France is returning seven paintings taken from their Jewish owners during World War II, part of an ongoing effort to give back hundreds of looted artworks that still hang in the Louvre and other museums, reports the New York Daily News.
The works were stolen or sold under duress up to seven decades ago as their Jewish owners fled Nazi-occupied Europe. All seven were destined for display in the art gallery Adolf Hitler wanted to build in his birthplace of Linz, Austria, according to a catalog for the planned museum.
At the end of the war, with Hitler dead and European cities rebuilding, artworks were left “unclaimed” and many thousands that were thought to have been French-owned found their ways into the country’s top museums.
The move to return the seven paintings ends years of struggle for the two families, whose claims were validated by the French government last year after years of researching the fates of the works.
“This is incredibly rare. It’s the largest number of paintings we’ve been able to back to Jewish families in over a decade,” said Bruno Saunier of the National Museums Agency.
Many of the 100,000 possessions looted, stolen or appropriated between 1940-44 in France have been returned to Jewish families, but Saunier said the country has increased its efforts in the past five years to locate the rightful owners of what the French government says are some 2,000 artworks still in state institutions.
Archiving errors and the challenge of identifying the paintings have made it slow going.
Read more of this report from the New York Daily News.