The event comes in the wake of a report by France’s state spending watchdog accusing the national museum network of having made little or no effort to return some 1,995 works of art that were entrusted to it shortly after the end of the war.
The museums were required by law to try to locate the artworks’ owners or their heirs. Some of the works are believed to have been seized from Jews who were deported to concentration camps or were fleeing persecution. Others might have been sold to German officers by art dealers who collaborated with the wartime regime.
In addition, the French government recently announced that it would conduct a probe into Jewish property seized during World War II.