France returns paintings stolen by the Nazis from Jews Automatic translate

France promised to return seven paintings seized from their Jewish owners during World War II as part of an action to return the looted art objects that are now in the collection of the Louvre and other museums.

The works were stolen or sold under pressure from the Nazis almost seven decades ago, when their owners fled from Nazi-occupied Europe. Those seven paintings in question were intended for display at the Adolf Hitler Art Gallery in his hometown of Linz, in Austria. At the end of the war, after the death of Hitler, the paintings were unclaimed, and came to France.

For many years, it took the former owners of objects of art to prove their rights to them. The issue was finally resolved last year, when the French government confirmed the legitimacy of the requirements.

In total, more than 100,000 items were stolen or misappropriated in France in 1940-44. And only in the last five years the country has been trying to track down and return the property to the real owners. The process was complicated by the fact that more than 2000 works settled in state institutions, some of them were incorrectly cataloged, some archives disappeared.

Six of these paintings - among them the work of Alessandro Longhi, Sebastiano Ricci and Gaspare Diziani - belonged to Richard Neumann, an Austrian Jew. The work will now be returned to his grandson, Tom Selldorff.

Another painting, "The Halt," by Dutch artist Peter Jansz Van Asch, was stolen by the Gestapo in Prague in 1939 from a Jewish banker, Josef Wiener, who was subsequently deported and died in Terezin concentration camp. After the war, the painting was sent to Paris and hung in the Louvre for many years.

Most of the looted Jewish property will be displayed at the Shoah Memoria National Exhibition in Paris, which runs until September 21. It will also feature ads calling on the French to buy property from Jewish families.

Anna Sidorova