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His family was forced to sell their precious Pissarro painting before fleeing Nazi Germany; will he finally see justice?
It has been more than four years since I first reported on the looted art case regarding the Camille Pissarro painting, “Rue Saint-Honoré, Apres Midi, Effet de Pluie,” in The Forward. The painting is part of a series the Jewish artist painted from the safety of his hotel room in Paris at the height of the Dreyfus Affair in France.
The scandal, sparked by the false conviction of a Jewish army office tore French society apart and brought to light the country’s deep antisemitism. “Rue Saint-Honoré” is both an important work of Impressionism and a testament to historical events. If recovered, it may even break records at auction, how rare a Pissarro cityscape comes on the market, and how robust the fine art auction industry is at present. “The painting could “easily break the hundred-million-dollar mark at auction, following its recovery,” says historian and looted art expert, Jonathan Petropoulos.
The case of this rediscovered Pissarro painting captured my imagination from an aesthetic, legal, and storytelling perspective. It is a saga that has it all — art, war, robber barons, and more — and forces everyone who encounters it to reckon with fundamental questions on morality and humanity — from both a personal and historical perspective.
The case has been in the public consciousness for far longer than my own connection to it, however. In 1939, just prior to the onset of World War II, Lilly Cassirer — who inherited Rue St. Honoré through her husband, a member of a renowned family of cultural patrons in Germany — was forced to sell the painting under duress in order to flee Nazi Germany.
Sixty years later, in December of 1999, Lilly’s heirs discovered that the Pissarro had not been lost or destroyed in the war. In fact, it had resurfaced at the new Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, a collection belonging to the Kingdom of Spain acquired directly from the Thyssen Steel family, which had financed Hitler’s early rise to power.
The rediscovery kicked off an Odyssean legal journey up and down the federal courts in California, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington twice, and back. Now, another ruling is expected from the Federal District Court in Los Angeles this spring, on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has asked the district court to issue a new ruling in light of a new California law regarding stolen and Holocaust-looted art. For its part, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum maintains that it is the legitimate owner of the painting and that “there were no indications of bad faith in the acquisition of the painting.”
A separate, concurrent effort is underway in Congress to update the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 (HEAR Act), a Federal law that enabled Nazi-looted art claims to be submitted within six years of discovery of a work of art, thereby supplanting any state statute of limitations. The law was intended to expire after ten years, but given the enormous amount of looted art still to be found, the proposed update would remove the sunset clause, as well as dismiss defenses not directly related to the merits of the cases. The new act specifically cites this Pissarro painting and the legal case to recover it, seeking to prevent other looted art claims from facing a similar, protracted legal battle. The bill already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in a unanimous vote and is on the docket for a vote in the House of Representatives.
On the eve of two significant moments in the adjudication of Nazi-looted art, I sat down with David Cassirer, Lilly’s last living heir, and Sam Dubbin, one of his lawyers working on the case.
David, not long from now, there will be a new court decision on the long running case to restitute your family’s Pissarro painting “Rue Saint-Honoré, Apres Midi, Effet de Pluie,” which was a prized possession of your great-grandmother Lilly. What are you feeling at the moment?
David Cassirer: I’m pretty excited. It’s been such a long time since we started. This case gets exciting, and then it slows down. This is one of those exciting moments. There’s a lot going on, and we’re feeling pretty confident that we’re close to a recovery, after finding the painting more than twenty-six years ago
And what about you, Sam, how are you feeling?
Sam Dubbin: That’s a great question, because in my profession, you get optimistic, and then you get deflated, and sometimes the deflation takes a long time to get over. But deep down, I’m feeling optimistic, like this could really happen. And the moments when I feel lucky that it’s happening, I say to myself, “That’s ridiculous. It’s so long overdue.” What should have been done, should have been done so long ago. If the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum had given it back when Claude asked for it in 2000, he would have had ten years to enjoy it, to show it to people, to donate it. And it would have been a magnificent event.
This painting is important within the oeuvre of Pissarro’s work, but also historically in connection with the Dreyfus affair. Can you elaborate on its cultural and historical importance?
Dubbin: Pissarro painted this painting from the second floor of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre during the height of the Dreyfus Affair, when he literally feared for his life. He could not be seen on the streets of Paris because the antisemitism was so intense, and it’s considered one of the great works of the Impressionist movement. And so when you think about its origin during the Dreyfus Affair, then being looted by the Nazis during the preeminent human rights war crime in history, and now not being returned by the Kingdom of Spain, it’s just such an egregious, arrogant violation of decency and humanity.
And for you David, from a personal standpoint, what does the painting mean to you?
Cassirer: One of the things I like about the case is that there has been so much extraordinary publicity and interest by the public and by the press that it kind of reconnected the dots between the Impressionists and my family. My father would be very proud to read about the fact that his cousins Paul and Bruno, had championed the Impressionists and responsible for some of their success. There’s a new exhibition that’s starting soon in Berlin all about Paul Cassirer. It’s exciting to see this. It’s exciting in light of all the antisemitism that we’ve seen and the resurgence of it lately, to have some good news about Jewish contributions to culture, not to mention that Pissarro himself was Jewish. I’m delighted when I read stuff that starts to put in perspective this whole concept of our role in culture. It’s not the only thing Jewish people do, but it’s a big part of our culture.
I’d be very happy on behalf of the family and our friends to win the case, but it’s equally important that the case stands for something. And my father would feel that in his bones, especially since he really was there in the Holocaust and watched his family wiped out, watched their fortunes wiped out, watched most of his relatives sent off to the camps and so on. So, he felt it on a level I can only empathize with. It’s different if you’re there at a detention camp in the desert outside of Casablanca, and you’re dying of typhoid fever because there’s no running water and there’s no toilets. So luckily, he was young and strong and came back and survived and got here during the war. And of course, he went in to try to enlist. [The Americans] threw him out. “We’re not taking any Germans. Are you crazy?” He was very disappointed that he couldn’t join up and fight the Nazis.
The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2022 that California law should apply in this case, which was a big victory. But then the appellate court ruled against you, once again. What’s at stake with the next court decision?
Cassirer: I badly need this case to come out right, not just for the family. It’s a very important precedent. My father would have wanted people to be able to cite, to point to Cassirer v. Spain, Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza. That’s a big deal. We want people to be able to rely on that precedent all over the country and maybe in other countries as well, so I’m watching for that. It isn’t just California law versus Spain, it’s American law versus Spain. Generally speaking, throughout the country, the rule would be that you never acquire good title to stolen stuff. That’s the bigger picture here. The Supreme Court ruling meant that we are going to use good old American law to decide this thing ultimately.
Dubbin: By the way, Spanish law is an outlier. Even in other European countries, you cannot acquire good title even after the passage of time, if you take it in bad faith. Even countries like Germany, France, Netherlands, and Switzerland. Only Spain allows you to get good title after six years of adverse possession if you acquired something in bad faith.
It feels like a case in which, hopefully, common sense and morality can align. I think oftentimes, when the public thinks about the law, there’s sometimes a frustration that can arise, because cases are not always litigated based on what the public thinks is the logical, morally correct outcome. But hopefully, from what you’re saying, this could be one of those cases. David, what have been some of the positive things that have come out of this battle?
Cassirer: Lots of great stuff although it’s been difficult to wait so long and to watch my immediate family pass away in the interim. And as you can see, I’m not getting any younger here. (David is 71). It’s been a long, hard slog. The support from non-Jews has been extraordinary. We would expect, and we did receive, endless support from Jewish organizations and Jewish individuals. It’s been amazing, however, how much support we’ve had from day one in the press and in the public and in government, et cetera. I’ve been very heartened by the fact that we’ve had so much support from people “without a dog in the race,” so to speak, beyond the Jewish community.
I’ve also been very heartened in recent years with Sam’s extraordinary success working with legislatures, both in California and in Washington, and that the support isn’t just from one side or the other. It’s amazingly bipartisan. People who don’t even talk to each other gladly work together on these bills, sponsor these bills, and fend off anyone trying to undo it. Even though we haven’t won yet, we have won many battles along the way.
David, what advice would you give to other families who may be pursuing cases? What do you hope people take away from your experience?
Cassirer: That’s a good question. Assuming that we’re ultimately successful, which I’m still pretty confident with Sam’s help and this extraordinary team that we’ve managed to assemble, that we are going to win this thing. People should be encouraged, in a meta sense, that it’s worth fighting for stuff that’s important, even if the odds are long, even if other people might not be successful at it. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and you shouldn’t stick with it. I’ve been in the case twenty-six years and counting. If you’re tough enough and dedicated enough and you figure out a way to surround yourself with talented, committed people, there’s very little that can’t be accomplished in this country and in other countries as well. I think for me, that’s a pretty big takeaway.
You’ve just struck me that you’re talking about the American dream.
Cassirer: Yes! My father told me that the greatest day he ever had was becoming an American citizen. After what he had been through and being stateless, having had his government turn against him, it’s interesting that, given his extraordinary life, the greatest day of his life to him was when he became a naturalized citizen; because, to him, that was the American dream.
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After attacks, Jewish security watchdogs warn of ‘most elevated and complex threat environment’ in recent history
(JTA) — A string of recent synagogue attacks across North America and Europe has left security officials sounding the alarm bells.
“We are in the midst of the most elevated and complex threat environment the Jewish community and this country has seen in modern history,” said Kerry Sleeper, chief of threat management and information sharing for the Secure Community Network, a Jewish security organization.
Sleeper’s comment came during an SCN webinar on Friday, held in response to the previous day’s attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, where an assailant rammed into the synagogue armed with rifles and smoke bombs.
Though the attack was successfully thwarted by existing security measures, Mitchell Silber, executive director of the Community Security Initiative, said in an interview that Jewish institutions may now need additional layers of protection.
“This might be a bit of a tipping point where we’ve gone to a new level, where really what’s required to secure a Jewish institution in the U.S. starts to look like almost a Europeanization of security,” Silber said.
That would include posting multiple armed guards outside entrances and requiring increased screening before entry, he said. Many European synagogues also require attendees to go through security screening at some distance from the building, rather than at their doors.
“Unfortunately that seems to be where we are right now — the Jewish community has to up its game in terms of the external security of its locations,” he said.
Currently, a shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security since Feb. 14 is halting the review of millions of dollars in security funding for nonprofits, constraining the ability of Jewish institutions and other vulnerable groups to upgrade their security infrastructure.
The Temple Israel attack came within two weeks of attacks in Austin, Texas, and at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Those other attacks were not on Jewish institutions, but Sleeper, a former FBI assistant director, said the “various motivations of the attackers appear to be affiliated with the war between the U.S., Israel and Iran.” He added that the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran, and President Donald Trump’s stated desire to facilitate a regime change, have “contributed to the extremely high threat environment.”
Meanwhile, things have escalated outside the United States. Three Toronto-area synagogues were hit with gunfire over the last couple of weeks, and a synagogue in Rotterdam was targeted by an arson attack early Friday morning, allegedly by a group that has also claimed credit for an explosion at a synagogue in Belgium.
The flurry of attacks has the entire Jewish world on edge going into Shabbat — and some watchdogs say things could soon get worse.
“It is not entirely shocking to those of us who’ve watched this space for a long time,” said Mike Jacobson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who served in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau. “I would think things would continue to ratchet up again, at least in the short term.”
He pointed to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ activation of sleeper cells — their agents lying in wait until called to action to commit an attack — across the West, as a danger to vulnerable targets, which includes Jewish communities.
Another source of danger, Jacobson said, comes from copycat attacks.
“There’s also this mix that makes it really hard to sort out in the initial stages, where you’ve got people, not only who may be directly tied to Iran, but people who are so-called ‘inspired’ by this,” Jacobson said. “Those are often really hard for law enforcement to get advance notice on.”
Not always does the threat come from direct orders from Iran, he said. “It’s often difficult to tell: Is this something that is directly tied to the organization, or is this something that is more by someone inspired [by the IRGC]?”
He added, “They are trying to inflict pain in as many directions as they can.”
As security organizations encourage increased caution and awareness of suspicious activity, they are also emphasizing that those measures shouldn’t come at the expense of gathering in communal Jewish spaces.
“We’re not going to let the terrorists take away our confidence or the ability to embrace our religion,” said Michael Masters, SCN’s national director, during the Zoom webinar.
Masters’ sentiment is also shared by congregational leaders like Rabbi Adam Roffman, of Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas.
“Sure, security is something we think a lot about, and we’ve done our best to protect ourselves,” Roffman said. “And at the same time, the life of this community goes on.”
At Temple Israel, Shabbat services are being streamed from the nearby country club that served as a reunification center for families after the attack. The synagogue wrote on Facebook: “We’re so glad you’re joining us tonight as our community comes together to welcome this much needed Sabbath.”
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Muslim advisor to Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission resigns to protest ‘Zionist political agenda’
(JTA) — The Trump administration’s Religious Liberties Commission was wracked again this week over anti-Israel sentiment, as a second affiliated individual has exited while claiming it had been hijacked by a “Zionist political agenda.”
Sameerah Munshi, a Muslim member of a board that advises the commission, announced late Thursday that she would be stepping down. Her reason, she said, was to protest the dismissal of commissioner Carrie Prejean Boller, who was ousted last month after she used a hearing on antisemitism to expound on her objections to Israel and Zionism.
“In this country, people of faith are having their free expression stripped away, and even their lives put at risk, because of their deeply held beliefs about Palestine, all for the sake of a Zionist political agenda,” Munshi wrote in a resignation letter she posted to Substack. “The removal of a Catholic commissioner for expressing dissenting views grounded in her faith is the exact affront to free expression and religious liberty that I spoke out against.”
Munshi posted her resignation to X just before 10 p.m. Thursday, hours after an attacker drove a car into a Michigan synagogue while a preschool was in session. She did not mention the incident in her letter, which she said instead was timed to Prejean Boller’s formal ousting by Trump earlier that day.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations praised both Munshi and Prejean Boller on Friday for their “courage.”
“Ms. Prejean Boller and Ms. Munshi fulfilled the commission’s stated purpose by opposing all forms of anti-religious bigotry and standing up for every person’s right to express their religious beliefs, including opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” the council said in a statement. “The commission is now clearly meant to protect Israel from criticism, not to protect religious freedom for the American people.”
Munshi is a recent Brown University graduate and onetime director of the Muslim organization Coalition of Virtue. She was embraced by the Christian right after publicly opposing a change in a Maryland public school system’s policy allowing parents to opt their children out of curriculum, including LGBTQ material, that went against their religious beliefs. The policy Munshi protested was eventually taken to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of parents who had challenged the school.
Munshi’s biography on the commission’s website was still active as of Friday. It states, “Sameerah has courageously spoken out against forcing children to learn radical gender ideology in schools.”
Munshi had been outspoken for weeks about her support of Prejean Boller, with whom she was ideologically aligned on Israel, after Prejean Boller’s remarks during the antisemitism hearing caused a firestorm.
Like Prejean Boller, Munshi is also a follower of Candace Owens, the right-wing pundit who has embraced a number of antisemitic conspiracy theories. She praised Owens’ conversation with Jewish pro-Palestinian academic Norman Finkelstein last fall, writing on Instagram that Owens had a “rare willingness to confront uncomfortable truths head-on,” and suggested future guests for Owens to interview.
Munshi has been aligned with Prejean Boller since the fall, when Prejean Boller approached her after Munshi testified to the commission in favor of public schools’ rights to protest Israel. “Carrie has been wonderful. We’ve become pretty good friends at this point, and we’ve shared a lot,” Munshi told Middle East Eye.
On her Instagram before last month’s antisemitism hearing, Munshi wrote that the two of them had pushed the commission to invite “fair witnesses” to the hearing that would have reflected their own perspectives, including Finkelstein, left-wing Israeli academic Miko Peled, anti-Zionist rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, and David Spevak, an American Jewish activist and descendant of Holocaust survivors who has compared Jewish summer camps and cultural programs to the Hitler Youth.
After Prejean Boller’s performance at the hearing, during which she told Jewish witnesses that her Catholic faith compelled her to oppose Israel and Zionism, Munshi defended her from blowback from Jewish groups and the Trump administration. The Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial that the two “left together and appeared to be texting amid the hearing,” appearing to allege collusion in Prejean Boller’s line of attack.
“Christian views and beliefs were targeted as ‘antisemitic’ for merely expressing concerns about the ongoing conflation between criticism of the state of Israel and anti-Jewish animus,” Munshi wrote on her Substack in February. “During the hearing, an attempt was made by a collection of ‘Israel First’ actors to redefine antisemitism to include all criticism of Israel, smear many concerned citizens as bigots, and even gatekeep what counts as ‘real’ Judaism by confining it to Israel-first Jews.”
Trump established the Religious Liberties Commission last year, with the order’s text stating that it would “offer diverse perspectives on how the Federal Government can defend religious liberty for all Americans.” Munshi was one of three Muslims on the commission and the only Muslim woman; all three were chosen to serve in an advisory capacity, rather than as full commissioners.
In her resignation letter Munshi also said she was resigning in protest of the Trump administration’s war with Iran, which she wrote was being done “at the urging of a genocidal state.”
“I support America over Israel, and unfortunately that means I cannot support Trump or this government,” Munshi continued.
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Oklahoma attorney general accuses officials of rigging vote on proposed Jewish charter school
(JTA) — Oklahoma’s attorney general is accusing a state board of trying to rig the legal fight over a proposed Jewish charter school — a dispute that could open the door for publicly funded religious charter schools across the United States.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a motion this week asking an Oklahoma County district judge to intervene after the Statewide Charter School Board rejected an application to open the Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School, a virtual statewide school that would combine secular studies with Jewish religious instruction.
Drummond alleges that the board engineered its vote so the rejection would focus only on the school’s religious character, strengthening the legal case for the school’s supporters, who are preparing a federal lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s ban on religious charter schools.
“A state agency that deliberately hobbles its own legal position is not doing its job — it is betraying Oklahoma taxpayers. I will not allow that,” Drummond said in a statement.
He added: “The Board deliberately suppressed those findings to manufacture a cleaner path to federal court. I will not allow this Board to rig the record at taxpayers’ expense.”
Drummond asked the court to order the board to issue a new rejection letter detailing all of the reasons the proposal was deficient.
The dispute centers on the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, led by former Florida Democratic Rep. Peter Deutsch. The group applied to open a statewide online charter school serving kindergarten through 12th grade students beginning next school year.
The proposal called for a curriculum combining secular coursework with daily Jewish religious studies. If approved, it would have become the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school.
Jewish groups in Oklahoma have opposed the proposal, saying they prefer not to be thrust into the middle of a debate over church-state separation and that there is little demand for such a school among local Jewish residents.
The charter board voted earlier this week to reject the application, citing a 2024 Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that charter schools must remain secular.
That ruling overturned a previous effort to open a Catholic charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court ended in a 4–4 tie after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, leaving the state court decision in place.
Several board members said the precedent left them no choice but to reject Ben Gamla’s application.
At the same time, the board has signaled it may support the school’s broader constitutional argument in court. The board hired the conservative Christian legal group First Liberty Institute to represent it in the expected litigation and has indicated it could back the school’s position once a lawsuit is filed.
Drummond, who also fought the Catholic charter school proposal, said the legal question about religious charter schools had already been settled by the state courts and insisted his objection to the board’s vote was procedural rather than religious.
Among the issues he says the board improperly left out was a discrepancy in Ben Gamla’s projected enrollment.
Deutsch initially said the online school would serve about 40 high school students, but the formal application projected enrollment of 400 students across grades K-12.
State officials also raised questions about the composition of the school’s governing board. Oklahoma law requires a charter school board to include a parent or grandparent of a student. Ben Gamla listed Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, as its parent representative.
Supporters of the school have said they plan to challenge Oklahoma’s prohibition on religious charter schools in federal court, arguing that excluding religious schools from charter programs violates the Constitution’s protections for religious freedom.
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