- A US court has ruled that paintings looted by the Nazis in Spain do not need to be returned to their original owners’ families.
- The decision shocked not only his family but also Spain’s Jewish community.
- A lawyer for one group said it was “unbelievable” that Spain would not return the paintings.
In a shocking legal ruling earlier this month, a California court ruled that Spain has the right to keep a priceless painting looted by the Nazis, rather than returning it to the family of the Jewish woman who stole it. was lowered.
The decision shocked his family and members of the Jewish community. Spain’s main Jewish organizations have long supported the family’s legal battle to take the painting from the Spanish Museum, which owns it.
Bernardo Cremades, a lawyer representing the Federation of Spanish Jewish Communities (FCJE), told Business Insider: “It is completely unbelievable that Spain would refuse to honor its international commitments.”
Meanwhile, the Spanish Federation of Young Jews (FEJJE) told BI that the Spanish government’s decision to stick with the painting “perpetuates the cycle of dehumanization.”
The fight to recover precious works of art
In 1939, Jewish collector Lily Neubauer was forced to sell Impressionist Camille Pissarro’s “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. The Effects of the Rain” to the Nazis as she tried to flee Germany.
After the war, Neubauer believed his company had lost and demanded compensation from Germany, commensurate with its value at the time.
According to The Guardian, the painting is now thought to be worth around $30 million.
The painting bounced around auction houses and collections for years until it was purchased by Spanish aristocrat Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza in 1976.
His collection was later declared the property of a state-supported non-profit foundation and placed on display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid.
Neubauer’s California-based descendants, the Cassirer family, discovered the painting in their collection in 2000 and have been fighting for its return ever since.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, lawyers for Neubauer’s descendants argue that Spain is obligated to return the painting under several international agreements regarding spoils of war.
But on January 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the painting could remain in Spanish hands.
85 years of battle
“We have always stood by the family,” Clemades said. Mr. Clemades was hired by the FCJE in 2017 to support Mr. Cassirer and others’ claims in court.
Clemades said the FCJE does not want any quarrel with the Spanish government, but “we just want to tell the court that this painting should be returned to its rightful owner.”
However, a FEJJE spokesperson went further, calling the Spanish state’s position “unacceptable.”
The spokesperson acknowledged the legal complexities of the case, but said the return of property looted during the Holocaust was an act of “historical and moral justice” and should not be ignored.
inconsistent decisions
Clemades said the Spanish government’s position on the painting was “in a sense incoherent”, as it had recently taken steps to return art looted by the regime of dictator Francisco Franco, who ruled the country from 1939 to 1975. He said that.
Works such as “Portrait of a Young Knight”, painted in 1623 by Dutch portrait painter Cornelis van der Voort, will be painted in 2022 by the persecuted Basque politician Ramon de la Sota y Aburto. It has been returned to its descendants, El Debate reported.
Clemades suggested that making this kind of reparations in Spain would get more votes than doing the same for Holocaust victims.
“It was probably politically motivated,” he said.
The museum welcomed the US court’s decision but declined to comment on the views of Spain’s Jewish community.
Spain’s Culture Secretary Ernesto Urtasun said in a statement shared with BI that the U.S. court’s decision “must be respected.”
He said Spain “could have complied” with international reparations agreements, but added: “The verdict has been handed down, so I won’t go into speculation about what we will do.”
‘Tip of the iceberg’
As argued by the Ninth Circuit, the case did not address the issue of Spain’s obligations under international reparation agreements, but was instead limited to the question of what to do with stolen property and which country’s laws should be followed.
No one disputes that the painting was stolen. California law does not give owners rights to stolen property. But in Spain, if you buy stolen goods in good faith, you have a stronger claim.
The question was whether to apply Spanish law or California law, and the court ruled that Spain should prevail.
Still, Consuelo Callahan, one of the three judges, said that while the ruling may be legally correct, it goes against her “moral compass.” She called on the Spanish government to voluntarily surrender the painting.
This decades-long case is one of many that have passed through courts internationally. A FEJJE spokesperson said this was the “tip of the iceberg” of people stripped of their land “during one of the darkest events in modern Jewish history.”