Database of Nazi-Looted Art Now Online
A searchable database of more than 20,000 Nazi-looted art objects has gone online.
At least half of the objects, searchable by item, artist and owner, have not been restituted to their original owners, according to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
The database is a project of the Claims Conference with technical support provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. It reveals the fate of each of more than 20,000 art objects taken from more than 200 private Jewish collections in German-occupied France and Belgium between 1940 and 1944. The database includes photos of the artwork being processed and stored.
The Third Reich engaged in a systematic campaign to plunder the cultural property of Europe’s Jews through theft, confiscation and forced sales.
“It is now the responsibility of museums, art dealers and auction houses to check their holdings against these records to determine whether they might be in possession of art stolen from Holocaust victims,” Claims Conference Chairman Julius Berman said in a news release issued Monday. “Organizing Nazi art-looting records is an important step in righting a historical wrong. It is not too late to restore art that should have been passed down within Jewish families instead of decorating Nazi homes or stored at Nazi sites.”
The records and historical data in the database had been dispersed among three major repositories: the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States, the Federal Archives of Germany, and the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of France.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.