The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act quietly became law on Friday with President Obama’s signature. A small but significant victory against the evils of the Holocaust, the bipartisan HEAR Act resets statutes of limitation for Holocaust-era art thefts.
The bill—co-sponsored by Texas Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—was introduced in April, in part as an effort to make good on promises set forth nearly twenty years ago. In 1998, an accord known as the Washington Principles formally committed the United States to simplifying restitution of artworks stolen by the Nazis.
The HEAR Act, as law, dissolves an exceptionally cruel impediment to restitution.
“Today, with the President’s signature, we delivered a long-overdue victory for the families of Holocaust victims,” said Sen. Cruz in a statement Friday.
“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.”
There was little doubt the HEAR Act, uncontroversial and overdue, would be signed into law after it unanimously passed the House of Representatives earlier this month and the Senate on December 11, hours before Congress left session. But its official enactment nevertheless represents a remarkable triumph for justice, both symbolically profound and legally practical.
Digitized museum archives and high-profile attention to looted-art restitution have drawn public notice to the difficult process of reclaiming inheritance that was stolen by the Nazis. Until now, legal time constraints presented a particularly cruel snag to fair, full-faith proceedings.
Nazi plunder, regarded as the greatest systematic art theft in world history, constitutes a cultural genocide—and, as such, merits exceptional legal status, advocates contend. Legal time limits on heirs’ claiming their ancestors’ stolen art undermined the moral imperative to never forget.
Under this new federal law, the clock starts ticking on a six-year statute of limitations only once an heir has formally filed his claim. Statutes of limitation previously varied according to state law, and might have stood in the way of justice for crimes committed a lifetime ago in an effort to eradicate the cultural heritage of six million European Jews.
As fewer and fewer living survivors of the Holocaust remain to pass on first-hand witness, reclaiming their generation’s stolen heritage gains even greater urgency. Now, heirs’ and survivors’ claims have one less hurdle before them.
