My country's fight to keep Nazi-looted art is shameful [View all]

MADRID — For a country that gave the world Picasso and boasts some of the finest art collections in its museums, the decision should have been simple. When Camille Pissarro’s “Rue Saint-Honoré,” a painting stolen by the Nazis from Lilly Cassirer, was discovered by her grandson Claude in 2000 in Madrid’s state-owned Thyssen-Bornemisza museum, Spain should have sent it to its rightful Jewish owners in California.

Instead, my country has spent the past 25 years, a fortune in legal bills and its reputation to keep it.

In doing so, Spain has placed itself in a dishonorable group of nations that obstruct the return of art stolen from victims of war and genocide, alongside countries such as Russia, Turkey and Romania. It is time for Madrid to acknowledge that, beyond the legal dispute, this case raises a far more essential moral issue.

No piece of art, however valuable, is worth betraying the memory of Holocaust victims.

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