Nazi-looted Monet artwork returned to family generations later
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — On the eve of World War II, Nazis in Austria seized a pastel by renowned impressionist artist Claude Monet, selling it off and sparking a family’s decadeslong search that culminated Wednesday in New Orleans.
At an FBI field office, agents lifted a blue veil covering the Monet pastel and presented Adalbert Parlagi’s granddaughters with the artwork over 80 years after it was taken from their family. Helen Lowe said she felt that her grandfather would be watching and that he would be “so, so proud of this moment.”
Monet’s 1865 “Bord de Mer” depicts rocks along the shoreline of the Normandy coast, where Allied forces stormed the beaches of Nazi-occupied France during “D-Day” in 1944, marking a turning point in the war. The Monet pastel is one of 20,000 items recovered by the FBI Art Crime Team out of an estimated 600,000 artworks and millions of books and religious objects stolen by the Nazis.
“The theft was not random or incidental, but an integral part of the Nazis’ plan to eliminate all vestiges of Jewish life in Germany and Europe, root and branch,” U.S. State Department Holocaust adviser Stuart E. Eizenstat said in a March speech.
https://apnews.com/article/nazi-looted-art-returned-23cdc4651c6a63ec260c4f1144f83597
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