Israeli museum shows art looted by Nazis

JERUSALEM, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- An exhibit at the Israeli national museum has an unusual goal -- finding the owners of art works stolen by the Nazis during World War II.

The 50 works in the "Looking for Owners" exhibit were supplied by the French government, the Los Angeles Times reports. Most of them were returned from Germany after the war and became French government property because the rightful owners were unknown.

Claude Monet's "Snow At Sunset" is one of the paintings in the exhibit. The work surfaced in the 1990s after a former German soldier confessed to a priest that an officer had given him the painting to safeguard it and had never come back for it, the Times' report said.

An Henri Matisse, "Landscape, the Pink Wall," was found hidden in a wall in the home of Kurt Gerstein, the SS officer in charge of cyanide gas transport to Auschwitz.

James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum, told the Times that he isn't optimistic about rightful owners coming forward since the paintings have been hanging openly in French museums. Any claims would have to be made in France.