The president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, urged a leading Spanish museum to return a painting that the Nazis stole from a Jewish art collector.
Lauder, in a statement issued on Friday, called on the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, which is owned by the Spanish state, to stop its legal fight to keep the Impressionist masterpiece “Rue Saint-Honoré, après-midi, effet de pluie,” which the Nazis stole from Lilly Cassirer, a German Jew seeking to flee her homeland in 1939.
The painting was purchased from the painter Camille Pissarro by Lilly Cassirer’s father-in-law, Julius. Her late grandson, Claude, sued for restitution in 2005 in a claim he filed with the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
