The Brief

In 1943, Hedy Shenk arrived in Los Angeles. She was one of the thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe fleeing the Nazis. Life as a single mother was hard, and Hedy worked tirelessly as a bus driver, quality control supervisor at Xerox, and toy entrepreneur.

But Hedy had another job, which meant more to her than any other. She was determined to reclaim the artworks and treasures stolen from her family during the horrors of the Holocaust.

RECLAIMED: A Family Painting, on view at the Skirball Cultural Center Oct. 19 to March 3, tells the remarkable story of Hedy, her daughter, Liz Goldman, and her granddaughter, Cheryl Bernstein. These three generations of Angeleno women spent over eight decades fighting to regain their rightful inheritance. “

The desire to heal wounds, to understand your family history is very strong, and neither restitution or reclamation is about making money,” Cheryl Bernstein says in a testimonial video on view at the exhibition. “It's more about understanding family, bringing families back together.”

Johann and Lisbeth Bloch in Brno, Czechoslovakia, c. 1903

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Carl Pietzner, K.U.K Hof-Atelier

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Courtesy of Elizabeth H. Scholtz

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The family’s saga begins in another time and place. Hedy was born in 1906, to Johann and Lisbeth Bloch. Johann ran E. Block & Company, his family’s prominent leather goods business. The elegant Bloch home in Brno, Czechoslovakia, was a vibrant, cultural place, filled with noted artworks and Czech glass collected by Lisbeth. The Blochs passed on their love of the arts to their daughter, Hedy, who took art classes and learned how to sew from the family’s live-in seamstress.

In 1922, the Blochs purchased their most valuable work, Baroque German artist Johann Carl Loth’s 17th century painting Isaac Blessing Jacob from the Dorotheum Auction House in Vienna. The painting was hung in place of honor in their dining room, which was often graced by members of their close, extended family, many who would later be killed in the Holocaust.

Lisbeth would have little time to enjoy her prized painting. She was killed in a car crash in 1928. Life went on, and Hedy married a Catholic engineer named Leo Schenck (Hedy would later change the spelling of her name to Shenk). Their daughter, Liz, was born in 1936. But the family’s happiness was tempered by the growing menace of the Nazis.

Isaac Blessing Jacob by Johann Carl Loth

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Robert Wedemeyer

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Loan courtesy of Elizabeth H. Scholtz

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Aware of the enormous danger facing him as Jewish man, Johann and his new wife, Erna, attempted to get a visa to Switzerland, but they were denied. In September 1938, the Nazi-controlled Czech government confiscated the Blochs’ grand Brno home, along with their art collection. Johann and Erna fled to family in Prague. While still attempting to export his art collection to England for safety, Johann died of natural causes in 1940. Erna was killed by the Nazis.

The family believes that Isaac Blessing Jacob was stolen from the Bloch house in 1939, and resold at Dorotheum Auction House, one of approximately 600,000 Jewish owned artworks looted by the Nazis.

Bloch Family Dining Room in Brno, Czechoslovakia, 1930s

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Dr. Bruno Wolf

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Courtesy of Elizabeth H. Scholtz

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Meanwhile, Hedy and her husband were in their own race to escape. In 1938, Hedy and her daughter were baptized by a Catholic priest to shield them from anti-Jewish persecution. The young family fled to Switzerland, but Hedy had one more thing she had to do.

In 1939, she ventured back to Brno, collecting important family photos, including one showing Isaac Blessing Jacob in the family dining room, which would prove invaluable in her fight for reclamation.

“My grandmother was so incredibly smart and forward-thinking,” Cheryl Bernstein says. “As she's fleeing in the middle of the night with her toddler, she had the presence of mind to take the professional photographs of the inside of her father's home with her, and the minute she found out her father had died … they started working on his estate.”

Elizabeth Schenk arriving in New York as a refugee, 1940.

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Courtesy of Elizabeth H. Scholtz

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As World War II ravaged Europe, Hedy was able to obtain visas for her family to go to America. In July 1940, they arrived in New York aboard the Cunard White Star’s RMS Scythia along with many other war refugees. A photo of an excited looking four-year-old Liz was published in the Daily News, along with other child refugees. The paper minimized the trauma Liz had suffered, claiming she took the escape as a “lark.”

The small family moved around America as Leo took engineering work before permanently settling in Los Angeles, then a haven for European refugees. Always industrious, Hedy was able to obtain a bank loan to purchase a small apartment building and rent out some of the units to tenants. Hedy and Leo divorced in 1947, and Hedy proved to be an enterprising spirit. In the 1950s, she even created a line of whimsical hand sewn stuffed animals called Hollyfornia Creations.

However, Hedy never forgot the life and inheritance that had been stolen from her. For 50 years, she repeatedly filed art claims with the Czech and German governments, using photos and surviving family members’ testimony to prove ownership.

With her modest funds, Hedy hired expensive international lawyers and traveled to Europe repeatedly in an attempt to track down her family’s collection. In the 1960s, Liz joined in the search and brought her daughter Cheryl along. Together, the three-generations toured Austrian salt mines, where Nazis reportedly hid looted art, and visited the Bloch family home in Brno searching for clues.

Although Hedy would receive modest reparations and payments from the Blochs’ confiscated bank accounts and property, she was never able to recover Loth’s Isaac Blessing Jacob or her family’s other lost artistic treasures. She died in 1997.

But her daughter and granddaughter were not finished. In the early 2000s, Liz took up the family’s quest. “n 2001, a claim was filed with the Art Loss Register. That claim led to the Holocaust Claims Processing Office.

“It took about 20 years until this very brilliant attorney, Rebecca Friedman, finally started looking into…the Czech claims, that things really started to roll along,” Cheryl says. “In about 2019, she called me with this great news that the Loth painting has shown up at the Dorotheum for auction, and they contacted her because we had a claim. It was really at that point that the hard work started because they had the painting, we knew we were heirs, we had to prove to them that we were the heirs.”

Using Hedy’s meticulous records, her decades of legal correspondence, and the photos she had spirited away, the family was able to prove that Isaac Blessing Jacob was rightfully theirs. In 2020, the painting was finally returned to the Bloch family. In February, four paintings Johann Bloch had been forced to “donate” to the National Gallery Prague were also returned to Cheryl at an official restitution ceremony.

While much of the Bloch collection remains lost, Isaac Blessing Jacob is the centerpiece of RECLAIMED: A Family Painting, hanging in a recreation of the Bloch family dining room, filled with mementoes and artifacts from the family’s century long odyssey.

“This painting has brought my mother and I even closer together. I'm grateful for the journey that this painting brought in my life, and the deeper understanding of everything she went through,” Cheryl Bernstein says. “I am grateful to the Skirball for allowing us to put it here, where I knew it would be honored in the way that I felt my grandmother deserved and my mother deserved. Grandma worked on this her entire life.”

This on-and-off rain is looking like good news ... for wildflower lovers.

We talked to Katie Tilford, our go-to wildflowers expert at the Theodore Payne Foundation here in L.A., which is dedicated to native plants and wildflowers in Southern California.

And she is holding out hope the rains this week and next will be just what we need to see California poppies and more bloom big in the upcoming weeks.

"A little more rain would be nice," she said, "Then I think we’ll have a really good bloom this year. Either way, I think there’s going to be some flowers for sure … but a little more rain would really just kick things up a notch.”

And as for the question we always ask this time of year … will it be a superbloom kind of year?

Only Mother Nature knows for sure. We plant nerds also know that that the term superbloom gets thrown around with regularity during wildflower season, even though it refers to very specific conditions created by a potent cocktail of early rains, cool temps, hot temps, and late rains. So, we repeat: Stay tuned.

But Tilford says she’s already seeing signs there will be plenty of wildflowers to enjoy in the coming weeks, so you might want to make a plan to get out there.

One surefire spot: the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, when the poppies hit full bloom. There is a live cam to help you time your trip for the best blooms.

Another great resource is also the wildflower hotline hosted by Theodore Payne. Starting in March, it will be updated each Friday with the latest wildflower news and tips on where to see it all. Call: 818 768-1802, Ext. 7. 

An annual meeting of the nation's governors that has long served as a rare bipartisan gathering is unraveling after President Donald Trump excluded Democratic governors from White House events.

The National Governors Association said it will no longer hold a formal meeting with Trump when governors are scheduled to convene in Washington later this month, after the White House planned to invite only Republican governors. On Tuesday, 18 Democratic governors also announced they would boycott a traditional dinner at the White House.

"If the reports are true that not all governors are invited to these events, which have historically been productive and bipartisan opportunities for collaboration, we will not be attending the White House dinner this year," the Democrats wrote. "Democratic governors remain united and will never stop fighting to protect and make life better for people in our states."

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who chairs the NGA, told fellow governors in a letter on Monday that the White House intended to limit invitations to the association's annual business meeting, scheduled for Feb. 20, to Republican governors only.

"Because NGA's mission is to represent all 55 governors, the Association is no longer serving as the facilitator for that event, and it is no longer included in our official program," Stitt wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press.

The governors' group, which is scheduled to meet from Feb. 19-21, is one of the few remaining venues where political leaders from both major parties gather to discuss the top issues facing their communities. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday that Trump has "discretion to invite anyone he wants to the White House."

"It's the people's house," she said. "It's also the president's home, so he can invite whomever he wants to dinners and events here at the White House."

Representatives for Sitt and the NGA didn't comment on the letter. Brandon Tatum, the NGA's CEO, said in a statement last week that the White House meeting is an "important tradition" and said the organization was "disappointed in the administration's decision to make it a partisan occasion this year."

In his letter to other governors, Stitt encouraged the group to unite around common goals.

"We cannot allow one divisive action to achieve its goal of dividing us," he wrote. "The solution is not to respond in kind, but to rise above and to remain focused on our shared duty to the people we serve. America's governors have always been models of pragmatic leadership, and that example is most important when Washington grows distracted by politics."

Signs of partisan tensions emerged at the White House meeting last year, when Trump and Maine's Gov. Janet Mills traded barbs.

Trump singled out the Democratic governor over his push to bar transgender athletes from competing in girls' and women's sports, threatening to withhold federal funding from the state if she did not comply. Mills responded, "We'll see you in court."

Trump then predicted that Mills' political career would be over for opposing the order. She is now running for U.S. Senate.

The back-and-forth had a lasting impact on last year's conference and some Democratic governors did not renew their dues last year to the bipartisan group.
Copyright 2026 NPR

A booming industry that charges veterans for help in obtaining the benefits they earned through military service must shut down or dramatically change its business model in California by the end of the year under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Tuesday.

The law prohibits unaccredited private companies from billing former military service members for help with their Department of Veterans Affairs claims.

Technically, it was already illegal under federal law to charge veterans for that work, but Congress 20 years ago removed criminal penalties for violations, and scores of private companies emerged, offering to speed up and maximize benefit claims.

“We owe our veteran community a debt of gratitude — for their years of service and sacrifice," Newsom said in a written statement. "By signing this bill into law, we are ensuring veterans and service members get to keep more money in their pockets, and not line the coffers of predatory actors. We are closing this federal fraud loophole for good.”

Critics call the private companies “claim sharks” because their fees are often five times the monthly benefit increase veterans obtain after using their services. CalMatters in September, for instance, interviewed a Vietnam-era veteran who was billed $5,500 after receiving benefits that would pay him $1,100 a month.

Depending on a disability rating, a claim consulting fee under that model could easily hit $10,000 or more.

“We owe it to our veterans to stand with them and to protect them from being taken advantage of while navigating the benefits they've earned,” said Sen. Bob Archuleta, a Democrat representing Norwalk. Archuleta, a former Army officer, carried the legislation. “This is not about politics; it's about doing what's right. Making millions of dollars on the back of our veterans is wrong. They've earned their benefits. They deserve their benefits.”

California’s new law is part of a tug-of-war over how to regulate claims consulting companies. Congress for several years has been at a stalemate on whether to ban them outright, allow them to operate as they are or regulate them in some other way.

California is among 11 states that have moved to put the companies out of business, while another group of mostly Republican-led states has legalized them, according to reporting by the veteran news organization The War Horse.

That split in some ways reflects the different ways veterans themselves view the companies. The bill had overwhelming support from organizations that help veterans file benefits claims at no cost, such as the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, as well as from Democratic Party leaders, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

But the VA’s claims process can take months and sow uncertainty among applicants. Several of the claims consulting companies say they have helped tens of thousands of veterans across the country, and that they have hundreds of employees.

Those trends led some lawmakers to vote against the measure, including Democrats with military backgrounds.

“We're going to say to you, ‘Veteran, you know what, I don't know if you are too stupid or too vulnerable or your judgment is so poor you can't choose yourself,'” said Sen. Tom Umberg, a Democrat and former Army colonel, during a debate over the measure last month.

The new law was such a close call for lawmakers that nine of 40 senators did not vote on it when it passed that chamber last month, which counts the same as a “no” vote but avoids offending a constituency that the lawmaker wants to keep.

It was also one of the 10 most-debated measures to go before the Legislature last year, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database. Lawmakers spent 4 hours and 39 minutes on the bill at public hearings in 2025 and heard testimony from 99 speakers.

Two claims consulting companies spent significant sums hiring lobbyists as they fought the bill, according to state records. They were Veterans Guardian, a North Carolina-based company that spent $150,000 on California lobbyists over the past two years; and Veterans Benefit Guide, a Nevada-based company that spent $371,821 lobbying on Archuleta’s bill and a similar measure that failed in 2024.

Those companies view laws like California’s as an existential threat. Both have founders with military backgrounds. Veterans Benefit Guide sued to block New Jersey’s law prohibiting fees for veterans claim consulting, and a federal appeals court sided with the company last year.

"This was the hardest bill I’ve had to work on since I’ve been in the Legislature," said Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo, a Santa Clarita Democrat who supported the law. "We know why that is, because there was so much money on the other side."

Charlotte Autolino, who organizes job fairs for former military service members as the chairperson of the Veterans Employment Committee of San Diego, criticized Newsom’s decision to sign the law. She spoke to CalMatters on behalf of Veterans Benefit Guide.

“The veterans lose,” she said. They lose the option. You’re taking an option away from them and you’re putting all of the veterans into one box, and that to me is wrong.”

But David West, a Marine veteran who is Nevada County’s veterans service officer, commended Newsom. West was one of the main advocates for the new law.

“The veterans of California are going to know that when (Newsom) says he’s taking care of everybody, he’s including us; that he values those 18- and 19-year-olds who are raising their hands, writing a blank check in the form of their lives; to then ensure that they aren’t writing checks to access their benefits,” West said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.