Art stolen by Nazis returned to Holocaust victim’s family

A COURT in New York has ruled that two valuable drawings looted by the Nazis should be returned to a Holocaust victim’s heirs.

In what was seen as a key test case a London art dealer was told to hand over the works – Woman In a Black Pinafore and Woman Hiding Her Face – by the Austrian Egon Schiele.

The drawings were taken by the Nazis from Fritz Grunbaum, a Jewish entertainer who perished in the Dachau concentration camp in 1941.

Richard Nagy, the art dealer, argued that he bought the drawings legally after Grunbaum’s sister-in-law sold them to a Swiss gallery in 1956, and that the time for relatives to claim them had long passed.

But Justice Charles E Ramos ruled that the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act, signed into law in 2016 by Barack Obama, meant the drawings belonged to Grunbaum’s descendants.

In 2015, the two Schiele drawings turned up in a booth operated by Mr Nagy at an art show in New York. Grunbaum’s heirs – Timothy Reif, David Fraenkel and Milos Vavra – sued to recover them.

Raymond Dowd, their lawyer, said the case could have wide ranging implications for museums and art dealers.

He said: “This decision brought us a step closer to recovering all of the culture that was stolen during the largest mass theft in history.”

In a statement, Thaddeus Stauber, a lawyer for Mr Nagy, said the decision would be appealed.

He said the dealer had checked with “recognised Holocaust provenance experts” all of whom said the works were “not stolen by the Nazis”. If they had been, the dealer would have restored them to the relatives, he said.