Report lists 24 countries making ‘little to no progress’ in returning Nazi-looted art
The noncompliant states, which include major economies and EU members, are named in a report unveiled at a State Department event promoting restitution
Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter
Most of the 47 countries included in a report unveiled at a State Department event on the restitution of artworks looted in the Holocaust have made “little to no progress” on the matter, according to a new survey.
The report published Tuesday, which is titled “Holocaust-Era Looted Cultural Property: A Current Worldwide Overview,” assesses the countries’ progress in implementing the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art of 1998.
The World Jewish Restitution Organization unveiled the report during an event co-organized with the Department of State at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The State Department also published a set of best practices that it said “reinforce the Washington Principles, including by recognizing that forced sales happened and underscoring the urgency of resolving remaining claims for property.” So far, 21 countries have endorsed the best practices.
A set of guidelines formulated in December 1998, the Washington Principles came out of the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets. That conference brought together representatives from 44 countries, NGO representatives, and art market observers. The legally non-binding guidelines speak of the need to identify Nazi-looted art to locate its owners for restitution talks.
The 47 countries surveyed in the new report endorsed the 2009 Terezin Declaration, which incorporated the Washington Conference Principles.
Tuesday’s survey lists 24 countries that had made “little or no progress yet” in implementing the Washington Conference Principles. That list includes major world economies as well as member states of the European Union and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
EU member states Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Ireland, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus and Malta are among the noncompliant 24 countries, as is Australia. Other notable countries on the list are Brazil, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, along with six Balkan nations and Uruguay.
“The Holocaust was not only the largest genocide in history. It was one of the largest mass thefts in history,” said US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in a pre-filmed speech for Tuesday’s event, titled the 25th Anniversary of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art.
Blinken, who is Jewish, said that his family in Poland was among the countless victims of Nazi dispossession. A soldier serving Nazi Germany stole the wedding ring of the mother of Blinken’s late stepfather before loading her onto a train bound for a death camp, he said in the video.
“Of the millions of works of art and cultural property stolen by the Nazis, countless objects still have not been returned to their owners,” Blinken said. “Today, too many governments, museums, dealers, galleries, and individuals still resist restitution efforts.”
Stuart Eizenstat, Blinken’s special advisor on Holocaust issues, said at the anniversary event that even though the best practices and the original guidelines “are legally non-binding, they are morally important.”
Restitution from public bodies or private individuals “is not just about returning what was taken; it’s about reconnecting families and communities with their heritage,” said Gideon Taylor, president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization.
Israel, Canada and Switzerland have made “substantial progress,” Tuesday’s report stated, but their efforts fell short of those of the seven countries that made “major” progress: the United States, Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Austria and the Czech Republic.
In 2022, the Amsterdam municipality settled a protracted dispute concerning a pricey painting by Wassily Kandinsky that it acknowledged was stolen by the Nazis from Jewish owners but kept anyway at the city-owned Stedelijk Museum, citing the painting’s cultural significance. The municipality handed over to the heirs of Robert Lewenstein and Irma Klein the 1909 work, “Painting With Houses.”
Stuart E. Eizenstat, the Secretary of State’s Special Adviser on Holocaust Issues (second from right) and Ellen Germain, U.S. State Department Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues (right) at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. on March 5, 2024. (Butcherphotography, courtesy of the World Jewish Restitution Organization)
Thirteen countries made “some” progress in adopting the Washington Principles, according to Tuesday’s report.
“Museums in many countries continue to ignore the need for provenance research, and in most countries, it is not seen as an essential part of museum practice,” the report also said. Provenance research, it noted, has nonetheless “grown greatly and has become much more advanced, partly as the result of greater access to archives and the effect of digitization.”
