This month at the FBI field office in New Orleans, officials turned over an 1865 Claude Monet drawing to Helen Lowe and Francoise Parlagi<\/a> 86 long years after the Gestapo seized it from the home of their Austrian Jewish grandfather<\/a> who\u2019d fled with his family to London. According to The Times-Picayune, Adalbert \u201cBela\u201d Parlagi, a Vienna businessman and art collector, tried and failed to get his art back after World War II.\u00a0After he died in 1981, his son also failed to track down the art.\u00a0Francoise Parlagi contacted the Commission for Looted Art in Europe<\/a> in 2014, which set in motion the process that finally returned Monet\u2019s work \u201cBord de Mer (Sea Side)\u201d to the family\u2019s possession.<\/p>\n

A Louisiana couple bought the Monet in 2019, unaware that the Nazis had stolen it.<\/p>\n

A Louisiana couple bought the Monet<\/a>, which could be worth millions, in 2019, unaware that the Nazis had stolen it.\u00a0 Bridget Vita-Schlamp<\/a> said she and her now-deceased husband were shocked to learn of the drawing\u2019s history but \u201cwere quick to realize that it needed to go back to the family.\u201d She and her husband \u201clost a painting,\u201d she said, \u201cbut the Jewish community had lost so much more<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s era who didn\u2019t survive the Holocaust. \u201cWe, of course, feel totally privileged,\u201d she said. \u201cSo many families aren\u2019t able to have this conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

An estimated 20% of European artworks<\/a>, books and religious objects once owned by Jewish families disappeared under the Nazi regime.\u00a0Approximately 100,000 of the 600,000 known expropriated cultural items remain missing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As this month\u2019s news out of New Orleans<\/a> 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\u2019s finest art collections<\/a> and the death of Jewish collectors and artists.\u00a0Restitution endures as a legacy of Nazi persecution and the Holocaust.\u00a0Called the \u201c last prisoners of war<\/a>,\u201d confiscated cultural property is a tangible connection to Jews\u2019 families who were annihilated by the Nazis.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> so people like Lowe and Parlagi<\/a> can look for what was stolen from their families.<\/p>\n

In order to legitimize the purchases of paintings for Adolf Hitler\u2019s F\u00fchrermuseum in Linz, Austria, Nazi leaders confiscated collections from Jewish-owned and state museums<\/a> through economic collaboration with art dealers and auction houses that used other plundering methods such as forced sales and exchanges.\u00a0Jews desperate to escape Nazi Germany and Austria sold off all of their cultural assets to pay the expensive Reich flight taxes for exit visas.\u00a0Or, as was the case with Bela Parlagi, the Gestapo would seize those things left behind by Jews fleeing in terror<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Called the \u2018last prisoners of war,\u2019 confiscated cultural property is a tangible connections to Jews\u2019 families who were annihilated by the Nazis.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0As a result, the ability to legally prove Jewish victims\u2019 loss of ownership remains an unresolved economic legacy of World War II.<\/p>\n

For several years after the victorious Allies divided Germany and Austria into military occupation zones, those victors had no policy for confiscated artworks.\u00a0Because 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.\u00a0The 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.\u00a0For decades after the war, few wanted to discuss the Nazi crimes of stolen cultural property.<\/p>\n

Jewish survivors, who\u2019d 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\u2019s report identifying the art dealer and the artworks.\u00a0Some Jewish survivors didn\u2019t file claims at all.\u00a0Others settled for less money their art was worth because of the impossibility of presenting full documentation.<\/p>\n

Government officials made Jewish claims a low priority to avoid paying restitution to owners and heirs.\u00a0Unbeknown 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.<\/p>\n

Almost 80 years after the Nazis\u2019 defeat, we must recognize that every item will not be found and that moral certainty is just as elusive today.\u00a0Bureaucratic delays and legal issues contribute to the claimants\u2019 frustrations.\u00a0Unless the items belonged to a well-known collector, museum or library, Nazi-looted Jewish assets can never be accurately enumerated.<\/p>\n

Government officials made Jewish claims a low priority to avoid paying restitution to owners and heirs.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Behind words like provenance and restitution are people\u2019s lives and livelihoods, their memories and their property.\u00a0Lowe said her family getting the Monet back made her feel \u201c emotionally connected to her grandfather<\/a>.\u201d Her cousin Parlagi said their grandfather \u201cwouldn\u2019t have thought this was possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span>Anne Rothfeld<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Anne Rothfeld, an independent scholar,\u00a0<\/strong>publishes on European history, including the\u00a0collaborative roles of art dealers with the Nazi regime during World War II and\u00a0restitution of stolen cultural\u00a0property in the postwar Allied military occupation zones.\u00a0\u00a0She\u2019s a research grantee\/fellow of the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies and the\u00a0U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n