Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
2 October
OWNERS' RETAIN RIGHTS TO LOOTED PROPERTY
On this day in 2018, a Paris court of appeal ordered American collector Bruce Toll to return The Pea Harvest, a painting by Camille Pissarro (1887) to the heirs of Simon Bauer. The painting was seized in May 2017 while on loan to the Musée Marmottan in Paris. The court ruled that the painting was part of a collection looted in 1943 by the pro-Nazi Vichy government in France and had to be returned to the Bauer family. Palestinian land and movable property was looted more recently that The Pea Harvest.
حقوق المالكين في الممتلكات المنهوبة لا تلغى مع الزمن
2 أكتوبر
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام ٢٠١٨، أمرت محكمة استئناف باريس جامع التحف الفنية الأمريكي بروس تول بإعادة حصاد البازلاء، اللوحة التي رسمها كاميل بيسار سنة ١٨٨٧، لورثة سيمون باور. تم الاستيلاء على اللوحة في مايو ٢٠١٧ بينما كانت موجودة على سبيل الإعارة إلى متحف مارموتان في باريس. وقضت المحكمة بأن اللوحة كانت جزءًا من مجموعة نهبت في عام ١٩٤٣ من قبل حكومة فيشي الموالية للنازية في فرنسا وكان يجب إعادتها إلى عائلة باور. نهبت الأراضي الفلسطينية والممتلكات المنقولة في الآونة الأخيرة بعد فترة من سرقة لوحة حصاد البازلاء.
The French Court of Cassation issued a final and definitive ruling that property looted by "acts of barbarity" remains the property of the victims and their descendents "without limit of duration". The example before the French court was a looting from 1943, five years before the Israeli militias carried out the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the seizure of their property - landed as well as valuable moveable property was pillaged.
Once property becomes the proceeds of crime, it remains the proceeds of crime. Almost a year earlier, Nov 8 2017:
The High Court of Paris ordered a Florida couple to return a painting to the descendants of the collector, Simon Bauer, from whom it was taken by the French Vichy regime during WWII. The precedent set by the ruling could be bad news for other collectors who have bought works in good faith, only to find out later that they were looted.
The painting in question, Pissarro’s Pea Harvest (1887), was seized in Paris under anti-semitic laws during the Vichy regime 74 years ago [1943]. Its journey from Bauer’s collection to the courtroom is emblematic of Jewish families’ complex, generations-spanning struggle to reclaim art lost during World War II.
"The right of the victims of acts of barbarity...to recover, without limit of duration, the goods they have been disposed of.”
A Paris appeals court on Tuesday upheld a ruling ordering an American couple to return a Camille Pissarro painting to the descendants of a Jewish family that owned the art work before it was seized during World War II...The lawyer representing Bauer’s descendants, Cedric Fischer, said Tuesday’s ruling “sanctions the right of the victims of acts of barbarity committed by the Vichy regime to recover, without limit of duration, the goods they have been disposed of.”
