Congress Can Deliver Justice: Extend and Strengthen the HEAR Act to Return Nazi‑Looted Art

Congress Can Deliver Justice: Extend and Strengthen the HEAR Act

For nearly eighty years, families torn apart by the Holocaust have pursued the return of property and artworks stolen by the Nazis. Hundreds of thousands of artworks and cultural objects were seized in one of history's largest organized thefts, and billions of dollars' worth of cultural property remain missing. For survivors and their descendants, recovering these pieces is about more than financial value: it is about restoring histories the Nazis sought to erase.

In 2016, Congress unanimously passed the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act to make such restoration possible. The law recognized a simple reality: in the chaotic years after World War II, Jewish families were dispersed across continents and often unable to determine what or who had survived. During that time, looted art moved through underground markets and into museums, dealers' inventories, auction houses and private collections worldwide. The HEAR Act set a clear rule: once an heir locates a stolen work, they have six years to bring a claim.

Yet in the nine years since the HEAR Act took effect, some courts and cultural institutions have worked against that intent. Instead of focusing on the central question — was this work looted by the Nazis? — some defendants have relied on procedural technicalities to avoid accountability. The result has been a quiet but serious rollback of the protections Congress intended.

Illustrative Case: A lead lawyer for a major New York museum asked whether an affidavit 'signed' at Dachau and presented as transferring an art collection could have been the product of coercion. The document's purported signatory and his wife were murdered within two months. The suggestion that such a document reflected free will underscores how far some institutions will go to resist restitution.

Congress is now considering legislation to strengthen and extend the HEAR Act before the 2016 law sunsets. The proposed HEAR Act of 2025 recently cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee 22–0, receiving unanimous bipartisan support. Despite this, some museum leaders, including the Association of Art Museum Directors, are campaigning to block or weaken the extension — even proposing a new sunset clause that would reinstate the very time limits the original law sought to remove.

Opponents predict a flood of frivolous suits, but experience under the HEAR Act does not support that claim: in nearly a decade of litigation under the law, no baseless Holocaust restitution case has been filed. If a meritless claim did appear, Rule 11 sanctions — like in any federal civil case — would apply.

Some defenders assert that Nazi‑looted works only 'inadvertently entered' American collections. That narrative overlooks U.S. government warnings sent to American museums after World War II that 'no clear title can pass on objects that have been looted from public or private collections abroad.' It also downplays evidence that some institutions historically turned a blind eye to tainted works and have not always prioritized continued provenance research.

Proposals for a new sunset clause risk encouraging concealment and protecting those who hope to hide the truth. For decades, families searching for stolen works encountered locked archives, private collections and an art market built on secrecy. Recreating those obstacles would be a grave injustice.

Strengthening the HEAR Act does not predetermine outcomes or strip defendants of their rights. It simply ensures that judges can hear the facts and decide cases on their merits: Did the family own the object, and was it looted by the Nazis? Negotiation without the credible possibility of litigation is not true negotiation — it is capitulation, forcing families to accept terms set by the holder of contested property.

For survivors and their descendants, this may be the last realistic opportunity to correct a historic wrong. Congress faces a moral choice: side with victims seeking justice, or side with institutions betting they can run out the clock.

Joel Greenberg is president of Art Ashes, a nonprofit that assists families in recovering Nazi‑looted art, and a founder of Susquehanna International Group.

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved.