Siegel operators for holomorphic differential forms

We give a geometric interpretation of the Siegel operators for holomorphic differential forms on Siegel modular varieties. This involves extension of the differential forms over a toroidal compactification, and we show that the Siegel operator essentially describes the restriction and descent to the boundary Kuga variety via holomorphic Leray filtration. As a consequence, we obtain equivalence of various notions of "vanishing at boundary’’ for holomorphic forms. We also study the case of orthogonal modular varieties.