“A woman’s life was in serious danger when Victor Lopez decided to attack her in a subway station – with a train moments away,” said District Attorney Bragg. “Thankfully, the woman was able to catch her balance, avoid injury and survive this frightening attack. These attacks tear at public safety and the sentence imposed today reflects that we take all acts of violence in our transit system seriously.”
“The tragedy of gun violence is manifold when young New Yorkers are accused of shooting at and killing other New Yorkers – in this case, their own friend,” said District Attorney Bragg. “Allegations like these are some of the most serious I can imagine, and our prosecutors are treating this case with the sober care it deserves. We will hold accountable those who use gun violence to destroy our communities.”
Works of art stolen by the Nazis from a renowned Austrian-Jewish cabaret performer more than 80 years ago were officially returned to his heirs Wednesday at a ceremony in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Seven artworks by Egon Schiele will be returned to the heirs of a Jewish cabaret performer who had owned the pieces before being murdered in the Holocaust.
The works, most of them portraits of Schiele himself or his wife, were part of a massive art collection owned by the Viennese performer, Fritz Grünbaum, and are estimated to be worth a total of approximately $9.5 million. Grünbaum’s collection also included works by Albrecht Dürer, Auguste Rodin and Camille Pissarro, along with a total of 81 pieces by Schiele, an Austrian expressionist painter active in the early 20th century.
During his abbreviated lifetime, a cabaret performer named Fritz Grünbaum amassed a trove of artwork — more than 400 pieces, including 80 sketches and paintings by the Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele that were ultimately plundered by the Nazis. For a while, many of those disappeared until they began to resurface over the years in auction houses and prominent museums.
