Last chance for Holocaust restitution
10 European countries that pose obstacles for restitution-seekers
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PrintPRAGUE – Ten European Union countries where claimants of looted art, communal property, or private property face serious obstacles:
• Poland: Has not enacted any form of private restitution or compensation for an estimated $30.5 billion worth of property confiscated by Nazis or Communists. The Jewish share of claims on those properties is estimated at 20 percent to 27 percent. Poland has a very slow and burdensome process for restitution of Jewish communal property. Since 1997, 5,500 claims were filed but only 1,625 were adjudicated.
• Lithuania: Has not enacted communal property restitution. The government had offered to pay $46 million over 10 years to a Jewish fund — about one-third of the value of the claimed properties — starting in 2011 before shifting recently and suggesting that such a fund might contravene Lithuanian law. A number of cultural institutions in Lithuania hold looted Jewish artifacts, and little to no provenance research has been done on holdings. Lithuania’s claims process for private property bars non-citizens from making claims.
• Germany: Has supported the return of looted art, but in May it acknowledged that museums and galleries still have thousands of looted works. Provenance research, documentation of ownership, and sales history are underfunded. The government commission that handles art claims is viewed as ineffective because it requires the permission of the current art owners to mediate cases. Researchers claim museums and archives are frequently uncooperative. On property restitution, Germany is the leading European Union member to return Jewish properties.
• Ireland: Never signed the 1998 Washington Principles on Looted Art, which would require provenance research and facilitation of the claims process. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has accused the Hunt Museum, one of Ireland’s greatest private collections, of housing looted art, but an Irish investigatory commission cleared the museum of wrongdoing.
• Greece: Little to no provenance research has been conducted at its numerous state museums.
• Hungary: Blocks nearly all attempts to retrieve looted art. The National Gallery and Museum of Fine Arts hold looted art.
• Romania. Has excessively slow and burdensome Jewish communal property restitution. Three hundred of 1,980 claims have been adjudicated since 1997.
• Slovenia: Private property is returned only to current citizens, and only if it was confiscated in 1945 or after.
• Bulgaria: Does not conduct provenance research at its museums.
• Spain: Has looted art in its cultural institutions, but Spain does not conduct provenance research on art.
JTA
Sources: JTA analysis of information provided by Claims Conference, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, American Jewish Committee, community leaders in Europe, U.S. government reports, and nongovernmental organizations.
More on: Last chance for Holocaust restitution
 | Last Friday, the Lithuanian tabloid Vakaro Zinios cast Rabbi Andrew Baker, top, as a villain for his demand that Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, bottom, return Jewish property after eight years of promises to do so. |
PRAGUE – It has the tone of a newspaper from Berlin in 1936, except it’s from Vilnius in 2009.
The face of a rabbi is enlarged on the cover of a Lithuanian tabloid with the words “Give it now!” emblazoned across the top. The subject, Rabbi Andrew Baker, director of international affairs for the American Jewish Committee, is cast as the villain, looking down on a miniature Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, portrayed as defenseless at the hands of some Shylock.
The image, which appeared on the June 26 edition of the popular right-wing daily Vakaro Zinios (The Evening News), alludes to Baker’s demand that the Lithuanian government return Jewish property after eight years of promises to do so.
‘Needs are immediate and we are all too aware of them’
PRAGUE – Just when charitable agencies are struggling to provide services, 46 nations have called for greater aid to needy Holocaust survivors. No one suggests that communal agencies take on this obligation, but in the United States, immediate support is unlikely to come from any other source.
With a declaration endorsed on Tuesday at the Terezin concentration camp, the nations — primarily European — concluded a four-day conference on Holocaust-era assets. The conference, hosted by the Czech Republic, was the first international diplomatic forum on Nazi victims’ material losses in slightly over a decade. It also was the first to include the social welfare of survivors on the agenda.
“It is unacceptable that those who suffered so greatly during the earlier part of their lives should live under impoverished circumstances at the end,” said the Terezin Declaration.
‘We are here to ignite momentum before it is too late’
PRAGUE – Stuart Eizenstat, who led the U.S. government delegation to the June 26-29 Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague, sat down with JTA for an interview on the eve of the conference.
The conference, organized by the Czech government, brought together representatives of 49 countries for what participants said was likely to be the last major attempt to compensate Holocaust victims and their heirs for art and property confiscated or sold under duress during the Nazi era.
Eizenstat, a lawyer who served as undersecretary of state under President Clinton and recently was appointed chairman of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, is largely credited with getting Jewish property restitution started in the former Eastern bloc after the end of the Communist era. He also was the lead negotiator in the $1.25 billion settlement with Swiss banks in 1999.
