Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art, on display at the Jewish Museum in New York City, includes masterpieces by the likes of Cézanne, Picasso, and Pissarro stolen from European Jews by the Third Reich and returned after the war. Yet even though the curators succeed in telling the story of some these works, they seem to lose the thread quickly thereafter, as Edward Rothstein writes:

Aside from a panel’s brief allusion to the Nazis’ “vast and systemic pillaging” and its continued “repercussions,” we get too little sense of the staggering scale of the theft and no sense of continuing repercussions. Nor do we learn the fate of works that were refused repatriation or were kept secret—like some 1,300 Nazi-era acquisitions discovered in 2010, in the home of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Nazi art dealer. Also missing are any hints of the epic quests by heirs for restitution or stories of the continuing struggles faced by those still trying to reclaim family treasures.

Even more baffling is how quickly the show’s theme is abandoned. Perhaps half of the rest of the show is devoted to commissioned works by Maria Eichhorn, Hadar Gad, Dor Guez, and Lisa Oppenheim. And as with the looted art, these too receive a cursorily positive gloss. “Rather than focus on the lasting void left by the war,” the exhibition notes, they are “fueled by a sense of hope and discovery.” In the catalog, Claudia Gould, the museum’s director, writes that in a year of grappling with the “pandemic and rising threats to democracy,” the notion of art expressing “both trauma and survival” seems “crucial.”

Is that the banal point? Can the “pandemic” and supposed “rising threats to democracy” really be inspiration for exploring looted Nazi art and giving it all a redemptive spin? All to affirm art’s transcendence over suffering?

This loose-limbed carelessness treats history as if it were a burden. The most puzzling example is the exhibition’s gallery devoted to looted Jewish books and Judaica. . . . Throughout, the overall impression is of a calculated avoidance of both historical specificity and Jewish religious life—which is precisely what happens in the institution’s permanent exhibition, which displaces Jewish history and practice with ahistorical juxtapositions of artworks. This is the aesthetic that leaves “lost stories of looted art” in limbo.

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.