According to researchers and writers in the field of reclaiming Nazi-looted art, the number of artworks in Europe stolen, plundered or confiscated in the decade leading up to 1945 is staggering. Estimates seem to settle on the theft of some one-fifth of all European artwork. The figure usually touted is some 550,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, books and other works taken from museums, churches and private collections. See S. Gilbert, “The Persistent Crime of Nazi-Looted Art,” The Atlantic (March 11, 2018). Many of the private collectors throughout Europe were Jews who suffered calamitously under Nazi dominion.

Artworks included numerous classics and items of value. Michaelangelo’s Madonna and Child and Vermeer’s The Art of Painting, for example, along with some 12,500 other paintings and objects were stashed by the Nazis in an Austrian salt mine that was rigged with explosives to deny them to the enemy should the Nazi war of conquest fail. Author Gilbert describes the discovery by German authorities in February 2012 of some 1,500 works by artists including Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Liebermann, Chagall, Durer and Delacroix in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, son of one of the most notorious art dealers employed by the Third Reich, Hildebrand Gurlitt.