A judge has ordered an art dealer to turn over a pair of paintings looted by Nazis from an Austrian Jewish entertainer in the 1930s to a New York City auction house, and upbraided the dealer for infringing on the property rights of the entertainer’s heirs.

The two-and-a-half year legal battle was one of the first successful applications of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act, said Raymond Dowd of Dunnington Bartholow & MIller, the attorney for the plaintiffs.