Jewish heirs sue LA museums for Nazi-looted masterpieces under new state law

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany stole more than 600,000 works of art from across Europe—paintings, sculptures, drawings, everything. Most were taken from Jewish families, collectors, and institutions. Eighty years later, many of those masterpieces still hang in museums around the world, including two prominent institutions in and near Los Angeles. This month, Jewish heirs and their representatives filed lawsuits to get them back, armed with new legal tools that didn't exist before.

The first lawsuit targets two life-size oil paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, created in 1530. They depict Adam and Eve, rendered with the precise detail and pale northern light that made Cranach famous. The paintings now belong to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and its board chair Daniel Gryczman. The federation is acting on behalf of Marei von Saher, the sole heir to a Dutch art dealer named Jacques Goudstikker, whose collection was seized by Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler's second-in-command. The paintings changed hands multiple times after the war before being sold to the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art in the 1960s—the institution that later became the Norton Simon Museum.

The second lawsuit is stranger and more haunting. It was filed in federal court the same day by the daughters of Dinah Gottliebova Babbitt, a Holocaust survivor who became an animator in California. While imprisoned in Auschwitz, Babbitt was forced by Josef Mengele—the Nazi physician known as the "Angel of Death"—to paint watercolors of fellow prisoners. These paintings documented Mengele's experiments on Roma and Sinti victims. The lawsuit demands their return from the Auschwitz Memorial, where they are currently held.

Both lawsuits are the first to be filed under newly strengthened legal protections. In September 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2867, written by Democratic Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel. The law requires that California courts apply state law in cases brought by California residents or their heirs seeking to recover art seized during the Holocaust or other acts of persecution. Congress passed complementary federal legislation around the same time. These laws exist because a federal court had previously ruled that a state-owned Spanish museum could keep a Camille Pissarro painting that the Nazis had stolen from the Cassirer family in 1939. Gabriel, who co-chairs the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, introduced the bill in response to that decision. He said it was time for museums to "do some deep introspection on whether they want to be on the right side of history."

The museums are not yielding. Norton Simon Museum issued a statement asserting that a federal court unanimously determined in 2018 that the museum held proper title to the Cranach paintings. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in 2019. The museum's account of the paintings' provenance differs from the heirs' version: the museum says the works originally belonged to the Stroganoff family and were sold by the Soviet Union in 1931 at an illicit auction in Berlin, where Goudstikker purchased them. The museum has restored and preserved the pieces and kept them on public view for nearly fifty years.

The Auschwitz Memorial took a different approach. Pawel Sawicki, a spokesperson, said the watercolors should not be classified as "Nazi-looted art" because Babbitt painted them as a prisoner without ownership. He acknowledged the family's sentiments but argued that the paintings are irreplaceable historical documents of Mengele's crimes. "The loss of even the smallest part of the documentation is an irreparable loss and blemish on the memory of the victims of Auschwitz," he said.

Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, framed the effort differently. He said the federation plans to use most of the net proceeds from any recovered art to help the approximately 2,500 Holocaust survivors still living in the Los Angeles area. "These are incredibly beautiful European masterpieces stolen from a Jewish family to enrich the Nazi party and fund the war and death machine," Farkas said. "It's our honor to take on this role on behalf of the community and use most of the proceeds to help these elderly survivors live out the last years of their lives in dignity, comfort and peace."

Marei von Saher, the heir whose family's collection is at stake, issued a statement saying she was grateful to the Jewish organization for taking up her cause. "This effort represents a meaningful step toward justice for Holocaust survivors and victims of Nazi era atrocities," she said. The lawsuits do not specify the monetary value of the paintings. What happens next will likely shape how museums across the country handle claims to Nazi-looted art—and whether the new California and federal laws prove strong enough to overcome decades of legal precedent and institutional resistance.