08 June 2007
Prosecutors in the Swiss city of Zurich have found several paintings believed to have been looted by the Nazis during World War II. Swiss newspapers first reported that a cache of works by such painters as Monet and Renoir had been found in a safe rented by the late Bruno Lohse, an art historian who assessed paintings stolen from Jews for the Nazis.
Prosecutors entered the safe at Zürcher Kantonalbank after the daughter of an heir to the Jewish publisher Gottfried Bermann Fischer reported that two men offered to reveal to her – for a fee – the whereabouts of a Pissarro painting stolen from her family as they fled Austria. The complaint spurred an investigation that led to the finding. Lohse was acquitted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and continued working as an art dealer.
