A drawing by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele is finally being returned to the rightful heirs of a Jewish collector whose life was brutally cut short during the Holocaust.

The artwork, titled “Seated Nude Woman, front view,” completed in 1918 and believed to depict Schiele’s wife, had been in private hands since its theft by the Nazis. Following an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, officials acknowledged this injustice and ordered restitution.

The story behind the drawing is truly heartbreaking.

Fritz Grunbaum, a celebrated Austrian-Jewish cabaret performer, endured the systematic theft of his extensive art collection during Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938. Many of his confiscated art pieces were reportedly sold to finance the Nazi Party’s Final Solution. Grunbaum ultimately perished in the Dachau concentration camp in 1941, and his wife met a similar fate in another Nazi concentration camp just a year later.

New York resident Gustav Papanek was given the piece by his parents as a gift, not knowing it had been stolen. Following his death in 2022, Papanek’s heirs fully cooperated with the DA’s orders. Members of the Grunbaum and Papanek families gathered in New York on Friday for an emotional ceremony marking the return of the long-lost artwork.

“The recovery of this important artwork which was stolen from a prominent Jewish critic of Adolf Hitler. It sends a message to the world that crime does not pay and that the law enforcement community in New York has not forgotten the dark lessons of World War II,” said Timothy Reif, a relative of the original owner.

For over 80 years, Schiele’s masterpiece represented a painful reminder of the Nazis’ campaign to plunder Jewish-owned art as part of their broader genocidal agenda.

Finally, justice is being served.