Fighting for the return of Nazi-looted art

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Fighting for the return of Nazi-looted art 06:31

Few who see Picasso's "The Actor "at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art know its complicated history. Paul Leffmann, a German Jewish businessman, sold it in 1938. "It used to hang in the home of my great-granduncle," said Laura Zuckerman. "He needed money to escape the Nazis."

"Did they get out?" I asked.

"They did get out. And they did survive. But not all of the family did."

Zuckerman represents Leffmann's heirs, who have fought for the painting – worth as much as $100 million – claiming it was sold under duress, meaning, "If there had not been Nazi persecution against them, they never would have sold it," she said.

Yet, two American courts disagreed.

But for other cases, the tide may be turning. An Amsterdam museum returned "Odalisque" by Henri Matisse, to the heirs of Albert and Marie Stern, saying it was sold under duress. The Sterns had tried to escape, but most of the family died in concentration camps.

And in an historic policy shift, the French Parliament recently unanimously approved a law fast-tracking the return of art to families who claim it is rightfully theirs.

David Zivie, of France's culture ministry, heads the mission for research and return of Nazi-era looted property. He says the motive of such work is "to recognize what happened, and to help families to get their works.

"We have to know the history, because they should be in the rightful owner's hands, because they are the last witnesses of what happened during the war," Zivie said. "These works are like the witnesses of the persecutions."

University of Denver professor of history Elizabeth Campbell said, "I think there finally is political will to recognize that this is part of belated justice."

She wrote about the complicity of the French and other European governments in keeping what the Nazis stole in her book, "Museum Worthy: Nazi Art Plunder in Postwar Western Europe." Campbell says there could be even more change with new guidelines agreed to by France and other countries, including the United States. "These new guidelines say that any persecuted person who sold a work of art during the Nazi era should be assumed to have done so under duress," she said. "So, it's now giving a blanket acknowledgement of coercion in any sale. It's really a dramatic change."

When the Germans retreated, allied art experts found stacks of stolen paintings everywhere, from caves to castles. More than 60,000 pieces of art were returned to France. But some 2,000 pieces ended up in limbo, held by the French government with no clear rightful owner.

Ines Rotermund-Reynard is the newly-hired provenance researcher at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Her job is to find the truth about a piece of art's Nazi-era past. "There's really a huge wish now by the French to clarify the situation," she said. "It's somehow as if you take a detective and you say, 'Look at all the cold cases which happened 80 years ago and solve it.' Each story is important. And it is worth, for each family, to do this effort."

But the case of Armand Dorville has pitted the French government against his heirs, among them Francine Kahn, who said, "Discovering those pictures is a way to know him."

Another heir, Raphaël Falk, said, "I feel anger when we have so much difficulties to retrieve them."

When Dorville died of natural causes in 1941, his art collection was sold at auction. But due to anti-semitic laws, the French authorities confiscated the proceeds, and family members – without money to escape – were later murdered at Auschwitz.

Eighty years later, a North Carolina museum returned one of Dorville's paintings to the family, and a German museum returned one by impressionist Camille Pissarro. But the French government is refusing to give back more than half a dozen paintings held in public museums, saying the auction was not done under duress.

Falk said, "It must be hard for them to give them back. So, I can understand that. But [to give them back], it's just right, you know? It's just right."

The family hired Paris lawyer Corinne Herschkovitch, who has spent 30 years recovering art for Jewish families. "All these people in charge of the cultural heritage, they were more concerned by keeping alive or preserve all these paintings and works of art than to preserve the Jews," she said.

I asked, "Do you think some of these museum directors are still ashamed of how they got these paintings?"

"I think so, I think so. They are embarrassed, that's for sure," said Herschkovitch.

The Dorville heirs believe they are fighting for their history.

I asked, "When you get them back into the family, do you feel somehow that bad history has been corrected? Erased?"

"Not erased, never erased," Falk replied. "Members of our family died because of it. In my mind, it's a way to repair the damage that was done."

Kahn said, "It is the memory of the family. Because it was totally forgotten. And it is on our shoulders to awake this story ... to tell the story."

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