Book Description

August 8, 1944, the war in Europe is bleeding to a close. The scion of a prominent New York family, US Army Lt. Col. Jacob Jay Rosenthal discovers six paintings, the works of great masters, in the bunker of a battle-battered mansion of a Nazi colonel in Frth, Germany. Deftly, he smuggles two of them to a Swiss bank vault, the others to New York City as hes deployed home. Three generations of Rosenthals commit themselves to finding the rightful owners, victims or heirs. Prophetically, Jay shunned restitution by governments, knowing that legitimate claimants would face the deceptions and ineptness of sputtering bureaucracies. The Rosenthals encounter illicit trading networks of ex-Nazis, tax-evading free-trade zone systems, and legal barriers and technicalities lobbied into place by a few great American and European museums. The Rosenthal weltanschaung never curdles, even as Jays daughter-in-law is murdered by hired German gangsters. Another family member dies mysteriously as her small plane hits a mountain near Nice, France, each having come close to finding the rightful owners. As Jacobs legacy seems a lost cause, his grandsons swampy deal to sell the billion-dollar collection suddenly disintegrates and for the right reasons. Set in New York City, the Hamptons, Monte Carlo, and Paris, the realities of illicit trade in Nazi-confiscated art coagulate into a corroborated denial of justice.