US scraps deadline for Holocaust-looted art claims, paving way for new restitution efforts |
JTA — A new US law removing a deadline for laying claim to art looted during the Holocaust has gone into effect after President Donald Trump signed it on Monday.
The 2025 Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act, or HEAR Act, expands on a 2016 law, signed by then-US president Barack Obama, that permits victims and descendants of victims of the Holocaust to lay legal claim to works of art looted by the Nazis or sold to the Nazis under false pretenses.
That law included a controversial “sunset clause” that required all claims of artwork looted by the Nazis to be filed by the end of this year. That clause has been removed, and the revised act permits families to file a lawsuit within six years of the discovery of looted artwork.
The law also further protects those seeking to retrieve their family’s looted property by preventing the current holders from using certain legal tactics unrelated to the subject matter — such as requesting to switch courts — during proceedings.
“For years, the sunset clause cast a shadow over every survivor and family whose stolen art is still missing,” Joel Greenberg, president of Art Ashes, a nonprofit that helps families recover their looted art, said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Now they can seek due process without the pressure of time and deadlines.”
Hundreds of thousands of pieces of fine art were looted from their Jewish owners by the........