Last month, a Rhode Island federal court ruled that the forced sale of art by Jews in Nazi Germany was equal to theft.

Last September, a Montreal man claimed ownership of a Gustav Klimt painting he says was stolen from his Austrian grandmother during the Holocaust.

In the Netherlands, the daughter of a Jewish art dealer, Nathan Katz, is claiming 17th-century works owned by Dutch state museums, which she says were stolen by the Nazis.

These news headlines make the documentary The Rape of Europa, running at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto from Jan. 25 to 31, highly topical (bloorcinema.com).

The Rape of Europa tells the story of the systematic theft, plunder and destruction of Europe’s art and culture during the 12 years of Nazi rule.

It had always been Hitler’s dream to create a great art museum in Linz, Austria, as a monument to his legacy. To do this, Hitler set out to obtain – by purchase or plunder – the greatest art treasures of Europe.

Soon, art collecting became the main hobby of the Nazi elite. Advancing Allied  soldiers in 1945 found more than 20,000 artworks belonging to Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Goering.

Organized looting from Jewish households by the Nazis began in earnest with the annexation of Austria in 1938. As Hitler’s troops advanced across Europe, the works of the masters, including Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt and Rafael, were removed from galleries and private collections and shipped to Germany.

In France, the amount of artwork confiscated from Jewish-owned collections and galleries was so vast, they had to be stored in the Musée Jeu de Paume, used solely for this purpose.

Nazi plunder was not discriminating. Everything was taken – good, bad, valuable and worthless. Paintings, sculptures, furniture, china, Judaica. Nothing was left behind.

It is estimated that 22,000 pieces of art were shipped from France to Germany. Concentration camp inmates with knowledge of art were used to sort through the huge piles. Goering is said to have taken 700 artworks from France for his opulent hunting lodge outside Berlin.

The plunder of cultural property was conducted in a systematic manner. In typical Nazi fashion, a department, the ERR, was set up to deal specifically with Jewish artwork collected in the occupied countries.

The advancing Soviet armies were not blameless. Trophy brigades were sent out to seek out art left behind by the retreating Nazis. Repatriation after the war stopped in the 1960s, and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg recently admitted that 74 paintings looted from the Nazis’ stash were in its possession.

Still holding a grudge, the Russian goverment ruled that captured German loot was considered Russian property.

Despite U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s order to respect cultural and historic monumentas, the advancing Americans were not blameless, either.

During their advance into Italy, the Allies were forced to destroy the ancient Monte Cassino Monastery, built in 592 CE.

The bombing of Florence was intentionally undertaken with extreme precision to avoid collateral damage to historic buildings. However, a similar bombing raid in nearby Pisa destroyed the Camposanto, a cemetery that dates back to the 12th century and contained hundreds of 14th-century frescoes. Restoration on this building and its frescoes is still underway.

Repatriation of stolen artwork is a complicated endeavour that is still going on today. Based on the book The Rape of Europa by Lynn H. Nicholas, this film, directed by Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham, begins and ends with the story of Klimt’s famed golden portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a wealthy Jewish Viennese sugar merchant, taken from Viennese Jews in 1938 and now the most expensive painting ever sold at $135 million.

This film also examines the heroic deeds of the Louvre and Hermitage staff members to protect their priceless collections and the dedicated work of one curator in France who secretly catalogued  all the looted work stored in the Musée Jeu de Paume storehouse.

The Rape of Europa, which was the closing film of last year’s Toronto Jewish Film Festival, is short-listed for an Academy Award nomination. It is a fascinating and timely look at the deliberate looting and destruction of art and culture by Nazi Germany.