Jews and American Indians--Unequal, but Comparative Losers to History

Heirs of Jewish Art Collectors Pursue Works Sold in Nazi Era

By Craig Whitlock and Shannon Smiley

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, January 21, 2008; A01

DRESDEN, Germany -- When the Nazis came to power, Fritz Glaser was a marked man. A wealthy Jewish lawyer, he was also well known as a collector of modern art -- works condemned by Hitler as "degenerate" and soon banned under the Third Reich.

Miraculously, Glaser survived the Holocaust and the 1945 Allied firebombing of this city on the Elbe River. But his precious art collection was in shambles. During Nazi times, when Jews were routinely pressured to sell property at nominal prices, he was forced to liquidate much of his collection, according to his family. Amid the postwar wreckage, he sold a few remaining pieces to raise cash and saw the others confiscated by the communists before he died in East Germany in 1956.

A half-century later, Glaser's sole remaining heir is fighting an uphill battle to win back some of his artworks, which…