War does terrible things to people on both sides in a conflict. Families are torn apart, loyalties are sometimes divided and possessions are plundered.
The two daughters of the famous German industrialist Friedrich Siemens know this only too well. The family's private collection of French 19th-century painting was taken by the Red Army as it swept through Berlin in 1945.
It now forms part of a collection of 74 French oil paintings which are on display at the Hermitage. Until last week they had been stashed away in its depositories since the end of the war.
Anabele Von Johnston and Daniela Brabner-Smith can lay claim to at least two of the great masterpieces.
A Delacroix entitled "Flowers" painted between 1847 and 1849 and Edgar Degas' "Interior with Two Figures," painted in 1869, came from the family collection. In the catalog to the exhibition "Hidden Treasures Revealed" the painting is indifferently listed from "an unknown collection" but the Siemens daughters have legal documentation to prove it is from their father's collection.
Daniela Brabner-Smith said, "I grew up with these paintings and I can never remember a day without seeing them in our family house. When I saw them again after all these years my first feelings were of happiness especially when I remember how much my father loved them.
"We would obviously like to get them back. No one ever has the right to take what is not their property." An interesting story surrounds the paintings. They were two of 11 which were housed in the Siemens mansion in Berlin.
In 1943 Freidrich Siemens' brother became involved in plots to overthrow Hitler and was found out and executed. The rest of the family, which occupied a wealthy and privileged position in German society, became fearful that suspicion would fall on them.
Ironically their father, whose factories contributed toward the German war effort, was forced to hide his paintings in the depositories of the Berlin Museum to avoid confiscation by the Nazis if he was arrested.
They were discovered by the Russians, brought to Moscow and St Petersburg and never returned to their rightful owners. Now these and hundreds of other art works are caught up in an immense political and cultural conflict between the two countries over the issue of the return of plundered works of art.
The paintings were brought to Russia without frames and form a broad panorama of French painting of the period from the 19th century to the start of the 20th century. It opens with Camille Corot's work "The Cliff" (1828) and ends with Henri Matisse's "Ballerina" (1927).
The middle of the 19th century is represented with works by Eugene Delacroix, Honore Daumier and Gustave Courbet and includes five still-lifes by Henri Fontain-Latour. But the exhibition gives pride of place to works by the most famous painters of the second half of the 19th century, including the impressionists and their successors.
Amongst these are works by the impressionist painters Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Paul Signac and the celebrated masterpiece "Place de la Concorde" by Edgar Degas. Of 20th century painting there are masterpieces by Georges Rouault "Naked Woman with Raised Arm" (1906), landscapes by Albert Marquet and Andre Derain, and Pablo Picasso's "Absinthe" (1901).
But on the difficult question of restitution Siemen's daughter Anabele Von Johnston was more realistic. She said, "As for me, my first feeling is one of thankfulness that people can come and see them. As for my father, he loved these pictures and bought them for a tiny fraction of their value today from a gallery shop in Berlin between 1925 and 1929.
"It was never seen then that they were or would be valuable, they were seen as a way to furnish a wonderful house. Now they have changed so much in value they are not private any more," she said.