AG: Holocaust Descendants Should Get Stolen Art Back

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CALIFORNIA NEWS

AG: Holocaust Descendants Should Get Stolen Art Back

On July 7, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced filing an amicus brief in support of the Cassirer family’s efforts to recover a painting stolen from them by Nazis during the Holocaust.

The oil painting — an 1897 work by French impressionist Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro entitled Rue SaintHonoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain — is on display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain.

In the friend-of-the-court brief, the Attorney General highlights the state’s strong interest in helping Holocaust victims and their descendants seek justice and urges the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to reverse a lower court ruling that blocked the family’s lawsuit seeking the return of the painting.

“While nothing can undo the horrors the Cassirer family and millions of Jews suffered during the Holocaust, the simple act of returning a family heirloom is the right — and legally sound — thing to do,” said Bonta. “Finders keepers might work on a playground, but it shouldn’t work in a court of law. My office respectfully urges the Ninth Circuit to apply our state’s laws and support a California family’s fight to recover a painting unjustly stolen by Nazis.”

In 1939, Lilly Cassirer Neubauer and her husband sought to flee Nazi Germany in the face of increasing persecution. To obtain exit visas, they were forced to “sell” the painting in question to a Nazi art appraiser. Although they later received monetary compensation from the German government, the Cassirer family never waived their right to seek restitution or the return of the lost painting.

Unbeknownst to the family, the painting was sold to a dealer in Beverly Hills in 1951, subsequently sold to a Missouri art dealer in 1952, re-sold to a Dutch-born Swiss Baron in 1976, and finally purchased by the Kingdom of Spain in 1992.

In 2000, a descendant of the Cassirer family who had moved to San Diego in 1980 discovered that the painting was on display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and promptly filed a petition with the Kingdom of Spain seeking its return.

“Stolen Art” page 17