Sen. Cruz Chairs Hearing on Reuniting Nazi-Confiscated Art with Its Rightful Owners

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, today chaired a hearing titled ‘Reuniting Victims with Their Lost Heritage,’ focused on S. 2763, The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act. Cruz cosponsored the HEAR Act with Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). 

The HEAR Act facilitates the return of artwork stolen by Nazis during the Holocaust to their rightful owners or heirs. The HEAR Act would ensure that claims in the United States to Nazi-confiscated art are resolved in a fair and just manner on the merits, and are not barred by state statutes of limitations and other procedural defenses. Doing so is consistent with long-standing U.S. foreign policy, as expressed in the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, the Holocaust Victims Redress Act, and the 2009 Terezin Declaration. 

“Sadly, even today—over 70 years later—we are still trying to cope with the consequences of the Holocaust,” Sen. Cruz said in his opening statement. “One consequence that we are here today to address is the Nazis’ looting of hundreds of thousands of works of art and other cultural property in what has been described as the ‘greatest displacement of art in human history.’ Despite the Allies’ restitution efforts following the war, much of the stolen property was never reunited with their rightful owners. And over the years, often through sheer happenstance, many works found their way into American museums and galleries… This bill will help ensure that claims for the restitution of Nazi-looted art are adjudicated based on the facts and merits, and are not short-circuited by technical or non-merits defenses that often work to the disadvantage of Holocaust victims and their families.”

Watch Sen. Cruz’s opening statement in its entirety here. The full transcript of the senator’s opening statement is available below:

“On this day 72 years ago, American, British, and Canadian troops had fought their way ten miles inland of the Normandy coast in France. It was the day after D-Day, which launched the Allied Forces’ invasion to free Europe from the grip of the Third Reich. As our troops swept across Europe and into Germany, what they found would shock and appall the world. They liberated places like Dachau and Buchenwald…concentration camps where the Nazis sent unspeakable numbers of Jews to force labor, and many to their death. 

“They also discovered, hidden away in churches and underground mines, countless works of art and other valuable cultural property that the Nazis had taken from their victims. These stolen treasures were not simply the spoils of war; they were the fruits of a policy that stretched back well before the war to 1933 when Hitler and the Nazi Party took power. This policy called for the systematic discrimination and oppression of Jews and other groups whom the Nazis regarded as unacceptable according to their evil ideology. The Nazis enacted laws denying citizenship to Jews, segregating them from German society, banning marriages between them and Germans, and expropriating their property.

“The goal, of course, was to dehumanize the Jewish people—a process that led inexorably to the so-called ‘Final Solution’—the Nazi euphemism for the policy of extermination. After all, if a regime is willing to strip people of their citizenship, their homes, their businesses, their precious belongings, it is not much further of a step to expect that it may try to take their lives as well. And that is precisely what the Nazis did to the Jewish people on a horrific and unprecedented scale. 

“Sadly, even today—over 70 years later—we are still trying to cope with the consequences of the Holocaust. One consequence that we are here today to address is the Nazis’ looting of hundreds of thousands of works of art and other cultural property in what has been described as the ‘greatest displacement of art in human history.’ Despite the Allies’ restitution efforts following the war, much of the stolen property was never reunited with its rightful owners. And over the years, often through sheer happenstance, many works found their way into American museums and galleries.

“The great dislocations caused by the Holocaust and a world war, followed by a Cold War that lasted another fifty years, made it difficult, if not almost impossible, for many Holocaust victims and their families to locate or prove the ownership of their stolen valuables. Records were lost or destroyed. Some were inaccessible because of the Cold War. And many transfers of property went unrecorded on the black market. To undertake the herculean task of tracking down lost possessions under these circumstances would have been a tall order even for a family with the resources to do so.

“But many surviving families were left with nothing after the war having narrowly escaped extinction. Many families were not emotionally and psychologically prepared for such an arduous undertaking. And in many cases, the work of finding and reclaiming a family’s stolen heritage fell to future generations. This work, unfortunately, remains unfinished.

“The HEAR Act—which I am proud to sponsor with Sens. Cornyn and Schumer and Blumenthal—is intended to ease the burden on these families by temporarily suspending state time-based litigation defenses—like statutes of limitations and laches. Instead, it creates a uniform federal six-year statute of limitations that is tailored to the unique circumstances of Holocaust-era disputes.

“This bill will help ensure that claims for the restitution of Nazi-looted art are adjudicated based on the actual facts and merits, and are not short-circuited by technical or non-merits defenses that far too often work to the disadvantage of Holocaust victims and their families.

“The HEAR Act is just one modest step to make good on the commitments that the United States has made since it agreed to the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art in 1998. These principles declared that families ‘should be encouraged to come forward and make known their claims to art that was confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted’ and that ‘steps should be taken expeditiously to achieve a just and fair solution’ to such claims. More recently, in 2009, the United States adopted the Terezin Declaration, which called on the signatories to ‘make certain’ that claims to Nazi-looted art ‘are resolved expeditiously and based on the facts and merits of the claims.’ This is what the HEAR Act aims to help accomplish.

“The quest to reunite the families of Holocaust victims with their stolen heritage is ultimately a quest to help them reclaim a tangible link to a happier time in their family’s history—a time before the darkness of the Holocaust. That is far more valuable than whatever economic value the works of art or cultural artifacts might have today. Indeed, that is priceless.

“There are many issues on which the sponsors of this legislation -- Sen. Cornyn, Sen. Blumenthal, Sen. Schumer, and I – many issues on which we might disagree. But on this issue, I’m proud to see bipartisan cooperation and coming together in defense of principles of justice. That’s what this hearing is about, and I’m pleased to welcome the witnesses that are here to testify on these important issues.”

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