A French heiress says she has been left with "no other choice" but to give up trying to obtain a painting from the University of Oklahoma that was stolen from her adoptive parents by Nazis.
Léone-Noëlle Meyer, an 81-year-old Holocaust survivor, has been legally battling the school over the painting by Danish-French artist Camille Pissarro, but on Tuesday she admitted defeat.
In a statement to NBC News, Meyer explained she was "left with no other choice but to take heed of the inescapable conclusion that it will be impossible to persuade the different parties to whose attention I have brought this matter," adding that she was "heard, but not listened to."
Meyer lost her mother, grandmother, and older brother at Auschwitz and was adopted at age seven from a Paris orphanage by Raoul and Yvonne Meyer, who had fled Paris during the Nazi occupation. They hid artworks, including the Pissarro, in a bank vault but those were later seized by Nazis.
"This work of art, which belonged to my adoptive parents, Yvonne and Raoul Meyer, was stolen from them by the Nazis during the occupation of France in 1941," Meyer explained.
The Pissarro, which is worth an estimated $2 million, eventually landed in the hands of an art dealer in Switzerland. Raoul Meyer had fought unsuccessfully in Swiss court to obtain the painting. His adopted daughter's efforts were just as futile.
A 1945 French law exists that requires the restitution of Nazi-looted works to their rightful owners but the court ruled last month that this had been superseded by a contract signed between Meyer and the University of Oklahoma to share the painting, which is currently on display in Paris’ Musée d’Orsay but will return to Oklahoma this summer, NBC noted.
Earlier this year Meyer admitted she signed the contract but said her hand was forced.
"I was called at 2 a.m. and my American lawyer put me under strong pressure to accept this deal. I didn’t have the choice," she told the French outlet Le Monde.
The university, meanwhile, has argued it had received the painting as a donation from a New York art gallery. In a statement, it said it would honor its commitment to rotate the painting between the U.S. and France every three years.
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Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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