Why a Swiss gallery should return its looted Nazi art out of simple decency

Nazi loot carries a legacy of hate. The latest ownership dispute – over a Constable painting, claimed by the heirs of British Jews – reminds us that respect is at the heart of the restitution debate

Memory has many colours. A work of art that survives the centuries is an embodiment of history, marked invisibly by all the hands that have held it. Who owned it? Where did it hang? These are not just arcane questions for scholars but the network of human experience that haunts works of art in museums and makes them richly alive.

The hunt for works of art looted by the Nazis matters. Researchers who discover the true owners of a painting stolen in wartime Europe and later acquired innocently or knowingly by a museum or gallery are piecing together shadowy stories of oppression, injustice, murder and destruction. Why did the Nazis loot art from Jewish owners? It was not only greedbut an ideological belief that Jews contributed nothing to European civilisation and did not deserve to share in it.

Related: The Black Years: how Nazi art came back to Berlin

Is there a backlash against restitution in the museum world?

Related: Not so neutral: wartime workers at a Swiss arms factory – in pictures

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