Can Californian Sue Austria for Nazi Theft?

Feb. 28 -- Maria Altmann, an 88-year-old Los Angeles woman who escaped the Holocaust, came to Washington, D.C., where she and her family visited the U.S. Memorial Holocaust Museum and took in the sights.

Then on Wednesday, she went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she tried to secure the right to sue the government of Austria for millions of dollars of artwork Nazis plundered from her family.

Adding to the drama of the case, Austria v. Altmann, the U.S. government — led by the Bush administration's attorney, Solicitor General Ted Olson — sided against her.

It is undisputed that six paintings by Austrian master Gustav Klimt once belonged to Altmann's family, which fled Austria after the Nazis invaded in 1938. Two of the paintings, in fact, are of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, commissioned by Maria Altmann's uncle, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer; a reproduction of one hangs in Maria's Los Angeles home.

"She died when I was very young," Maria Altmann recalled in an interview with ABCNEWS. "I was only 9 years old when she died. When my uncle commissioned Klimt to paint it, it was totally affordable."

But Altmann says the paintings are now valued at $150 million, which to say the least complicates her efforts to reclaim them — though the paintings' worth seems the least of the hurdles in Maria Altmann's path.

A Bad Precedent?

In 2000, Altmann sued Austria in U.S. District Court to try to recover the paintings, which hang in Austria's government-run National Gallery.

But the U.S. government says a 1976 law, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, precludes lawsuits against foreign countries — though some courts have disputed whether the law applies to events that transpired before the law was enacted, and even before the 1952 State Department guideline upon which the law is based.