PASSAGES: CLAUDE CASSIRER, HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR & DEMOCRATIC ACTIVIST, GONE AT 89 BUT HIS LEGACY LIVES ON

La Mesa man's long battle to recover Pissarro painting stolen by Nazis ends, but family vows to pursue his dream

October 5, 2010 (La Mesa) – Claude Cassirer, who survived an internment camp during World War II and became a lecturer in schools teaching students about the Holocaust, died on September 25, 2010. A portrait photographer, he later became a volunteer and licensed ombudsman for the State of California for more than  20 years, striving to assure proper healthcare for seniors. He and his wife, Beverly, were also prominent political activists and co-founders of the La Mesa Foothills Democratic Club.

Recently, Cassirer made headlines by winning a court battle in September that allowed him to sue the government of Spain.  His lawsuit sought to recover a Pissarro painting stolen from his grandparents by the Nazis, but he passed away before he could see his long-time dream fulfilled.

Born in Berlin, Germany on April 27, 1921 to a prominent Jewish family, Cassirer lost his mother to an influenza epidemic. His grandparents became prominent influences and he had fond memories of a famous painting which hung on their wall, Pissarro’s Rue St. Honore, Apres Midi, Effect de Pluie (St. Honore Street, Afternoon, Rain Effect, 1897). In the 1930s, young Claude Cassirer made his way to England, where according to the Cassirer family, his grandparents were allowed to emigrate But they faced a painful choice: be sent to the Dachau concentration camp, or turn over their masterpiece painting to the Nazis in exchange for exit visas. The Nazis looted some 600,000 paintings across Europe during this time period.
 

Cassirer entered school in England and traveled to France with his school friends. While in France, he was apprehended by Vichy-French, who were collaborating with the Nazis during World War II. Cassirer was interned by the Vichy-French in a former foreign legion camp in Morocco, where he contracted typhoid fever. When the Allied African campaign loosed the Nazi grip on Morocco, Cassirer was liberated by members of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of New York.
 

He came to New York with other internment camp survivors, arriving in 1941 at age 20 , penniless with no family, while the war continued to rage in Europe. He moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked for a department store and later became a respected portrait photographer. While on a train to the East Coast, he met Beverly Bellin in 1944 and married her. They became active in their synagogue in Cleveland, where he became an outreach speaker’s bureau lecturer in the community and in schools on the horrors of the holocast.

The couple became active in progressive political politics, including John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, which kicked off in Cleveland. Thirty years ago, they moved to San Diego, a community with conservative political leanings. Cassirer’s personal history had shown him what could happen when right-wing extremism took power as in Hitler’s Germany, where rights of religious minorities and others were trampled and 7 million Jews were exterminated.
 

Claude and Beverly Cassirer provided the catalyst to found the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club, which grew to become one of the largest and most active Democratic Clubs in San Diego County.
 

Ten years ago, Claude Cassirer learned from a friend that the Pissarro painting he recalled from childhood was being displayed at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid. He insisted that he could prove that it had been stolen from his grandmother in 1939 and sought to force Spain to return the priceless work of art to his family, as the Union-Tribune reported. But the law of sovereign immunity barred him from suing Spain.

Then on September 8th of this year, a U.S. judge ruled that the painting—valued at $20 million—was taken “in violation of international law.” The court gave Cassirer permission to sue, granting an exception to the rule of Sovereign Immunity.
 

“My grandmother never knew what happened to the painting,” Cassirer said, according to media reports. “But we never lost faith that it would be found.” Cassirer did not live long enough to see his the painting returned, however.

“It is a source of sadness that Claude did not live long enough to see the dream of the return of this stolen piece of family art fully accomplished,” said Larry Howe, past president of the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club.
 

Howe recalls the Cassirers’ “tireless dedication and enthusiasm” and added, “Claude will be remembered fondly by so many of us who were touched by his exceptional presence… Once one got to know him and understood what he had been through, his good nature was made all the more remarkably. Having witnessed personally what true inhumanity can produce, rather than retreating into cynicism and self pity, he decided to do something about it," he said, adding that Cassirer's "true care about the welfare of others has been a powerful inspiration to all of us.”
 

Claude Cassirer is survived by his wife of 66 years, Beverly, their daughter, Ava, of Moreland Hills, Ohio, and a son, David, of Telluride, Colorado. David Cassirer has vowed to carry on his father's battle to restore the treasured Pissarro masterpiece to the Cassirer family.

"A good and decent man, who was SO PROUD to become an American citizen, after his family was slaughtered in Germany by the Nazis. He NEVER stopped finding ways to "give something back," and my mother and father worked tirelessly for Jewish causes, civil rights, and the Democratic party," David Cassirer told East County Magazine.