New California Law Reopens Fight Over Nazi-Looted Art
Two lawsuits filed in California courts this week seek the return of artworks taken during the Holocaust.
They are described as the first cases brought after new California and federal laws strengthened claims in the United States to art forcibly taken during World War II, ABC News reported.
One case was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and its board chair, Daniel Gryczman. It names the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena and seeks return of “Adam and Eve.”
Those are two life-size oil paintings on wood panels created in 1530 by Lucas Cranach the Elder. The suit says they came from the collection of Jacques Goudstikker, a Dutch Jewish art dealer.
Marei von Saher, the sole heir of Goudstikker — the person legally entitled to his remaining property — signed her rights over to the Federation. The paintings were seized by Hermann Goering, a senior Nazi official, and later sold in the 1960s to the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, which became the Norton Simon Museum.
The second case was filed in federal court in Los Angeles by the daughters of the late Dinah Gottliebova Babbitt. She was a Holocaust survivor and California-based animator who was held at Auschwitz. The suit demands the return of watercolors she was forced to paint of fellow prisoners for Nazi physician Josef Mengele.
Both cases were filed on a Monday in the week of Sept. 16, 2026, and seek return to the heirs of the original owners, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The timing matters. California Assembly Bill 2867, written by Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2024, requires California state law to apply in lawsuits by California residents or their heirs to recover art seized during the Holocaust or other persecution.
The two lawsuits were filed at the end of the filing window — a limited time to bring a case — provided under that 2024 law, which applies to claimants whose earlier lawsuits had been dismissed, JTA reported.
The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles said it plans to use most of the net proceeds from any recovered art to help about 2,500 Holocaust survivors living in the Los Angeles area.
The scale of wartime looting was vast. Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime seized more than 600,000 works of art across Europe from Jewish families, collectors and museums.
What makes these filings stand out is the second chance they represent. Earlier claims over the same works did not succeed. The new laws gave the families a new path to court.
