S.D. FAMILY FOUGHT FOR RETURN OF NAZI-LOOTED PAINTING

For decades, Beverly Cassirer and her husband chased after the elusive Impressionist painting that had been taken from the family by the Nazis during the dawn of World War II, a maddening hunt that came up empty again and again.

The evocative Parisian street scene by Camille Pissarro had vanished into the mists of the war and then resurfaced decades later in Madrid, hanging for all the world to see in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-bornemisza, a treasured work by an Impressionistic master valued at roughly $30 million.

Cassirer and her husband, Claude, pursued the painting in the courts of Los Angeles, arguing that it had essentially been stolen by the Nazis, who had forced his grandmother to trade it for her own freedom as she tried to flee Germany. The painting ultimately made