The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act passed the Senate in a late-night session Friday, rolling through with unanimous support. A bipartisan bill from its inception, the HEAR Act will likely become federal law and institute a universal reset of the statutes of limitation for Holocaust-era art thefts.
Statutes of limitation too often stunt justice for seventy-year-old crimes that, lawmakers agree, demand exceptional legal status. Pending the president’s signature, the HEAR Act will help ensure heirs robbed of their heritage see their day in court.
A painting’s provenance tends to go dark during wartime, and even if an heir manages to track down his ancestor’s artwork after years of research against unyielding odds, his claim may be hobbled by state law. Justice, shackled by fate, may depend on where the art market has deposited a ancestor’s collection of Van Eyck miniatures. Thanks to an uneven patchwork of laws state-by-state, a too-short statute of limitation rule might preclude a rightful heir’s viable claim—hence the federal reset.
Texas senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, co-sponsors who introduced the bill along with Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, hailed the Senate’s passage of the HEAR Act as a symbolic victory for victims of the Holocaust.
Senator Cruz called the HEAR Act a “long overdue victory” and considered its significance in the context of a broader national campaign against a legacy of profound evil. “This bipartisan legislation rights a terrible injustice and sends a clear signal that America will continue to root out every noxious vestige of the Nazi regime,” Cruz said in a statement.
“Artwork lost during the Holocaust is not just property – to many victims and their families it is a reminder of the vanished world of their families,” Senator Cornyn said.
In 1998 a forty-four nations agreed to the Washington Principles, among them: “Nations are encouraged to develop national processes to implement these principles, particularly as they relate to alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for resolving ownership issues.”
The HEAR Act, by dissolving one restriction on restitution, begins to fulfill these decades-old promises. And it seems sensible to start with statutes of limitation, a cruel obstacle given the timeless existential scope of the crime in question.
Renowned art collector and president of the World Jewish Congress Ronald S. Lauder welcomed progress toward a fairer restitution process. “This important legislation will allow those seeking to recover art and other heritage stolen by the Nazis a fair opportunity to have their cases judged on the facts, rather than be undercut by legal technicalities,” Lauder said in a statement to mark the bill’s passage.
Lauder, a former ambassador to Austria and a leading advocate for looted art recovery, appealed to lawmakers in an op-ed published December 1: “What makes this egregious theft of culture and heritage even worse is how governments, museums, auction houses and unscrupulous collectors quietly allowed it to continue,” he wrote. The HEAR Act passed the House of Representatives unanimously December 7.
At Lauder’s Neue Galerie in Manhattan, a current exhibition of portraiture from golden age Vienna features portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gustav Klimt. In 2006, Adele Bloch-Bauer’s niece Maria Altmann successfully reclaimed another of Klimt’s portraits of her aunt from the Austrian government.
Her high-profile case and the Hollywood movie her subsequent memoir inspired have helped draw attention this one correctable injustice and propel the HEAR Act’s progress. (In June, film star Dame Helen Mirren’s testimony in support of the bill had Capitol Hill aflutter.)
At the time of the bill’s introduction in the Senate earlier this year, THE WEEKLY STANDARD wrote:
The process of seeking restitution will never be a simple one. But the removal of just one obstacle brings justice slightly nearer.
