Judge rules Museum rightfully owns Nazi-looted painting

(FASTNEWS|COLOMBO) – A Spanish museum is allowed to keep an artwork that the Nazis took from a Jewish woman in 1939, a judge ruled.

Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum has fought a 14-year legal battle in the US with the family of Lilly Cassirer.

Ms Cassirer was forced to trade the valuable Camille Pissarro painting for her freedom as she tried to flee Germany, just before the war.

A federal judge in California ruled that legally it belongs to the museum, which acquired it in 1993.

According to Spanish law, if a collector or museum does not know that an artwork was looted when they acquire it, then they are legally entitled to keep it.

But the judge, John Walter, criticised Spain for not keeping to the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art – an international agreement to return Nazi-looted art to the descendants of the people they were taken from.

Some 44 nations, including Spain, signed it in 1998.