Two lawsuits were filed on the same day in Los Angeles courts over artworks connected to Nazi persecution during the Holocaust. One lawsuit was brought by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and its board chair, Daniel Gryczman, against the Norton Simon Museum. The other lawsuit was filed by the daughters of Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, a Holocaust survivor who was held in Auschwitz.
The paintings at issue in the Norton Simon case are Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder. They were owned by Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker before the Nazis took control of his gallery after the German invasion of the Netherlands. Nazi leader Hermann Göring acquired the two paintings through a forced transaction in 1940.
The Norton Simon Museum has said it legally owns the paintings and plans to keep them on display. A federal appeals court ruled in 2018 that the museum had good title to the works because of postwar actions by the Dutch government.
Goudstikker had purchased the paintings from the Soviet Union at a 1931 auction in Berlin known as the Stroganoff Collection. The question of whether the Stroganoff family had previously owned the Cranachs was disputed in the earlier litigation and was not finally resolved by the court.
After World War II, Allied forces recovered the paintings and returned them to the Dutch government. In 1966, the Netherlands sold the works to George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff. He sold them to the Norton Simon Museum in 1971 for $800,000.
Marei von Saher, the heir of Jacques and Desi Goudstikker, spent years seeking the return of artworks taken from the family. In 2006, the Dutch government returned more than 200 works from the Goudstikker collection that were still in state possession. The Cranach paintings were not included in that restitution.
Von Saher has now assigned her rights in the Cranach paintings to the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. The federation and Gryczman are asking a California court to order the Norton Simon Museum to return the works.
The second lawsuit concerns watercolor portraits created by Babbitt while she was imprisoned in Auschwitz. She was forced by Josef Mengele to paint Roma prisoners who were being used in his experiments. Her daughters are seeking the return of the works from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland.
The Auschwitz Memorial has said the watercolors should remain in the museum as documentation of Mengele’s crimes. Museum spokesperson Paweł Sawicki said removing the works would damage the historical record and noted that the portraits are among the few surviving pieces of documentation connected to Mengele’s experiments on Roma prisoners.
The legal actions come amid broader efforts in California to address claims involving property taken during the Holocaust. Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel authored Assembly Bill 2867, which was signed into law in 2024. The law requires California law to apply in certain cases involving art or other property taken during the Holocaust or other acts of political persecution.
The two new lawsuits were filed near the end of a special filing period created by the California law for some previously dismissed restitution claims. A recently revised federal Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act also strengthens the ability of some claimants to pursue Holocaust-era art cases in U.S. courts.
Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation, has argued that the Cranach paintings should be returned because they were taken from a Jewish-owned business as part of Nazi persecution. The museum maintains that its legal ownership was already upheld in federal court.
The lawsuits are part of a continuing debate over how museums should handle artworks taken from Jewish owners during the Nazi era. The plaintiffs argue that new laws allow the claims to be heard again on their merits. The museums say they have lawful title and also emphasize the importance of keeping the works available for public viewing and historical education.
IMAGE: ‘Adam and Eve’ (1520) by Lucas José Luiz / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)