12 No. 69 JUSTICE n November of last year, I had the honor of chairing a session titled, “Tackling Injustices from the Time of the Holocaust – Immovable Property and Looted Art” at the Terezín Declaration Conference convened during the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union.1 The panel was comprised of a number of experts, including Ferdinand Trauttmansdorff, former Austrian Ambassador in Prague; Anne Webber, co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe; Dr. Wesley Fisher, Director of Research, Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference); David Zivie, head of the Mission for the Search and Restitution of Spoliated Cultural Property 1933-1945 in the French Ministry of Culture; and Dr. Pia Schölnberger, head of the Commission for Art Restitution and Provenance Research at the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism since 1945. In his remarks to the conference, Stuart Eizenstat, the former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and an expert in restitution issues, and now serving as a special advisor on Holocaust issues to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said: This Conference gives us the last, best hope to help the 275,000 remaining Holocaust survivors live out their last years in greater dignity than they knew in their tragic youth. It is unlikely there will be another international conference with this breadth of participation in their lifetimes. They are passing away at the rate of six percent a year.2 The Terezin Declaration, signed by 47 countries, is recognized as the most comprehensive set of international commitments for Holocaust justice and for ensuring that the memory of six million Jewish men, women, and children, as well as other victims of Nazi persecution, are not forgotten. It calls for welfare benefits for elderly survivors living in poverty and the recovery of or compensation for immovable property of both a communal or religious nature, as well as private or heirless property. It also supports the identification and protection of Jewish cemeteries and burial sites, the return of Nazi-confiscated and looted art as well as the identification, cataloguing and return of confiscated Judaica and Jewish cultural property. Finally, it demands increased access to archival materials and the promotion of Holocaust education, remembrance, research and memorial sites. Holocaust restitution is not about money. It is about victims. It is about individuals who have waited almost 80 years for justice and recognition of their loss of property. What we know about the Nazis is that they were many things: they were murderers; they were psychopaths; they were bigots; they were racists, and they were antisemites. But they were also thieves. They looted and plundered throughout Europe. They stole from citizens; they stole from states, and, because there is no honor among thieves, they stole from one another. Elie Wiesel articulated this far more eloquently than I, saying that this Nazis’ thievery was a process: “They stole your living, they stole your belongings, they stole your individuality. And they tried to wipe you out. To wipe out the fact that you ever existed.”3 In their book Justice After the Holocaust: Fulfilling the Terezin Declaration and Immovable Property Restitution, Michael J. Bazyler, Kathryn Lee Boyd, Kristen I. Nelson and Rajika I. Shah describe the hurdles that survivors faced when attempting to recover their property in the aftermath of the Holocaust: [R]eturning survivors had to navigate a frequently unclear path to recover their property from governments and neighbours who had failed to protect them and who often had been complicit in their Failure to Enact Restitution Laws for Property Stolen by the Nazis and their Collaborators I Lord Eric Pickles 1. https://www.mzv.cz/jnp/en/foreign_relations/terezin_ declaration/index.html 2. Terezin Declaration Conference Remarks by Ambassador (ret.) Stuart E. Eizenstat, Special Adviser to the Secretary of State on Holocaust Issues, Nov. 3, 2022, Prague, Czech Republic (“2009 Terezin Declaration”), available at https:// www.mzv.cz/public/4b/66/97/4846140_2947474__20221103_ Eizenstat_Remarks.Version_for_Program_Printing.docx 3. Elie Wiesel, M Wiesel, NIGHT (Penguin Classics, 2004).
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