Washed It!

The heirs of the Budapest-based Jewish banker Mor Lipot Herzog have filed a lawsuit in U.S. courts against Hungary and its leading national museums, seeking the return of what they have identified as more than 40 works of art looted from Herzog’s collection during the Holocaust. The lawsuit values the artworks, including well-known paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, El Greco, Francisco de Zurbaran and Gustave Courbet, at more than $100 million.

“This is one of the largest — if not the largest — restitution claims ever filed in U.S. courts by a single family against another nation,” says Michael S. Shuster, the New York attorney representing the family.

Shuster, who says the lawsuit will be translated and delivered to Hungarian authorities according to the Hague Service Convention, calls it a last resort “to get the Hungarian government, which has been much less cooperative and consensual than Germany or Austria on these issues, to do the right thing.”