14 No. 69 JUSTICE or compensation of property. Since its inception, there seems to have been confusion regarding the mission of ESLI. Many Holocaust survivors who had spent decades trying to retrieve their property were under the impression that the Institute would be able to deal with individual claims. However, it was never envisaged that the Institute would deal with individual cases. Rather, ESLI’s task was to promote restitution at a governmental level and to lobby for legislative changes. ESLI is no longer functioning. A staggering five million artworks were stolen by the Nazis and their collaborators. According to Anne Webber, anything considered sufficiently Aryan, such as Rembrandts, were earmarked for the Führermuseum that Hitler planned for his hometown of Linz, Austria. But anything seen as “degenerate,” such as work by Egon Schiele or Van Gogh, were sold at so-called “Jew auctions” to raise cash for the Nazi war machine. Other paintings were simply burned.6 Anne added that it is also important to realize that “everybody always thinks it’s just rich people’s paintings the Nazis took, but they took everything – your tablecloths, your towels, your pots and pans.” It was all part of “Hitler’s aim to annihilate the Jewish people, he wanted to erase people’s identity.”7 Around the world, thousands of artefacts, properties and belongings remain in the wrong hands – in the hands of national collections, local authorities, museums and private individuals. People and communities are often very proud of their collections and may even be well meaning, but stolen property in the most benign and cultured hands is still the result of theft. It is shocking that, even today, thousands of injustices remain uncorrected. Those who think that we are gently winding down discovery of stolen artworks should think again. When I was in Bern, Switzerland, in 2017, I visited an exhibition which showcased the art from the home of Cornelius Gurlitt. His father, an art dealer, had sold what Hitler dismissed as “degenerate” art. At the time of its discovery in a Munich flat in 2012, leading figures in the German and Austrian art worlds asked: “What is the problem? Everybody knew about Gurlitt’s collection.” Yes, everybody did know, except for the families from whom the works were stolen. The looting of cultural objects was a key focus of the recent Terezin Conference, where Anne Webber noted that despite the Washington Principles, the Vilnius Forum Declaration and the Terezin Declaration, the possibility of achieving the purpose of those commitments, namely the provision of justice through expeditious restitution, remains erratic and restricted. Webber further argued that there is no consistency, no level playing field, and limited progress. Webber raised three key areas of concern: a. Only 17 out of the 47 signatories to the 2009 Terezin Declaration have undertaken any kind of provenance research and subsequently published any of the results. b. Only a handful of countries have identified and/or provided access to archives, records, and other information essential for supporting claims. c. Only five signatories have established a national claims process while only three have passed a law to enable restitution. There is also a lack of agreed definitions of loss, forced sales and sales under duress. Furthermore, in countries without a national claims process or a restitution law, there is also a lack of agreement on who is eligible to file a claim and an absence of published guidelines for qualifying for and filing claims. Webber also raised the absence of national reporting and the provision of assistance for museums and families trying to locate their stolen artworks. Dr. Wesley Fisher of the Claims Conference addressed the problem of art looted in one country and taken to a second, a key issue in restitution claims. This issue arises through a number of historical and current circumstances, including border changes; changes in the art market since the War; because of the Soviet Trophy Brigades; and mistakes and policies in repatriation made by the Western Allies. Dr. Fisher mentioned several examples including the 2016 Serbian law which refers only to objects taken in Serbia, but not to items brought in by Ante Topic Mimara after World War II, who allegedly, “tricked Americans supervising the return of displaced art into turning over to Yugoslavia property that may have belonged to Holocaust victims… some works ended up in museums in Belgrade and Zagreb.”8 For example, Poland retains Greek Judaica in Warsaw and paintings in Gdansk, while France retains items repatriated to France instead of to Belgium. 6. Ham & High, “Beyond the Woman in Gold: On the Hunt for the Nazis’ Looted Art,” LOOTEDART.COM (April 9, 2015) available at https://www.lootedart.com/news. php?r=R740UR158321 7. Ibid. 8. Konstantin Akinsha, “Ante Topic Mimara, ‘The Master Swindler of Yugoslavia,’" LOOTEDART.COM (Sept. 2001), available at https://www.lootedart.com/MFEU4T15383
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