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Heirs of German-Jewish banker sue for restitution of one of van Gogh’s most famous paintings
(JTA) — Heirs of a German-Jewish banker are suing a Japanese insurance company for the return of one of Vincent van Gogh’s famed “Sunflowers” paintings or at least $750 million in punitive damages.
In December, Julius H. Schoeps, Britt-Marie Enhoerning and Florence Von Kesselstatt, heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, filed a 98-page complaint with an Illinois federal court alleging that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was forced to sell the painting in 1934 as the result of “racially exclusionary Nazi policies and concomitant coercion calculated to evict Jews from the economy and society of Germany.” They argue that the painting should be returned to his heirs as stipulated in his will.
A Sompo Holdings representative Courthouse News Service that the company “categorically rejects any allegation of wrongdoing and intends to vigorously defend its ownership rights in ‘Sunflowers.’” It displays the painting in a museum housed in its Tokyo headquarters building.
“It is a matter of public record that Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance Company [Sompo’s predecessor] purchased the Vincent van Gogh ‘Sunflowers’ work at public auction from Christie’s in London in 1987. For over 35 years, the Sompo Museum of Fine Art in Tokyo, Japan has proudly displayed ‘Sunflowers,’” the statement reads.
Sompo International did not return a request for comment in time for publication.
The complaint alleges that Yasuo Goto, president of the Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance Co. — which was incorporated into Sompo Holdings in 2002 — was aware of the painting’s previous owner when he purchased it at the Christie’s auction in 1987. It was sold for $39.9 million, at the time a record high price for a painting sold at an auction.
In 2001, a Yasuda representative wrote to the Art Institute of Chicago ahead of an exhibition including the painting that the company was “deeply concerned” and that its provenance had not been further investigated. The company displayed the “Sunflowers” work at the Art Institute anyway, and, according to the complaint, concealed the story behind its original sale from U.S. authorities, in violation of the National Stolen Property Act of 1934.
“By knowingly and fraudulently exploiting a Nazi-tainted painting in the U.S. for commercial gain, Sompo Holdings has violated multiple U.S. domestic and foreign policies,” the complaint states.
Representatives for the heirs declined to speak on the record.
Some art experts have argued the painting, the most famous in van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” series, is a forgery.
Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a member of the prolific German-Jewish Mendelssohn family, whose members included composer Felix Mendelssohn and Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. In the late 1700s, family members founded the Mendelssohn & Co. banking house, which became the largest private bank in Berlin. Facing Nazi persecution, they were forced to close Mendelssohn & Co. in 1938.
According to the complaint, Nazi laws that targeted Jewish banks crippled Mendelssohn-Bartholdy financially, forcing him to sell some works in his art collection — which included pieces by Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Georges Braque. He died in Germany in 1935 of a heart attack.
Other members of the family were forced into exile, committed suicide while under arrest by the Gestapo or went into hiding and abandoned their Jewish names.
The complaint is only the latest in an ongoing saga as Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s heirs seek restitution of his collection. Thus far, they have filed lawsuits against the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the German state of Bavaria for the restitution of five paintings by Pablo Picasso.
Settlements were reached on three of the cases while one — against the National Gallery of Art — resulted in the return of Picasso’s “Head of a Woman” to the family. The case against Bavaria is ongoing, as the Bavarian State Painting Collections refuses to refer the case to the German commission established to address disputed ownership over Nazi-era looted art.
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French Jewish Girl Assaulted Near Paris, Adolescents Arrested for Antisemitic Attack
Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Three teenage boys assaulted a 14-year-old Jewish girl and threatened to kill her in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles on Friday, police said, resulting in a trip to the hospital for the victim and arrests for two of the 12-year-old suspects.
The incident began when three younger boys approached an older teenage girl to ask why she failed to observe Ramadan, according to local media reports. After she disclosed her Jewish identity, the three reportedly began calling her a “dirty Jew” and one threatened, “I’ll kill you on the Koran.” They then allegedly beat her, especially on her face.
The assault required a trip to the emergency room, where hospital staff described her as in a state of shock.
Paris law enforcement arrested two suspects that evening and seek to identify the third.
Another suburb of Paris also saw an antisemitic incident on Sunday when vandals hit a Kosher restaurant in Levallois-Perret, spray-painting “dirty Jew” in red across the building’s windows.
A kosher restaurant in Levallois-Perret, near Paris vandalized with antisemitic graffiti reading “Dirty Jew.” Photo: Screenshot
Antisemitic vandals hit Kokoriko, another Kosher restaurant in Paris, just two weeks earlier. Investigators say the criminals sprayed acid on tables, walls, and the floor, rendering silverware and plates unusable.
That attack came just days after the French Interior Ministry last month released its annual report on anti-religious acts, revealing a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents documented in a joint dataset compiled with the Jewish Community Protection Service.
Antisemitism in France remained at alarmingly high levels last year, with 1,320 incidents recorded nationwide, as Jews and Israelis faced several targeted attacks, according to the data.
Although the total number of antisemitic outrages in 2025 fell by 16 percent compared to 2024’s second highest ever total of 1,570 cases, the newly released report warned that antisemitism remained “historically high,” with more than 3.5 attacks occurring every day.
Even though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, they accounted for 53 percent of all religiously motivated crimes last year.
Between 2022 and 2025, antisemitic attacks across France quadrupled.
The most recent figure of total antisemitic incidents represents a 21 percent decline from 2023’s record high of 1,676 incidents, but a 203 percent increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, before the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The surge in antisemitism appears to have carried into this year. Last month, a 13-year-old boy on his way to synagogue in Paris was brutally beaten by a knife-wielding assailant.
“How do you find the words to explain to a 13-year-old child that he is being attacked because he is Jewish? Who will be able to restore his confidence in the future tomorrow?” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), said of the incident.
One-third of last year’s antisemitic incidents in France explicitly referencing Palestine or the war in Gaza, indicting that anti-Israel rhetoric is fueling antisemitism.
The prominence of anti-Zionist forms of antisemitism has prompted French leaders to propose legislation combating this type of hate, as announced by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu last month at CRIF’s annual gathering,
“To define oneself as anti-Zionist is to question Israel’s right to exist. It’s a call for the destruction of an entire people under the guise of ideology,” Lecornu said, announcing that the government would introduce a bill to criminalize anti-Zionism. “There is a difference between legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and rejecting the very existence of the Jewish state. This ‘blurring’ must stop.”
Lecornu declared that “hatred of Jews is hatred of the Republic and a stain on France.”
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Belgian Synagogue Damaged in Blast Considered Antisemitic Attack
Police secure the site of a synagogue damaged by an explosion early on Monday, in Liege, Belgium, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
An explosion hit a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege early on Monday in what authorities said was an antisemitic attack that caused damage but no injuries.
The explosion, which happened around 4 am (0300 GMT), blew out the windows of the synagogue, as well as those of a building on the opposite side of the road, public broadcaster RTBF said.
The cause was not clear, but prosecutors said the case had been passed to federal authorities, which normally investigate incidents linked to terrorism or organized crime.
Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quintin called the explosion “a despicable antisemitic act that directly targeted the Jewish community of Belgium.”
He said security measures around similar sites will continue to be reinforced.
Eitan Bergman, Vice-President of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), said the targeting of the synagogue was deeply shocking.
“Liege is home to a very small but vibrant Jewish community where I personally grew up. Today, the feelings among our community members are a mixture of sadness, worry and profound shock,” he told Reuters.
Police have cordoned off the largely residential street on the bank of the river Meuse opposite Liege city center.
Federal prosecutors declined to give further details of the incident.
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Much of Iran’s Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium Likely to Be in Isfahan, IAEA’s Grossi Says
A satellite image shows a closer view of the destroyed tunnel entrances at Isfahan missile complex after reported airstrikes, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Isfahan, Isfahan Province, Iran, March 8, 2026. Photo: Vantor/Handout via REUTERS
Almost half of Iran’s uranium enriched to up to 60% purity, a short step from weapons-grade, was stored in a tunnel complex at Isfahan and is probably still there, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday.
The tunnel complex is the only target that appears not to have been badly damaged in attacks last June by Israel and the US on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Diplomats have long said Isfahan has been used to store 60% uranium, which the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in a report to member states last month, without saying how much was there.
IRAN STILL HAS HIGHLY ENRICHED URANIUM STOCKS
The IAEA estimates that when Israel launched its first attacks in June, Iran had 440.9 kg of 60% uranium. If enriched further, that would provide the explosive needed for 10 nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick.
“What we believe is that Isfahan had until our last inspection a bit more than 200 kg, maybe a little bit more than that, of 60% uranium,” IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told reporters in Paris.
He said the stock was “mainly” at Isfahan, and some held elsewhere may have been destroyed.
“The widespread assumption is that the material is still there. So, we haven’t seen – and not only us, I think in general all those observing the facility through satellite imagery and other means to see what’s going on there – movement indicating that the material could have been transferred,” Grossi said.
Iran has not informed the IAEA of the status or whereabouts of its highly enriched uranium since the June attacks, nor has it let IAEA inspectors return to its bombed facilities.
Iran’s nuclear program is one reason Israel and the US have given for their current attacks on Iran, arguing that it was getting too close to being able to produce a bomb, despite Trump saying in June that US strikes had obliterated the program. The IAEA has said it has no credible indication of a coordinated nuclear weapons program.
All three Iranian uranium-enrichment plants known to have been operating – two at Natanz and one at Fordow – were destroyed or badly damaged in June.
“There is an amount [of 60% uranium] in Natanz also, which we believe is still there,” Grossi said.