Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress finds the following: It is estimated that the Nazis confiscated or otherwise misappropriated as many as 650,000 works of art throughout Europe as part of their genocidal campaign against the Jewish people and other persecuted groups. This has been described as the greatest displacement of art in human history . Following World War II, the United States and its allies attempted to return the stolen artworks to their countries of origin. Despite these efforts, many works of art were never reunited with their owners.
Some of the art has since been discovered in the United States. In 1998, the United States convened a conference with 44 nations in Washington, DC, known as the Washington Conference, which produced Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. One of these principles is that steps should be taken expeditiously to achieve a just and fair solution to claims involving such art that has not been restituted if the owners or their heirs can be identified. The same year, Congress enacted the Holocaust Victims Redress Act ( Public Law 105–158 , 112 Stat. 15), which expressed the sense of Congress that all governments should undertake good faith efforts to facilitate the return of private and public property, such as works of art, to the rightful owners in cases where assets were confiscated from the claimant during the period of Nazi rule and there is reasonable proof that the claimant is the rightful owner. .
In 2009, the United States participated in a Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague, Czech Republic, with 45 other nations. At the conclusion of this conference, the participating nations issued the Terezin Declaration, which reaffirmed the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art and urged all participants to ensure that their legal systems or alternative processes, while taking into account the different legal traditions, facilitate just and fair solutions with regard to Nazi-confiscated and looted art, and to make certain that claims to recover such art are resolved expeditiously and based on the facts and merits of the claims and all the relevant documents submitted by all parties. .
The Declaration also urged participants to consider all relevant issues when applying various legal provisions that may impede the restitution of art and cultural property, in order to achieve just and fair solutions, as well as alternative dispute resolution, where appropriate under law. . Numerous victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs have taken legal action to recover Nazi-confiscated art. These lawsuits face significant procedural obstacles partly due to State statutes of limitations, which typically bar claims within some limited number of years from either the date of the loss or the date that the claim should have been discovered.
In some cases, this means that the claims expired before World War II even ended. (See, e.g., The Detroit Institute of Arts v. Ullin, No. 06–10333, 2007 WL 1016996 (E.D. Mich. Mar. 31, 2007).) The unique and horrific circumstances of World War II and the Holocaust make statutes of limitations and other time-based procedural defenses especially burdensome to the victims and their heirs. Those seeking recovery of Nazi-confiscated art must painstakingly piece together their cases from a fragmentary historical record ravaged by persecution, war, and genocide.
This costly process often cannot be done within the time constraints imposed by existing law. Federal legislation is needed because the only court that has considered the question held that the Constitution prohibits States from making exceptions to their statutes of limitations to accommodate claims involving the recovery of Nazi-confiscated art. In Von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum of Art, 592 F.3d 954 (9th Cir. 2009), the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit invalidated a California law that extended the State statute of limitations for claims seeking recovery of Holocaust-era artwork.
The Court held that the law was an unconstitutional infringement of the Federal Government’s exclusive authority over foreign affairs, which includes the resolution of war-related disputes. In light of this precedent, the enactment of a Federal law is the best way to ensure that claims to Nazi-confiscated art are adjudicated on their merits.
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- Pub. L. 105-158
- 592 F.3d 954
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