Two Pieces of Nazi-Looted Dutch Art to Be Returned to Heirs
The Dutch government said it will return two Nazi-looted paintings to the heirs of a Jewish Holocaust victim.
The 17th-century paintings — “Amsterdam Town Hall” by Gerrit Berckheyde and “View of a Dutch Harbour with Figures” by Adam Willaerts — belonged to the Dutch Jewish collector Sam Bernhard Levie, the Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War wrote on its website last week.
Holland’s minister of education, culture and science, Jet Bussemaker, has accepted the advice, the commission said, and will return the paintings to Levie’s heirs.
Levie sold the artworks in September 1940, several months after the German occupation of the Netherlands, to the art dealer Walter Andreas Hofer, who acted as an agent for Nazi party boss Herman Goring.
Levie was deported to the Sobibor death camp in Poland, where he was murdered in 1943.
The statement did not say how much money Levie received from the sale.
The paintings were shipped to Germany and then returned to Holland and incorporated into the government’s national art collection. The Willaerts painting was on loan at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht. The Berckheyde painting was at the Amsterdam Museum.
Last year, a different advisory committee found that dozens of Dutch museums are in possession of at least 139 items with “problematic origins.” The list published by the Committee for Museum Acquisitions in October of works from 1933 onward includes priceless items that are in the hands of 41 museums, including such renowned institutions as the Rijks and Stedelijk museums.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Politics Meet America’s potential first Jewish second family: Josh Shapiro, Lori, and their 4 kids
- 4
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.