Politics
Nazis stole this Jewish man’s Claude Monet drawing. How his heirs finally got it back.
This month at the FBI field office in New Orleans, officials turned over an 1865 Claude Monet drawing to Helen Lowe and Francoise Parlagi 86 long years after the Gestapo seized it from the home of their Austrian Jewish grandfather who’d fled with his family to London. According to The Times-Picayune, Adalbert “Bela” Parlagi, a Vienna businessman and art collector, tried and failed to get his art back after World War II. After he died in 1981, his son also failed to track down the art. Francoise Parlagi contacted the Commission for Looted Art in Europe in 2014, which set in motion the process that finally returned Monet’s work “Bord de Mer (Sea Side)” to the family’s possession.
A Louisiana couple bought the Monet in 2019, unaware that the Nazis had stolen it.
A Louisiana couple bought the Monet, which could be worth millions, in 2019, unaware that the Nazis had stolen it. Bridget Vita-Schlamp said she and her now-deceased husband were shocked to learn of the drawing’s history but “were quick to realize that it needed to go back to the family.” She and her husband “lost a painting,” she said, “but the Jewish community had lost so much more.”
Parlagi, who lives in Switzerland, told the newspaper that while she was happy to be getting the art stolen from her grandfather, the moment was also forcing her to think about the families that will never be reunited with the property the Nazis took, and it was forcing her to think about those of her grandfather’s era who didn’t survive the Holocaust. “We, of course, feel totally privileged,” she said. “So many families aren’t able to have this conclusion.”
An estimated 20% of European artworks, books and religious objects once owned by Jewish families disappeared under the Nazi regime. Approximately 100,000 of the 600,000 known expropriated cultural items remain missing.
As this month’s news out of New Orleans makes clear, even this far into the 21st century, we continue to discuss the material consequences of Nazi genocide. Those consequences included the destruction of Europe’s finest art collections and the death of Jewish collectors and artists. Restitution endures as a legacy of Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. Called the “last prisoners of war,” confiscated cultural property is a tangible connection to Jews’ families who were annihilated by the Nazis.
Two years ago, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a bill requiring New York museums to display signage alongside works of art from before 1945 that are known to have been stolen or forcibly sold under the Nazi regime. New York is also requiring that artistic work created before 1945 that changed ownership in Europe while the Nazis were in power be entered into the Art Loss Register so people like Lowe and Parlagi can look for what was stolen from their families.
In order to legitimize the purchases of paintings for Adolf Hitler’s Führermuseum in Linz, Austria, Nazi leaders confiscated collections from Jewish-owned and state museums through economic collaboration with art dealers and auction houses that used other plundering methods such as forced sales and exchanges. Jews desperate to escape Nazi Germany and Austria sold off all of their cultural assets to pay the expensive Reich flight taxes for exit visas. Or, as was the case with Bela Parlagi, the Gestapo would seize those things left behind by Jews fleeing in terror.
Called the ‘last prisoners of war,’ confiscated cultural property is a tangible connections to Jews’ families who were annihilated by the Nazis.
Art dealers who bought confiscated art during the Nazi period disguised their complex business transactions and lack of clear title to the artworks by creating faux paper receipts and bills of sale. As a result, the ability to legally prove Jewish victims’ loss of ownership remains an unresolved economic legacy of World War II.
For several years after the victorious Allies divided Germany and Austria into military occupation zones, those victors had no policy for confiscated artworks. Because the Allies returned whatever looted cultural property they recovered to its presumed country of origin and not to individuals, they put survivors and heirs at odds with postwar governments. The U.S. military was not interested in directing or enforcing a restitution policy, as its primary goals were the rebuilding of war-torn Europe, trying war criminals and resettling displaced persons. For decades after the war, few wanted to discuss the Nazi crimes of stolen cultural property.
Jewish survivors, who’d been stripped of all legal documentation by the Nazis, struggled to prove they owned what had been stolen from them, as governments often demanded documentation including photographs of the art, bills of sale and an expert’s report identifying the art dealer and the artworks. Some Jewish survivors didn’t file claims at all. Others settled for less money their art was worth because of the impossibility of presenting full documentation.
Government officials made Jewish claims a low priority to avoid paying restitution to owners and heirs. Unbeknown to the Jewish claimants, there existed a steady presence of covert antisemitic beliefs at play. The same museum curators and art dealers who collaborated with the Nazis, falsified sales receipts and obscured provenance were hired by the governments to review and appraise the restitution and compensation claims cases. Governments successfully attempted to secure properties for the state, allowing private citizens to keep looted goods, while resisting Jewish restitution claims.
Almost 80 years after the Nazis’ defeat, we must recognize that every item will not be found and that moral certainty is just as elusive today. Bureaucratic delays and legal issues contribute to the claimants’ frustrations. Unless the items belonged to a well-known collector, museum or library, Nazi-looted Jewish assets can never be accurately enumerated.
Government officials made Jewish claims a low priority to avoid paying restitution to owners and heirs.
Common to nearly all claims today are the difficult and costly tasks of producing evidence that was destroyed or nonexistent and challenging evidence from governments and art dealers that was most likely falsified.
Behind words like provenance and restitution are people’s lives and livelihoods, their memories and their property. Lowe said her family getting the Monet back made her feel “emotionally connected to her grandfather.” Her cousin Parlagi said their grandfather “wouldn’t have thought this was possible.”
But it is possible. As we just saw in Louisiana, it requires cooperation among governments, auction houses, art dealers and museums. Each entity has a duty to help return the things stolen by the Nazis to the owners or their heirs.
Anne Rothfeld
Anne Rothfeld, an independent scholar, publishes on European history, including the collaborative roles of art dealers with the Nazi regime during World War II and restitution of stolen cultural property in the postwar Allied military occupation zones. She’s a research grantee/fellow of the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
WASILLA, Alaska — Three weeks out from Election Day, President Donald Trump took a helicopter to a plane to another helicopter to a motorcade to an ice hockey rink in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, traversing nearly 4,000 miles over more than eight hours to turn out his base here to help Republicans defend the Senate.
But Trump’s trek might not be enough to save Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s running in a tougher-than-expected race against Democrat Mary Peltola in a state where the president’s approval rating is underwater and independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats.
Alaska strategists and voters who spoke to Blue Light News acknowledged that Sullivan faces a difficult path to reelection, despite Trump’s time investment and the outside money pouring in.
“Very conservative MAGA voters can’t vote for you harder,” said Scott Kendall, a veteran political strategist who worked on two of Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s campaigns and was chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker. “Donald Trump’s support in this current climate is both a blessing and a curse.”
Even some Trump supporters at the Tuesday night rally admitted the outlook appeared bleak.
“I think Alaska’s turning blue,” said Matt Niessink, a 45-year-old general contractor from Wasilla. He said he had voted for Trump three times and planned to support Republicans this year.
What did he wish the president would do differently? “I wish he’d shut his mouth sometimes and not be such a pompous ass,” Niessink said.
The president was in Wasilla — population 10,556 — because the outlook is darkening for his party in a state he carried by 13 points just two years ago. In a midterm year defined by the cost of gas and groceries, the Last Frontier has been hit particularly hard, with the average price of diesel nearing $7 per gallon. In the Senate race, Peltola is flush with cash and leads Sullivan in most polls. MAGA Inc., the cash-rich Trump-aligned super PAC, is increasingly focusing on Alaska as one in a slate of states that can help Republicans hold the Senate.
Enter Trump, who has been spending the cycle’s crucial final weeks holding rallies in red states to juice support among his base, which tends to see depressed turnout in years when he’s not on the ballot.
“That was a lot of flying,” the president said at the top of his remarks. “In fact, they were thinking about canceling. They said, ‘Sir, you’re very busy, this is very tough.’” But, Trump continued, he refused to cancel for a state he won three times.
Echoing his comments at other red-state rallies, Trump asked the roaring crowd for “one big favor” — to “pretend that I’m on the ballot, because every time I’ve been on the ballot, we win.” He repeated his promise that Americans will receive $5,000 dividends if Republicans hold both chambers.
“What this is about is getting out the vote,” Sullivan told reporters before Trump’s speech. “A rising tide of enthusiasm lifts all the candidates.”
Unlike some other Republican candidates in tight races, Sullivan has shied away from distancing himself from the least popular aspects of Trump’s presidency.
Sullivan proclaimed on stage at the rally that “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary. The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas and our jobs.” And although a campaign aide released a statement condemning Trump’s move to import Russian diesel, Sullivan did not join four of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Murkowski, who called on Trump to reverse the decision.
Art Hackney, a veteran Republican strategist in Alaska, said that “most of the people who support” Sullivan “think that he should” break more with the president.
Hackney, who runs a pro-Sullivan super PAC called “We Stand with Dan,” attributed that choice to loyalty — but suggested the president’s demand of fealty, and treatment of frequent dissenter Murkowski, could also be part of Sullivan’s calculus.
“A lot of his longtime supporters and the people who are in the industries that would benefit from that wish he would be more blunt,” Hackney said. “But with what Murkowski has done, if Dan did something considered a disrespectful trigger or something, what do you think would happen? It could well have implications for things that affect Alaska’s economy.”
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Some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and they are now focused on limiting the scale of the defeat and salvaging the party’s Senate majority.
Five senior Republican lawmakers, all granted anonymity to speak candidly about their party’s dire position, told Blue Light News the House had all but slipped away.
One senior House Republican said the GOP’s goal at this point was to “save as many Republican seats as we can.” The president, this person said, was not helping.
“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the lawmaker said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”
A second Republican member of Congress said the movement of campaign advertising made plain which side was in control of the midterms. This lawmaker predicted Democrats would pick up about 10 seats, more than enough to take control of the chamber.
Even in newly redistricted red states like Florida and Texas, this person said, Republican candidates were “hanging on with their fingernails.”
Republicans have already fallen back from several contested House districts that they feel are no longer winnable, including those held by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey. Trump carried their districts just two years ago. The party last week gave up on an Omaha-based district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon.
Trump officials and other top GOP operatives say more candidates may be cut off in the coming days, in order to shift advertising money to races where it can make more of a difference. Republican groups have already given up on multiple races where they once hoped to unseat Democratic lawmakers.
The Republican Party is under extreme pressure across the Midwest, where it is now spending heavily to defend Senate seats in once-reliably MAGA states like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Bacon, a maverick often at odds with the White House, said there was no mystery in his party’s political tribulations.
“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” Bacon said.
White House officials insist they’re not giving up on either chamber of Congress. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said Trump remained “committed to maintaining Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.”
As he departed on Tuesday to campaign in Alaska for embattled GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, Trump professed optimism about the midterms but acknowledged that sitting presidents typically see their party lose seats in the off year.
“But I’m doing a tour right now and I’m doing rallies,” Trump added. “The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson went even further, flatly declaring during a campaign stop in deep-red Texas that “the polling is wrong” in showing his party on the brink of a broad defeat.
Yet at a tactical level, the Republican Party’s moves to shift money away from defending the House and toward saving the Senate are clear enough. In recent days, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the top super PAC for House Republicans, canceled advertising for key House candidates in Nebraska and Iowa and allowed the Senate Leadership Fund – a Republican group focused on the upper chamber – to swoop in and claim the airtime to support Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa.
“These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” a third Republican lawmaker said.
In statements to Blue Light News, both CLF and the National Republican Congressional Committee said they had no intention of giving up on the fight for control of the House.
NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said districts are won “one by one,” and that the GOP has “the financial firepower and ground game needed to win.”
Chris Winkelman, president of CLF, said his group would keep moving money around to maximize the impact nationally.
The goal, he said, was to “keep the pressure on the most vulnerable Democrats and preserve a path to 218 seats.”
Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who lost his swing seat in Trump’s first midterm election eight years ago, said his former colleagues were clear-eyed about where the election seemed to be headed.
“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.”
Megan Messerly, Lauren Fedor, Lisa Kashinsky and Myah Ward contributed to this report.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said Tuesday he will not run for president in 2028 and committed to serving a full six-year Senate term if reelected.
“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” Ossoff said during a Georgia Senate debate against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
Asked by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whether he would serve his full term if he wins in November, Ossoff replied: “Yes, I will.”
The remarks are Ossoff’s most forceful rejection yet of a potential 2028 presidential bid even as his name has repeatedly surfaced in national Democrats’ conversations about possible contenders for the party’s nomination. His public commitment to a full Senate term on Tuesday is the latest of his campaign’s many efforts to tamp down that speculation.
Ossoff gained national attention this year given his strong fundraising numbers, his consistent lead in public polling against Collins and his ability to generate viral moments on the campaign trail, particularly through his attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats are bullish about Ossoff’s ability to hold onto his Senate seat — so much so that the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC said Tuesday it was removing its ad spending in Georgia for the week.
He’s also taken steps to boost the state Democratic party in Georgia, a perennial battleground that has been and will be key to winning the presidency. If November brings historic wins up and down the ballot, Ossoff will get some of the credit — and he’ll have confirmed his status as a leader in the swing state.
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