Nazis stole these famous works of art, which are now on display at the Met and MoMA

The law, which was passed last week, is part of a package of laws that aims to stop anti-Semitism and requires schools to teach about the Holocaust.

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis stole more than 600,000 works of art from museums and private collections. This was the biggest theft in history. Some stolen works have been given back to the heirs of the original owners, but most are still hanging in museums and private collectors' homes and offices around the world.

Experts told The Post that most of the time, when family members have tried to sue museums to get money back, they have failed because of legal details like statutes of limitations.

The new law requires museums to put up signs in front of art that "changed hands due to theft, seizure, confiscation, forced sale, or other involuntary means." However, this may not help the heirs get their family's assets back. But Timothy Reif, whose great-art uncle's collection was stolen by the Nazis, says it gives some sense of justice.

"Knowledge, awareness, and education are the first steps toward justice," Reif, a federal judge, told The Post.

Anna Kaplan, a Democrat from Nassau and the law's sponsor, said that she hoped it would "empower" the art world to be more responsible.

“When the Nazis looted over 600,000 works of art from Jewish families during the Holocaust, they did so because they were trying to erase Jewish culture, and for museums to continue trying to erase the history of what happened is unconscionable,” she said in a statement to The Post. “This new law compels museums to do the right thing and acknowledge the painful history of the Holocaust, and it’s self-policing by empowering the art community to get involved, speak out, and keep museums honest and accountable when they’re failing to do the right thing.”

Below are nine Nazi-looted works in New York City museums, according to experts.

‘The Actor’ by Pablo Picasso

Currently at The Met

The 1905 painting is thought to be worth more than $100 million. It belonged to Paul Leffmann, a German Jewish businessman who had to flee from the Nazis in 1938. When his family moved out of Cologne, he was forced to sell it to a dealer in Paris for $13,200.

Thelma Chrysler Foy, an heiress from New York, gave the Picasso to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1952. She had bought it from the Knoedler gallery 11 years before for $22,500.

The heirs of Leffman sued the Met, but in 2019 they lost an appeal because they had waited too long to file their claim for restitution.

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a long and well documented history of being transparent regarding works of art sold during the Nazi era and seeking resolution for any object that has been identified as illegally appropriated without subsequent restitution,” a spokesperson for the museum. “We have been following this legislation closely and are now reviewing its compliance components.”

‘Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer’ by Gustav Klimt

Currently at The Neue Galerie

The Nazis took this famous 1907 painting of the Austrian-Jewish socialite along with other belongings of the Bloch-Bauer family in Vienna after they took over Austria in 1938.

"Woman in Gold," a 2015 movie starring Helen Mirren, told the story of the fight for the painting. As the movie shows, Maria Altmann, a Bloch-Bauer family member, was able to get the painting back through the courts. She then sold the painting to Ronald Lauder, an heir to Estée Lauder, for $135 million, and it is now on permanent display at the Neue Galerie.

“The Neue Galerie has long supported efforts connected to the restitution of artworks stolen by the Nazis,” a Neue Galerie spokeswoman told The Post Friday. “The most famous work in the museum’s collection, ‘Adele Bloch-Bauer’ by Gustav Klimt, was itself a looted work, and its history is clearly displayed in our galleries and on our website.

‘Portrait of Tilla Durieux’ by Auguste Renoir

Currently at The Met

Renoir was 72 years old when he painted this portrait of the Berlin actress in 1914. He had arthritis and had to hold the brush with a strap around his hand.

When Durieux left Nazi Germany for Yugoslavia in 1933, she took a picture of herself with her. She was known for her work on stage and screen.

Her heirs said that she was forced to sell the painting two years after that. The painting ended up in Paris, and then it was given to the Met in New York in 1960.

‘Poet Max Hermann-Neisse,’ ‘Self Portrait with Model’ and ‘Republican Automatons,’ all by George Grosz

Currently at MoMA

Grosz was a fierce opponent of the Nazis, so he left Germany in 1933 and got a job teaching at the Art Students League in New York.

His heirs tried to get these three paintings, which were made between 1920 and 1928, back from the Museum of Modern Art, but the gallery, they said, played dirty by beating them on a legal technicality and saying the family's 2009 claim came too late.

MoMA bought the paintings between 1946 and 1954, so they could not have been stolen by the Nazis, which is what the claim said.

A spokeswoman for the MoMA told The Post this week, “We currently know of no artworks at MoMA that require action under the new law.”

‘Still Life: Job’ by Pablo Picasso

Currently at MoMA

This painting from 1910 was once owned by Alphonse Kann, who was one of France's most important collectors. Francis Warin, an heir, told The New York Times in 2000 that he saw photographs of Kann's Cubist art on the walls of his home outside of Paris in the late 1920s.

When the Nazis took over Paris in June 1940, they took the painting and Kann's other property with them. The painting was later sold to a Swedish dance director in Paris.

"Still Life: Job" made its way to New York, and in 1950, it was bought by Nelson Rockefeller, who had been governor of New York. In 1979, he gave the painting to the MoMA as a gift.

Warin tried to find out where the work came from by calling MoMA, but they were unable to help.

‘Le Moulin de la Galette’ by Picasso

Currently at The Guggenheim

and

‘Boy Leading at Horse’ by Picasso

Currently at MoMA

The German-Jewish banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy once owned these two Picassos from 1900 ("Le Moulin de la Galette") and 1906 ("Boy Leading a Horse"). Before he died of heart failure in 1935, he left his art collection to his wife Elsa. Reports say that the Nazis forced Elsa to sell most of the couple's possessions.

When Julius Schoeps, the grandson of one of von Mendelssohn-sisters, Bartholdy's tried to claim the paintings from the museums in 2007, the museums sued him to protect their rights to the works, which had been on display for many years. Two years later, the case was settled for an amount that was not made public, and the paintings are still in the museums.

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