California lawmakers plan to introduce a bill Thursday that would strengthen efforts by Holocaust survivors, their heirs and other victims to recover artwork and other property stolen from them in the aftermath of political persecution.
Rep. Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), co-chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and lead sponsor of the bill, said the measure was inspired by a recent decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals , who held that current California law required an Impressionist masterpiece stolen from a Jewish woman by the Nazis in 1939 to remain in a Madrid museum rather than be returned to the woman’s family in the United States. United
“I immediately thought this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to correct a historical injustice and ensure that something like this never happens again,” Gabriel said. “Respectfully, we believe the 9th Circuit got it wrong, and this law will make that very clear.”
Gabriel said the bill will hopefully ensure better legal outcomes for other California families who have suffered politically motivated thefts – whether in the past, present or in the future.
“We hope this will help other people, other victims of the Holocaust and other victims of genocide and political persecution,” Gabriel said. “It is specifically designed to be applied more widely.”
The legislative effort — which Gabriel said already has bipartisan support — is the latest twist in a more than two-decade legal battle surrounding Camille Pissarro’s masterpiece “La rue Saint-Honoré l’ afternoon “. Rain effect. This also isn’t the first time the California legislature has clashed with the powerful 9th Circuit on issues related to Nazi-looted artwork.
David Cassirer, whose great-grandmother Lilly Cassirer Neubauer had the painting stolen at the dawn of World War II, is appealing the 9th Circuit’s ruling against his family and praised the legislative effort as a potential boost in this fight.
“It is very important that our laws support and enable Holocaust victims and their heirs to recover this work of art that was stolen so long ago,” he said. “I am grateful.”
Thaddeus Stauber, a lawyer for Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, which obtained the painting in 1993 as part of a vast collection of masterpieces and rejects the family’s claims, did not respond to a request comment.
Neubauer gave the painting to a local Munich art dealer acting as an appraiser of Nazi art in 1939, in exchange for a visa to flee Germany. It was a decision made under duress, as part of a larger Nazi program to steal Jewish wealth, and both parties in the ongoing case have agreed that the incident constituted theft.
Despite this, Thyssen-Bornemisza, which is owned by the Spanish government, claims to have since obtained legitimate title to the painting under Spanish law. She claims to have bought the painting in good faith, without knowing that it had been stolen in 1993 from the billionaire Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza.
The baron, one of the world’s most prolific art collectors before his death in 2002, was the scion of a German industrial family that made its fortune in steel and helped finance the rise of power of Adolf Hitler along the way.
Neubauer’s family thought the painting was gone – perhaps lost for good during the war – until Neubauer’s grandson, Claude Cassirer, who escaped the Holocaust before moving to Cleveland and then to retire to San Diego, discovered around 2000 that he was at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
He asked the museum to voluntarily return the painting, then filed a lawsuit in 2005 when it refused to do so. David Cassirer, his son, became the lead plaintiff in the family case after his father’s death in 2010.
The case has since bounced through U.S. courts and repeatedly attracted the attention of the 9th Circuit. Around the same time as Cassirer’s death, the appeals court rejected a California rule expanding the window during which looting victims or their heirs could file lawsuits over Nazi-looted artwork, saying that it violated federal authority in such cases.
The state Legislature responded by passing a measure opening the window for all kinds of stolen property – not just in international cases with a federal nexus – six years from the time a victim acquires “actual knowledge” of the ‘place where the lost goods are located, which was a window. large enough to justify the Cassirer family’s claim. Congress later established a similar window for looted art claims under federal law.
Yet the battle over Pissarro – estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars – raged on.
In 2022, the United States Supreme Court handed another victory to the Cassirer family by ruling that California law – not Spanish law – should be used to determine the legitimacy of the family’s claim to the painting. However, in January, the 9th Circuit again ruled against the family.
A three-judge panel found that California law required it to consider the interests of Spain and California in enforcing their respective and conflicting stolen property laws, and to apply government law whose interests would be “more compromised” if his law were his. ignored.
According to this analysis, he had to apply Spanish law and the painting should therefore remain in the museum. One of the judges wrote that she agreed with the analysis on a legal level, but that it went against her “moral compass.”
It also went against “California values,” Gabriel said, which is why he decided to introduce the new measure.
“The purpose of the bill is to ensure an outcome based on morality and justice, not legal technicalities,” he said.
If the new bill passes, it will make clear that in scenarios involving property looted or stolen by the Nazis or as a result of political persecution, California law requires the property to be returned, Gabriel said.
The law would apply to any court case involving such issues in which the final decision is not yet final, including those on appeal to the Supreme Court.
If passed and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the bill would likely take effect Jan. 1, Gabriel said. This could also be accelerated, but this has not yet been considered.
The timeline of the Cassirer case is unclear. The case is currently before the 9th Circuit, where Cassirer has requested that the January ruling be reviewed by a larger panel of 11 en banc judges. Once the decision is rendered, the parties could also appeal to the Supreme Court.
Sam Dubbin, longtime attorney for the Cassirer family, praised Gabriel’s efforts to update California law.
“The clarity of Congressman Gabriel’s legislation is necessary to change the current dynamic in which governments, museums and collectors are incentivized to resist restitution and employ tactics and arguments that trivialize the Holocaust,” said Dubbin. “This is essential to truth, history and justice in the Cassirer case, as well as future cases. »
Gabriel said he already has co-sponsors from both ends of the political spectrum — including Assemblymembers Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) and Vince Fong (R-Bakersfield) — and is optimistic that the bill would enjoy broad support.
Rep. Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda), the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, also a Democrat, also support the measure. Jews were killed – a strong indication of his support.
“The decades-long effort to return confiscated property to Jewish families is morally courageous,” Kounalakis said in a statement to The Times.
Gabriel said it was “appalling” that the Spanish government would not voluntarily return the painting to Cassirer.
“It’s not about the money,” he said. “It’s a question of morality and justice.”
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