The Hague: An artwork looted by the Nazis from the world-famous Goudsticker collection has turned up in the Netherlands in the family of a notorious SS collaborator, Dutch art detective Arthur Brand said on Monday.Describing it as “the most bizarre case of my entire career”, Brand said “Portrait of a Young Girl”, by the Dutch artist Toon Kelder, had presumably hung for decades in the home of Hendrik Seford’s descendants. The case is similar to a discovery that made global headlines in 2025, when a Nazi-looted 18th-century painting – from the collection of the late Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudsticker – was featured in a property advertisement in Argentina.In the Dutch case, Brand said he had been contacted by a man who had recently revealed two terrible secrets: he was a descendant of Sefard, and his family had been exhibiting looted art for years. This family member, who wished to remain anonymous, told Brand that he had seen the painting hanging in the hallway of Seford’s granddaughter, who was murdered by Dutch resistance fighters in 1943.Seferd, one of the highest-ranking Dutch collaborators with the Nazis, commanded a Waffen-SS unit of Dutch volunteers on the Eastern Front. The NYT carried news of his death on its front page in 1943, and a lavish Nazi state funeral was held for him in The Hague, with a wreath laid by Adolf Hitler. Brand said Safford’s granddaughter told a family member that the painting was “Jewish looted art, stolen from Goudstikker. It is not sellable. Don’t tell anyone.”But family members wanted the story public and contacted Brand, who has made a name for himself solving several high-profile cases of stolen art. “I feel ashamed. The painting should be returned to Goudsticker’s heirs,” the family member told daily De Telegraaf. There is a Godsticker label on the back of the painting and the number 92 is engraved in the frame. Brand discovered the records of an auction in 1940, where part of the looted Goudsticker collection went under the hammer and found item number 92: “Portrait of a Young Girl” by Toon Kelder.When the art dealer fled to England in 1940, Hermann Goering, a top Nazi official, looted Goudsticker’s entire collection. Brand speculates that the Dutch collaborator Seferd acquired the painting at a 1940 auction, and it was then passed down through the generations. Lawyers for the Goudsticker heirs confirmed to Brand that the painting was looted and that they have demanded its return.The family member who contacted Brand also wants the painting returned to the Godsticker heirs, but the police are powerless because the theft has passed the statute of limitations.The Dutch Restoration Committee, which advises on looted Nazi art, is also troubled because it cannot force private individuals to return artworks. “Family members see the public display as the only way to hope to return the painting to the Goudsticker heirs where it rightfully belongs,” Brand said. AFP