Posted on 12/29/21
| News Source: Arutz-7
Two paintings and two drawings looted by the Nazis in France from a private art collection have been restituted to heirs of an Egyptian Jewish businessman who lived in France.
The two watercolor paintings and two drawings are by 19th century French artists Paul Delaroche, Auguste Hesse, Jules-Jacques Veyrassat and Georges Michel, the French Ministry of Culture said in a statement.
The paintings, along with hundreds of other pieces of art in the collection, were looted by the Nazis in November 1940 from the home of Moise Levi de Benzion.
Benzion passed away in France three years later, while World War II was still ongoing.
After the war, two Paris museums, the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, took possession of the pieces, while the legal owners were searched for. According to the ministry, the process took until 2018 when ex-French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe created a task fore to track down the rightful heirs of looted artwork.