust clauses left over from history, making it difficult to quickly cash out."

"Your family owns a large amount of mineral resources on private lands around the world."

"Historically, the Elena family used these resources to invest in mining companies, and these mining companies went through large and small mergers and acquisitions in the following century. Artworks are also a rare tax deduction tool, so until now, you still hold a large amount of debt and stocks of resource and chemical giants such as AAL (Anglo American Mining Group), ThyssenKrupp, NEM, etc...." Chen Shenglin slowly revealed the secret assets of the Elena family.

bang.

A disposable teacup was placed on the table.

Anna turned her head and found that it was the local official.

Officer Dan seemed to suddenly remember something. He stood up and poured tea while asking casually, "Would you like some tea? The tea here is actually quite good. The mineral water is too cold. It's not good for your health."

Not only did Officer Dan suddenly calm down, but the white lady accompanying him in the office also did a quick mental calculation, and the smile on her face became more respectful.

She didn't know how much the so-called large amount of debt and stocks were. But the names mentioned by the middle-aged people were all super-rich and resource-based leading enterprises with employees all over the world.

If you add it all up, the amount should be no less than the price of the art collection of Elena's family.

Anna didn't show any sign of being overly surprised.

Most assets are passed down from generation to generation.

If someone really wants to investigate, it is not too difficult to find out some general inside information.

"I don't know the exact number. Your great-grandfather was the sole heir to the family estate in his generation. Including the property returned by the Austrian government, and pieced together from several historical documents I obtained and the description in his personal biography, he inherited a total of about 17 large and small mining companies, nine large textile factories, two chemical factories, and shares of two railway companies."

Chen Shenglin said: "How about listening to this——"

"On June 1927, 6, the day after the mine disaster, the fire brigade dug out 22 bodies and the rescue operation was still ongoing... According to local residents, they saw black mud pouring out of the mine like a volcanic eruption yesterday, about 14 feet high..."

Brother Hao said that he could recite in person without hesitation many of the major and minor events that the Elena family had experienced in its 600-year glorious history.

This should not be false.

He is now being secretly detained in a prison, surrounded by heavily guarded jailers and guards. There are definitely no books or materials for him to read.

Chen Shenglin continued to slowly read out the opening paragraph of a news report.

"This is a report from Liverpool's City Weekly in 1922, telling the story of a mining accident that occurred that week at a coal mining company called David Collagervis on Merseyside. The opening paragraph of the report was so vivid that I memorized it easily. Fifty-one people died in the mining accident, and guess who owns the land on which the coal mine is located?"

"Of course it was acquired by the great and glorious Elena family through normal business purchases."

"American businessman David Colagevis contracted the mining rights of the mineral from the Elena family. The price per ton of coal was 15 shillings, which was the highest bid among all the contractors who participated in the bidding."

"In the following twenty years, until the mine was ordered to be closed by the government, this coal mine had three major mining accidents and five minor mining accidents, with a total of 197 deaths. This is the official record. You know, in the th century, such small coal mines without safety protection had people dying almost every month. There would be no official safety records for ordinary deaths, right?"

Chen Shenglin asked with a smile.

"But what the hell does this have to do with the noble Earl?"

"It wasn't even any of the 17 mining companies he had a stake in, he just made an easy profit of around £7, or about £9000 million today."

"He does not own any shares in the mining company, let alone a member of the board of directors. The shady company is run by Americans, and it is the British government's job to supervise production safety. How can the Earl be blamed? It is not his fault that the mining rights were leased to the highest bidder."

"More than half of the people working in the mines are children. The average age of new miners is 13 and a half. Children under 12 can also enter the mines if they can obtain proof of literacy from the local principal. They work 30 hours a day and don't see the sun for months at a time. More than 25% of them do not live to adulthood, and more than half do not live to 30. Those who live to 30 are considered long-lived. If they live to without losing a finger, it is simply a blessing from God."

Anna listened quietly.

Listening to this extremely evil man making extremely evil accusations against her family.

"Irena family, what is Count Irena doing? Count Irena is busy loving art! You are crying over the fake blood on the canvas and grieving over the death of Socrates, but you are too lazy to even look at the real blood that has flowed like a river in the world."

"Has Count Elena ever been to his mines once in his life? Has he ever held those children in his arms? Has he ever really cared about all this for even a second?"

"Socrates on the canvas is a real person, and his pain is real pain. The child laborers serving your family are not real people, they are just cattle and sheep, so their pain is just as insignificant as the pain of cattle and sheep. Their lives are not as valuable as the cats and dogs in your family."

The more Chen Shenglin spoke, the happier he became.

Maybe Mr. G is right.

He is a coward who is afraid to face his fate. He should go to hell, but how good can Elena's family be?

Even if he really was soaking in the sulfur springs of hell, he should have taken the noble Austrian Count with him.

"The old count cursed Adolf twice and he became a saint. His two days in the concentration camp were like a badge of honor, and your family has been singing about it for decades. How long did he stay in the concentration camp in total? Even in the concentration camp, the German side allowed him to bring a male servant and two female servants to take care of his daily life."

"My God, Adolf may be a butcher, but he treats Count Elena much more kindly than Count Elena treats the workers in his factory. Guess what, those workers who work in the dark, who get deducted money for not completing the required work, for whistling, for having a fever, for having a finger torn off by a machine and being unable to work for two days, and who get paid not even real money but vouchers that can only be used in specific mine stores, know about this situation-"

"How many of them will kneel down, kiss the Earl's boots, and beg him to say--"

Brother Hao took a deep breath and coughed twice.

"Please, Count, please, let me go to the concentration camp. I will do anything to go to the concentration camp instead of you."

Chen Shenglin said.

"Madam, when Mr. G said it was noble, I believed him. When you said it was noble, I also wanted to laugh. Just like when you told the story of Ms. K with great emotion at the European Art Conference, I also wanted to laugh."

“Why, when something happens to a member of the Elena family, you suddenly feel the pain.”

"She was born with the best educational resources, the best social resources, and she spent her family's money and enjoyed the life provided by her family. But she didn't want to bear the responsibilities given to her by her family, so she finally wanted to fight back? Why didn't she think about it when she was dancing and holding banquets?"

"My family didn't want her to be a painter, so they arrested her and locked her up in the cellar. Do you call this fate's trick? Or do you want to sing that a beautiful soul cannot be bound by fate and she will find freedom on her own?"

"Bullshit." Brother Hao scolded.

"The piece of clothing worn by the daughter of the noble Austrian Countess Elena family was paid for by the child laborers locked in the cellar with their entire lives. Where is their freedom?"

(End of this chapter)