Jewish heirs sue Norton Simon, Auschwitz museums over Nazi-looted art

Norton Simon cites 2018 court ruling; Auschwitz museum calls watercolors memorial evidence

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles filed its suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, joined by its board chair Daniel Gryczman, seeking the return of “Adam and Eve,” two life-size oil-on-panel paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder created in 1530. The paintings were originally owned by the Stroganoff family and were sold at an illicit auction in Berlin in 1931 by the Soviet Union, where they were purchased by the Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, according to the museum’s account.

Goudstikker’s collection was seized by Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command, after the Nazi rise to power, and the paintings changed hands several times before being sold in the 1960s to the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art — the institution later renamed the Norton Simon Museum after its benefactor — which restored and preserved the pieces. They have been on view at the museum for nearly 50 years, according to the museum.

Marei von Saher, the sole heir of Goudstikker, has signed over her rights to the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles. In a statement, von Saher said: “This effort represents a meaningful step toward justice for Holocaust survivors and victims of Nazi-era atrocities.”

Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, said the organization plans to use most of the net proceeds from any recovered artwork to provide services to the approximately 2,500 Holocaust survivors living in the Los Angeles area.

The Norton Simon Museum, in a statement, pointed to the 2018 federal court ruling that unanimously determined it holds proper title to the Cranach paintings, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up in May 2019. “For nearly 50 years, they have been on view at the Norton Simon Museum and will continue to be accessible to the public for years to come,” the museum said. Spokespersons for the museum said it legally holds title to the works and intends to continue displaying them.

The second lawsuit, filed the same day in federal court in Los Angeles by the daughters of Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, seeks the return of watercolors Babbitt was forced to paint at Auschwitz depicting fellow prisoners, now held by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland. Babbitt, a Holocaust survivor who later became a California-based animator, was held in Auschwitz, where Josef Mengele — the Nazi physician known as the “Angel of Death” — ordered her to produce the portraits.

Pawel Sawicki, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, said the watercolors of Roma and Sinti victims must remain at the memorial because they document Mengele’s criminal experiments and racial research. He said the works should not be mischaracterized as “Nazi-looted art” because Babbitt, who painted them under coercion as a prisoner, never held ownership of them. “While fully respecting the rights of people who created some of the documents here, we are of the opinion that any loss in the collections of the memorial will constitute irreparable harm,” Sawicki said. “The loss of even the smallest part of the documentation is an irreparable loss and blemish on the memory of the victims of Auschwitz.”

The lawsuits do not specify the monetary value of the paintings or watercolors.

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime orchestrated the largest art theft in world history, seizing more than 600,000 works of art across Europe from Jewish families, collectors and museums. Decades later, many of those works remain in prominent museums around the world, making recovery efforts more legally and ethically complex than ordinary property disputes.