The Dutch government is handing over millions of dollars of artwork from its National Collection to the heirs of a Jewish art collector who died while fleeing Amsterdam in 1940 during the Nazi invasion.

Following the recommendations of a restitution committee created to examine claims for property seized in the Holocaust, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science said yesterday it would give 202 pieces of art to the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker. The heirs live in the New York area.

A large portion of the works, including paintings by Dutch masters like Steen and van Dyck, are now on loan to Dutch museums, including Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, and government agencies, including foreign embassies. A press officer for the Dutch Embassy in Washington would not confirm whether it possesses any works from the Goudstikker collection.

In a telephone interview from Amsterdam with The New York Sun, the widow of Goudstikker’s only son, Marei von Saher, said the works would be returned to her over the course of the next year.

“We’ve been here five days reading rumors. Finally, when the decision happened today, we were relieved, excited, and overwhelmed,” Ms. von Saher, who lives in Greenwich, Conn., said.

She said her family had not yet decided what to do with the works once they are returned.

Goudstikker’s pre-World War II collection comprised at least 1,100 works, including pieces by old masters like Rembrandt, Goya, Rubens, and Raphael. Ms. von Saher said she would continue to try to recover an estimated 1,000 works that are still missing.

According to the restitution committee’s report, after Goudstikker fled the Netherlands, some of his employees who stayed behind sold the Goudstikker collection to Nazi leader Herman Goering and his agent, Alois Miedl. The committee found the sale to be involuntary and recommended that Holland return 202 of the 267 works Goudstikker’s heirs laid claim to. The committee disputed the Goudstikkers’ rights to the remaining 65 works.

Holland’s secretary of state for culture, Medy van der Laan, said the decision was “a big loss for the museums,” the BBC reported.

Also yesterday, a museum in Vienna prepared to return five works by Gustav Klimt to one of the heirs of a Jewish family that owned the paintings before they were seized by the Nazis. According to the Associated Press, the paintings must be returned to Maria Altmann of Beverly Hills, Calif. The Associated Press reported that Austria had hoped to buy back the paintings, but said last week it could not afford their $300 million price tag.

As reported by the Sun late last month, the Goudstikker heirs received an undisclosed amount of money when a 15th-century relief by Donatello was bought by the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, at Sotheby’s Old Masters painting auction in New York.

A lawyer specializing in art restitution who represented the Goudstikker heirs, Dick Schonis, said yesterday’s decision reflected a change in the way governments would look at other claims involving looted art from World War II.

“The Dutch government decided to institute a committee to look at claims not only in a legal way, but also in a moral way. That is what should be done,” Mr. Schonis said.