Artworks looted by Nazis returned to Jewish heirs

AMSTERDAM - The Dutch government today agreed to return more than 200 paintings worth tens of millions of dollars to the heirs of a Jewish art dealer whose collection was looted by the Nazis.

The family of Jacques Goudstikker, a major pre-war art collector who fled the Netherlands shortly before the German invasion in May 1940, spent decades fighting for the return of the old masters from Dutch state hands.

"At long last, justice. A dream has come true for me and my daughters," said Marei von Saher, Goudstikker's daughter-in-law, who continued the fight on behalf of the collector's widow and son.

The Dutch Culture Ministry said on the advice of the country's restitution committee it would return 202 of the 267 paintings claimed by von Saher but would keep the remaining works because it could not be certain they belonged to Goudstikker when he left the country.

The paintings now hang in at least 17 national museums, von Saher's lawyers said, and include a landscape by Salomon van Ruysdael and canvases by Jan Steen.

Hitler's air minister Hermann Goering and his Nazi cohorts looted much of the collection of some 1,300 works Goudstikker left behind.

The collector died shortly afterwards in an accident on the ship he hoped would take him to safety in Britain.

After the war the Allies returned art looted by the Nazis to the nations from which it was taken but it was left to those governments to give the works back to the individual Holocaust heirs who were robbed.

Goudstikker's widow, Desi, in 1952 reached a settlement with the Dutch government but was unaware of the full value of the works recovered by the government. A long battle then began.

A Dutch court in 1998 rejected a claim by Goudstikker's heir on the basis that the earlier settlement was binding but the government later softened its stance on war-time restitutions.

Goudstikker's family are still fighting for the return of other works scattered in private and public collections from Russia to the United States.

Dutch secretary of state for culture Medy van der Laan said museums would not be compensated for the loss of the works but she added she hoped the owners might decide to loan some of the paintings to the Netherlands.

Von Saher said she had not yet decided what to do with the paintings but was looking forward to admiring them.

- REUTERS