My country's shameful fight to keep Nazi-looted art

Washington Post

06-03-2025

David Jimenez is a Spanish journalist and author, and is the former editor in chief of El Mundo.
MADRID — For a country that gave the world Picasso and boasts some of the finest art collections in its museums, the decision should have been simple. When Camille Pissarro's 'Rue Saint-Honoré,' a painting stolen by the Nazis from Lilly Cassirer, was discovered by her grandson Claude in 2000 in Madrid's state-owned Thyssen-Bornemisza museum, Spain should have sent it to its rightful Jewish owners in California.
Instead, my country has spent the past 25 years, a fortune in legal bills and its reputation to keep it.
In doing so, Spain has placed itself in a dishonorable group of nations that obstruct the return of art stolen from victims of war and genocide, alongside countries such as Russia, Turkey and Romania. It is time for Madrid to acknowledge that, beyond the legal dispute, this case raises a far more essential moral issue.
No piece of art, however valuable, is worth betraying the memory of Holocaust victims.
The California State Legislature gave Spain yet another opportunity to do the right thing in September 2024 by passing a bill that would strengthen the claims of citizens seeking to recover stolen art held around the world. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed the bill into law surrounded by the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Among them was David Cassirer, the last direct descendant of the family that has long fought to reclaim the Pissarro stolen by the Nazis from his great-grandmother, Lilly Cassirer.
For the Cassirer family, the painting's material value (estimated at more than $50 million) has always been secondary. 'This painting symbolizes a chance for Holocaust victims and their families to recover at least a small part of what was taken,' David Cassirer told me, reflecting on the emotional toll the legal battle has had on his family. His father, mother and sister died without seeing the family's rightful claim to the Pissarro artwork affirmed.
Armed with the California legislation, David Cassirer's attorneys filed a petition on Dec. 6 in the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which ruled, despite a prior unanimous Supreme Court ruling in the Cassirers' favor on a procedural issue, that Spain could keep the painting. Regardless of the court's decision this time, further legal battles are inevitable — something Spain should strive to avoid. Even the Thyssen museum's own lawyers do not dispute that Lilly Cassirer was coerced into handing the painting over to the Nazis in exchange for the documents she needed to escape Germany in 1939.
'Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie' (Rue Saint-Honoré, Afternoon, Rain Effect), which Pissarro painted from his hotel window during the winter of 1897, passed through the hands of various private collectors before being acquired in 1976 by Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, whose family had close ties to Adolf Hitler.
The collection's arrival in Spain came about through a romantic twist when the aristocrat married his fifth wife, Carmen Cervera, a former Miss Spain, whom he introduced to the world of art. Cervera would be instrumental in the baron's decision to sell to the Spanish state, in 1993, a collection that included 'Rue Saint-Honoré.'
The Pissarro, measuring 32 by 26 inches, hangs on a wall in Room 33 of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid. Though it is an important work of 19th-century French impressionism, parting with it would hardly cause great damage to Spanish cultural heritage; keeping it illegitimately, on the other hand, has serious implications for art restitution rights around the world.
A dangerous precedent is set every time a country, a museum or a private collector refuses to return a piece of art taken from victims of war, persecution or genocide. Spanish law permits the buyer of a stolen item to legalize it after having owned it uninterruptedly for six years. California's legislature tried to address this with the bill passed last year, stating that California law instead of foreign law must apply in lawsuits over art looted during the Holocaust and other persecution.
Spain's laws represent a dream scenario for art traffickers. My country now risks becoming a haven for looted art.
Other than exploiting Spain's 'finders-keepers' law, the main argument Spain has raised over the years has been that Lilly Cassirer was compensated for her loss when she accepted a reparation payment of 120,000 deutsche marks from Germany in 1958, netting her $13,000. But the family and the German government were unaware of the whereabouts of the 'Rue Saint-Honoré' at the time. And Germany's Supreme Court and the federal courts in California have conclusively held that Germany's 1958 payment does not preclude the Cassirers from being able to physically recover the painting. The family has also promised, in the court record, that if it does recover the painting, it will repay Germany. Spain's insistence on advancing this inaccurate narrative of greed on the family's part is very troubling.
Returning the painting to Lilly Cassirer's last living descendant would be an act of justice and would send a clear message that Spain takes the memory of the victims of the Holocaust seriously. A Eurobarometer survey revealed in 2019 that 66 percent of Spaniards do not believe that denying the Holocaust is a problem, way above the European average of 38 percent. Centuries-old prejudices against Jewish people and lack of proper education regarding the Holocaust are contributing to a rise in antisemitism. By returning the Pissarro, the Spanish government would set the right example.