Public Notebook

14 September

On Monday 14 September 2026, two lawsuits were filed in Los Angeles to recover works linked to Nazi persecution. According to the Associated Press, these were the first to be filed following two reforms that expanded the avenues for bringing such claims before United States courts: a 2024 California law and the federal reform of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act, signed in April 2026.

The date was not coincidental. The California law entered into force on 16 September 2024 and opened a two-year window for certain claimants who were already aware of the relevant facts or whose previous claims had been closed for procedural reasons. Both lawsuits were filed two days before that deadline expired.

The cases are different. One returns to two paintings that were already the subject of ten years of federal litigation. The other claims seven watercolours that did not exist before the persecution: a prisoner painted them in Auschwitz, forced by Josef Mengele.

The first lawsuit is brought by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and Daniel Gryczman, chair of its board, against the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. They claim Adam and Eve, the two life-sized panels that Lucas Cranach the Elder painted around 1530. They belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, the Dutch Jewish art dealer whose collection was looted following the German invasion of the Netherlands.

Hermann Göring seized the panels. After the war, Allied forces handed them over to the Dutch State. In 1966, the Government of the Netherlands sold them to George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, who alleged that they had belonged to his family before the Soviet Union auctioned them in Berlin in 1931. Stroganoff sold them in 1971 to the museum's foundation.

Marei von Saher, Goudstikker's heir, claimed the paintings for years. In 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the judgment in favour of the museum. It did not rule that the Nazi looting had been legitimate: it concluded that ruling in favour of Von Saher would require declaring invalid various sovereign acts performed by the Dutch Government on its territory. It therefore applied the act of state doctrine. The Supreme Court of the United States declined to review the case on 20 May 2019.

Von Saher has now assigned to the Federation the right to claim the panels. The organisation states that it will use most of the net proceeds it may obtain to meet the needs of some 2,500 Holocaust survivors living in Los Angeles.

The new lawsuit relies on two changes. The 2024 California statute created a cause of action to recover property lost due to political persecution, extended certain deadlines, and ordered the application of California substantive law to certain claims by residents of the State, notwithstanding previous rules or judicial decisions. The 2026 federal reform was more direct: it declared that claims for art lost due to Nazi persecution must be resolved on the merits and excluded defences such as adverse possession, laches, the act of state doctrine, forum non conveniens, and international comity.

The California law was passed while the litigation over the Cassirer family's Pissarro, held by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, remained open. On 10 March 2025, the Supreme Court vacated the Ninth Circuit's judgment and remanded the case for reconsideration in light of that law. The matter subsequently returned to the District Court. As of 4 October 2026, it remained active, with proceedings recorded up to 28 September, but I have not located a new ruling on the merits or any future hearing that should be announced. The Cranach lawsuit raises an additional issue: whether the new rules allow for the re-examination of a claim concluded years earlier under the act of state doctrine and what constitutional or procedural limits such a reopening encounters.

The museum maintains that it acquired the panels legitimately and that the dispute has already been resolved in its favour. The lawsuit contends otherwise. As of 4 October 2026, there is no ruling on the merits of this new action.

The second lawsuit is brought by Michele Babbitt Kane and Karin Wendy Babbitt, daughters of Dinah Gottliebova Babbitt, against the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. It is pending before the United States District Court for the Central District of California under case number 2:26-cv-10429.

Babbitt, a prisoner at Auschwitz, painted seven watercolour portraits of Romani people in 1944 on the orders of Josef Mengele. According to the lawsuit, she agreed in order to keep Mengele from sending her mother and herself to the gas chamber. The daughters assert that Babbitt never sold, assigned, transferred or voluntarily abandoned the watercolours, and they ask the court to recognise their ownership and order their return.

The museum maintains that the works must remain at Auschwitz. According to its spokesperson, Paweł Sawicki, they are among the few surviving documents of Mengele's crimes and must be treated as unique historical documents. The institution also states that it lawfully acquired six portraits in 1963 and the seventh in 1977, and does not accept that Babbitt owned the physical sheets merely because she painted them under duress as a prisoner.

That conflict cannot be reduced to authorship. The fact that Babbitt painted the watercolours identifies the creator and may give rise to rights over the work, but the lawsuit also claims ownership of the physical sheets. It will be necessary to examine how that ownership arose, what effect the coercion had, what titles the museum relies on and which law applies.

Before reaching that issue, the federal court will have to resolve preliminary matters. The defendant is a Polish state museum and the works are in Poland. The lawsuit invokes the California law and the federal reforms regarding restitution, but there is not yet a decision on jurisdiction, immunity, service of process, choice of law, or the merits. The public record shows that the lawsuit was filed on 14 September, that a summons was issued for the museum on 22 September, and that the appearance of two attorneys for the plaintiffs was admitted on the 23rd. None of this determines who is the owner.

In my view, the criminal nature of Nazi persecution is not in dispute in either of the two lawsuits. What is being discussed is what legal consequences can be drawn today and who may claim them.

In the first case, the question is not simply whether a law can erase a judgment. Two legislatures, California's and Congress, have tried to remove obstacles that previously prevented the courts from reaching the merits. The court must decide whether those rules apply to this new lawsuit, how they sit alongside the finality of the earlier litigation, and whether they overcome the procedural and constitutional objections the museum may raise.

In the second, the question is likewise not only whether the work belongs to the person who painted it. The watercolours were created under violence to document a persecution, remained at the scene of the crime and were later incorporated into the museum's collection. The daughters invoke the ownership that, in their account, their mother never relinquished. The Memorial relies on its acquisitions and on the documentary function of the portraits.

Historical memory does not by itself decide title to property. Authorship does not automatically settle who owns the physical object either. But an institution does not acquire a better right merely because it can preserve and explain a document better, just as a family claim is not proven solely by identifying who created it. The courts will have to reconstruct each chain of title and decide which rules allow them to reach the merits.

The two lawsuits share a date because they took advantage of the same legislative window. They do not share the same question. One tests the reopening of litigation that seemed to have concluded. The other requires a determination of who can claim images that were born within the crime and remain in the custody of the place where they were produced.

About the open conversation

This text continues the line of the Notebook on restitution, provenance, and institutional authority. It draws from the lawsuits, the reforms in California and Congress, and previous judicial resolutions. As of 4 October 2026, neither of the two matters has a decision on the merits. If you work in restitution law, memorial museums, or Holocaust history and can provide subsequent primary documentation, write to me.