New Nazi-Looted-Art Lawsuits Reopen the Courthouse Door; They Do Not Decide Who Owns the Works

Two cases, two different chains of possession

Two lawsuits filed Monday in Los Angeles seek works tied to Holocaust persecution. The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and board chair Daniel Gryczman sued the Norton Simon Museum in state court for Lucas Cranach the Elder's 1530 paired paintings “Adam and Eve,” once owned by Dutch Jewish dealer Jacques Goudstikker. In federal court, the daughters of Dinah Gottliebova Babbitt sued for watercolors she was forced to create while imprisoned at Auschwitz.

The suits share a moral setting and new procedural tools, but they do not present the same ownership theory. The Cranach claim traces property allegedly lost through Nazi persecution and later museum acquisition. The Babbitt claim asks who owns art produced under coercion inside a concentration camp and whether the memorial may retain it as evidence of Nazi crimes.

Combining them under one label can obscure the legal work each family must still do: prove provenance, identify the relevant transfer, defeat defenses and show a valid present right to possession.

The new laws change timing and choice of law

California's AB 2867 directs courts toward California substantive law in covered Holocaust-era art claims brought by California residents or heirs. The updated federal Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act permanently removes its former sunset and preserves a six-year filing window measured from discovery of the artwork's location and the claimant's interest.

Those changes target cases lost before a court examines the history—because a foreign rule, statute of limitations or similar threshold defense ends the suit. They make a merits hearing more likely. They do not declare that every claimant owns the identified work, invalidate every museum purchase or dictate how a judge should resolve competing evidence.

That difference is the article's central legal comparison: access to adjudication is not the same thing as winning adjudication. A court still must apply the new rules to the facts and decide title or possession.

The museums' defenses are not identical

The Norton Simon Museum has defended its title for years. A federal court previously ruled for the museum, and the Supreme Court declined review in 2019. The new state case argues that California's law changes the governing framework. The museum maintains that it lawfully owns the panels; filing a new complaint has not displaced the works or reversed the earlier judgment.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial argues that Babbitt's watercolors should not be called looted art because she created them under duress as a prisoner and did not possess them in the ordinary prewar sense. Museum spokesperson Pawel Sawicki told the AP that the portraits of Roma and Sinti victims are rare evidence of Josef Mengele's crimes and that removing them would damage the historical record.

Babbitt's daughters answer from authorship and coercion: a criminal captor should not acquire ownership by forcing a prisoner to work. That dispute asks a difficult cultural question as well as a property question—whether preserving the object in place can override the creator's family's claim.

What the next records can establish

The laws are consequential because they move claims past procedural gates that often ended Holocaust restitution cases. The responsible cultural reading is not that the paintings have already been returned. It is that courts are being asked to examine two contested histories under rules designed to favor decisions on evidence rather than elapsed time.

• The complaints: the exact provenance allegations, causes of action and relief each plaintiff requests.
• Museum answers: admitted facts, disputed transfers and defenses preserved under the new statutes.
• Choice-of-law rulings: whether AB 2867 applies and how it interacts with the earlier Cranach litigation.
• Merits evidence: bills of sale, inventories, wartime records, correspondence and expert provenance reports.