For the first time since California and Congress passed a pair of laws bolstering U.S.-based claims to Nazi-looted artwork around the world, two lawsuits have been filed in California demanding prominent museums relinquish pieces seized during World War II.
In one case, filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday, the daughters of Auschwitz survivor Dina Gottliebova Babbitt sued the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland for the return of watercolors Babbitt was forced to paint of fellow prisoners for the Nazi physician and war criminal Josef Mengele.
In the other, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and Daniel Gryczman, the federation’s board chair, sued the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena for the return of the diptych “Adam and Eve,” a pair of 16th century masterpieces by Lucas Cranach the Elder.
The lawsuits revive legal battles waged unsuccessfully for the watercolors and the diptych for years, on the premise that their claims are newly viable under the new laws — one passed by California lawmakers in 2024 and the other signed into law by President Trump earlier this year.
Both laws were inspired in part by another legal battle over looted art between a California family and a prominent museum, which is still ongoing.
Lilly Cassirer Neubauer escaped Germany at the dawn of World War II by relinquishing to a Nazi art broker the exquisite impressionist masterpiece “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain,” by Camille Pissarro. The painting is now worth millions. Her grandson Claude Cassirer, who moved to California, and great-grandson David Cassirer have been fighting for the painting’s return from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Madrid for the last two decades.
Amid that battle, California lawmakers rewrote state law to make clear that in situations where it and another jurisdiction’s law on looted artwork are in conflict, California law applies and requires the return of the art to its original owners regardless of the passage of time. In an unusual moment of bipartisanship, Congress followed up by passing its own measure — the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2025 — to further bolster such family claims.
The two new lawsuits — neither of which provide a valuation for the artwork in question — were filed just ahead of a deadline under the California law for claims to artwork with long-known locations.
David Cassirer said his father would be “extremely proud” to know a California law passed in part in response to his family’s fight has also given other families another chance “to vindicate their ancestors’ artistic legacies.”
Auschwitz watercolors
Michele Babbitt Kane, of Ben Lomond, Calif., and Karin Wendy Babbitt, of Las Vegas, say in their lawsuit that Mengele demanded their mother produce the seven watercolors in question — each depicting a Roma prisoner later murdered — to support his “pseudo-scientific” and racist work studying the Roma people. Known as the “Angel of Death,” Mengele conducted gruesome medical experiments on Auschwitz prisoners.
They said their mother obliged “with deep sympathy for her subjects,” on the condition Mengele “spare her and her mother from the gas chambers.”
After liberation, the lawsuit says, their mother moved to California and worked for nearly 20 years as an animation assistant for Hollywood studios such as MGM and Warner Bros., where she contributed to familiar cartoon characters such as Wile E. Coyote, Tweety, Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales.
They say theirs is exactly the sort of case California’s new law was enacted to allow — involving “a California family seeking the return of watercolors created by their Jewish mother under Nazi coercion at Auschwitz and withheld by a Polish state museum for decades despite the Museum’s own repeated acknowledgments of the family’s rights.”
Paweł Sawicki, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz Memorial, said in a statement to The Times that the Babbitt paintings “must remain in the Memorial as part of the documentation of the crimes of Mengele,” and that many in the Roma community agree.
“We fully understand the emotional approach of Dina Gottliebova’s family to the works she made on the orders of Josef Mengele in circumstances that certainly affected her life, but in carrying out our statutory responsibility, we express the deep conviction that the watercolors should remain at the Memorial,” Sawicki said. “The portraits of Roma victims are the few remaining fragments of the documentation made by Mengele as part of his criminal experiments. Therefore, they should be treated as unique documents related to the history of Auschwitz.”
‘Adam and Eve’ diptych
According to the Jewish Federation’s lawsuit, the “Adam and Eve” paintings were part of a vast collection seized from prominent Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker by Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command. The collection was later recovered by Allied forces and given to the Dutch government, with the diptych being sold to the Norton Simon in 1971.
The lawsuit says Marei von Saher, Goudstikker’s surviving heir, has long sought the return of the Goudstikker collection, and years ago was successful in forcing the Dutch government to return 200 pieces still in its possession. She first demanded the “Adam and Eve” paintings from the Norton Simon in 2000, without success.
The new lawsuit says Von Saher on Monday signed her claimed rights to the paintings over to Gryczman and the Jewish Federation, which said in a statement that they will use a majority of any proceeds from the return of the paintings to “care for Los Angeles-area Holocaust survivors living in poverty.”
Von Saher’s daughter, Charlène von Saher, said in an interview that her family gave the painting rights to the Jewish Federation because of that shared mission. She said she wishes California and Congress had acted sooner but hopes a win now will help other Jewish families reclaim what is rightfully theirs in the future.
“My grandfather lost his life fleeing the Nazi invasion, and many of his family members were sent to Auschwitz and did not survive,” she said. “Victory would be justice, and a piece of the puzzle to restoring my grandfather’s legacy and his collection.”
The Norton Simon Art Foundation said in a statement to The Times that it was reviewing the new lawsuit, but that various courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have over decades of litigation confirmed that the foundation “has proper title” to the diptych paintings, and the foundation “will continue to make these important artworks accessible to the public.”
The Pissarro
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and the Kingdom of Spain, which owns it, have fought the Cassirer family’s claims to the Pissarro painting since Claude Cassirer, now deceased, first sued for its return in 2005. Spain has argued the painting was legally obtained by the collection prior to its 1993 sale to the country by Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, a prolific art collector whose wealthy industrialist family helped finance Adolf Hitler’s rise.
The matter has repeatedly wound its way through the U.S. courts, including to the Supreme Court, which remanded the case to the lower courts for additional review in light of California’s new law. A hearing is set for next month.
The museum has contended California’s new law is unconstitutional, which California is contesting. David Cassirer has argued the law clearly requires the museum to return the painting — and has pledged to support other looting victims with any proceeds.
He said both California and Congress “acted decisively to guarantee that stolen art victims, and victims of political persecution in particular, can have a fair shot to recover family legacies the Nazis ruthlessly tried to destroy,” and that “the momentum at all levels of government in favor of restitution is very encouraging.”
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