In 1938 Karl and Rosie Adler were forced to flee Nazi Germany, fearing for their lives amid persecution of Jews, and in order to pay for their short stay visas, they were forced to sell one of their prized possessions, a painting by Pablo Picasso titled Woman. Ironing.

The 1904 painting ended up in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Now the heirs of the spouses are asked to return the painting to their family.

“Adler would not have sold the painting at such a price and at such a time if he and his family had not been persecuted by the Nazis,” lawyers for the heirs said in a lawsuit filed in a New York court last week. Several Jewish organizations and non-profit organizations signed the lawsuit.

The painting was originally purchased by Heinrich Thanhäuser in 1916, a Jewish gallery owner living in Munich at the time. The Adlers later acquired it and, when they left Germany, sold it to Tankhäuser’s son Justin, who had already left Germany to seek asylum in Paris, for $1,552 (about $32,669 in today’s prices).

According to the lawsuit, this price was well below its actual market value, and immediately after its acquisition, Thanhouser insured it for $20,000.

In his will, Tanhäuser left his large art collection to the Guggenheim Museum, including an original painting by Picasso.

Before Tankhäuser’s death, as part of a museum investigation to confirm the painting’s provenance, Guggenheim contacted Karl and Rosie Adler’s son, Eric, the museum said in a BBC response.

Mr. Adler “confirmed the dates of his father’s ownership and expressed no objection to the painting or its sale to Justin Thanhouser,” the museum said in a statement, adding that he repeatedly acknowledged that the painting was previously owned by the Adlers.

The painting is in the collection to this day. For decades, the Adler descendants did not dispute the museum’s ownership of it, but in 2014 the grandson of one of the Adler children learned of the painting’s history and a claim was filed for the artwork.

In recent years, lawyers for the Adler heirs and defenders for the Guggenheim Museum have been embroiled in a legal battle over ownership of the painting, culminating in a recent lawsuit.

“Sold to a Jew, not a Nazi,” they say in the museum.

Guggenheim commented to the BBC that he takes questions of art origin and return claims seriously, but believes that, in relation to this particular painting, the claim by Adler’s descendants is “unfounded”.

The fate of works of art sold or looted during the Nazi period in Germany has been the subject of perpetual controversy. Many Jews and others who escaped persecution were forced to sell their property, including valuable works of art, to save themselves. From others, works of art were stolen without turnover.

In 1998, forty-four states signed the “Washington Principles” for art confiscated by the Nazis to deal fairly with such cases.

Picasso’s “Woman Ironing Clothes”, however, should not be considered a work of art confiscated by the Nazis, Guggenheim pointed out, noting that the painting was not sold in Germany, but after the Adlers left, and was sold to a Jew. an art collector, not some member of the Nazi Party.