Prompted by new California and U.S. legal guidelines, two new lawsuits demand return of Nazi-looted artwork

For the primary time since California and Congress handed a pair of legal guidelines bolstering U.S.-based claims to Nazi-looted paintings across the international stage, two lawsuits have been filed in California demanding distinguished museums relinquish items seized throughout World War II.

In one case, filed in federal courtroom in Los Angeles on Monday, the daughters of Auschwitz survivor Dina Gottliebova Babbitt sued the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland for the return of watercolors Babbitt was compelled to color of fellow prisoners for the Nazi doctor and war criminal Josef Mengele.

In the opposite, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and Daniel Gryczman, the federation’s board chair, sued the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena for the return of the diptych “Adam and Eve,” a pair of sixteenth century masterpieces by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The lawsuits revive authorized battles waged unsuccessfully for the watercolors and the diptych for years, on the premise that their claims are newly viable below the brand new legal guidelines — one handed by California lawmakers in 2024 and the opposite signed into regulation by President Trump earlier this year.

Both legal guidelines had been impressed partly by another legal battle over looted art between a California household and a distinguished museum, which continues to be ongoing.

Lilly Cassirer Neubauer escaped Germany on the daybreak of World War II by relinquishing to a Nazi artwork dealer the beautiful impressionist masterpiece “Rue Saint-Honoré within the Afternoon. Effect of Rain,” by Camille Pissarro. The portray is now value hundreds of thousands. Her grandson Claude Cassirer, who moved to California, and great-grandson David Cassirer have been combating for the portray’s return from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Madrid for the final twenty years.

Amid that battle, California lawmakers rewrote state regulation to clarify that in conditions the place it and one other jurisdiction’s regulation on looted paintings are in confrontation, California regulation applies and requires the return of the artwork to its unique homeowners whatever the passage of time. In an uncommon second of bipartisanship, Congress adopted up by passing its personal measure — the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2025 — to additional bolster such household claims.

The two new lawsuits — neither of which offer a valuation for the paintings in query — had been filed simply forward of a deadline below the California regulation for claims to paintings with long-known places.

David Cassirer stated his father can be “extraordinarily proud” to know a California regulation handed partly in response to his household’s combat has additionally given different households one other likelihood “to vindicate their ancestors’ creative legacies.”

Auschwitz watercolors

Michele Babbitt Kane, of Ben Lomond, Calif., and Karin Wendy Babbitt, of Las Vegas, say of their lawsuit that Mengele demanded their mom produce the seven watercolors in query — every depicting a Roma prisoner later murdered — to assist his “pseudo-scientific” and racist work learning the Roma individuals. Known because the “Angel of Death,” Mengele performed grotesque medical experiments on Auschwitz prisoners.

They stated their mom obliged “with deep sympathy for her topics,” on the situation Mengele “spare her and her mom from the gasoline chambers.”

After liberation, the lawsuit says, their mom moved to California and labored for almost 20 years as an animation assistant for Hollywood studios equivalent to MGM and Warner Bros., the place she contributed to acquainted cartoon characters equivalent to Wile E. Coyote, Tweety, Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales.

They say theirs is strictly the kind of case California’s new regulation was enacted to permit — involving “a California household in search of the return of watercolors created by their Jewish mom below Nazi coercion at Auschwitz and withheld by a Polish state museum for many years regardless of the Museum’s personal repeated acknowledgments of the household’s rights.”

Paweł Sawicki, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz Memorial, stated in an announcement to The Times that the Babbitt work “should stay within the Memorial as a part of the documentation of the crimes of Mengele,” and that many within the Roma group agree.

“We totally perceive the emotional strategy of Dina Gottliebova’s household to the works she made on the orders of Josef Mengele in circumstances that actually affected her life, however in finishing up our statutory duty, we specific the deep conviction that the watercolors ought to stay on the Memorial,” Sawicki stated. “The portraits of Roma victims are the few remaining fragments of the documentation made by Mengele as a part of his prison experiments. Therefore, they need to be handled as distinctive paperwork associated to the historical past of Auschwitz.”

‘Adam and Eve’ diptych

According to the Jewish Federation’s lawsuit, the “Adam and Eve” work had been a part of an enormous assortment seized from distinguished Dutch Jewish artwork seller Jacques Goudstikker by Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command. The assortment was later recovered by Allied forces and given to the Dutch authorities, with the diptych being bought to the Norton Simon in 1971.

The lawsuit says Marei von Saher, Goudstikker’s surviving inheritor, has lengthy sought the return of the Goudstikker assortment, and years in the past was profitable in forcing the Dutch authorities to return 200 items nonetheless in its possession. She first demanded the “Adam and Eve” work from the Norton Simon in 2000, with out success.

The new lawsuit says Von Saher on Monday signed her claimed rights to the work over to Gryczman and the Jewish Federation, which stated in an announcement that they’ll use a majority of any proceeds from the return of the work to “take care of Los Angeles-area Holocaust survivors residing in poverty.”

Von Saher’s daughter, Charlène von Saher, stated in an interview that her household gave the portray rights to the Jewish Federation due to that shared mission. She stated she needs California and Congress had acted sooner however hopes a win now will assist different Jewish households reclaim what’s rightfully theirs sooner or later.

“My grandfather misplaced his life fleeing the Nazi invasion, and plenty of of his members of the family had been despatched to Auschwitz and didn’t survive,” she stated. “Victory can be justice, and a chunk of the puzzle to restoring my grandfather’s legacy and his assortment.”

The Norton Simon Art Foundation stated in an announcement to The Times that it was reviewing the brand new lawsuit, however that varied courts, together with the U.S. Supreme Court, have over a long time of litigation confirmed that the muse “has correct title” to the diptych work, and the muse “will proceed to make these vital artworks accessible to the general public.”

The Pissarro

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and the Kingdom of Spain, which owns it, have fought the Cassirer household’s claims to the Pissarro portray since Claude Cassirer, now deceased, first sued for its return in 2005. Spain has argued the portray was legally obtained by the gathering previous to its 1993 sale to the nation by Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, a prolific artwork collector whose rich industrialist household helped finance Adolf Hitler’s rise.

The matter has repeatedly wound its manner by way of the U.S. courts, together with to the Supreme Court, which remanded the case to the decrease courts for extra overview in mild of California’s new regulation. A listening to is ready for subsequent month.

The museum has contended California’s new regulation is unconstitutional, which California is contesting. David Cassirer has argued the regulation clearly requires the museum to return the portray — and has pledged to assist different looting victims with any proceeds.

He stated each California and Congress “acted decisively to ensure that stolen artwork victims, and victims of political persecution particularly, can have a good shot to get well household legacies the Nazis ruthlessly tried to destroy,” and that “the momentum in any respect ranges of presidency in favor of restitution could be very encouraging.”