Why museums should be leading the fight for Holocaust art restitution, not resisting it
Museums are lobbying against a bill that’s essential for righting historical wrongs
French Culture Minister Rima Abdul-Malak (R) poses next to Felix de Marez Oyens (C) and his wife Theodora de Marez Oyens, representing the heirs of Ernst and Agathe Saulmann and Harry Fuld junior, during a ceremony for the restitution of three works of art looted from German Jews by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, in Paris, on April 18, 2023. Photo by Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty Images
When the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was founded, it enshrined a simple principle: Memory matters. That same principle should guide museums when it comes to returning art stolen from Jewish families during the Holocaust.
Yet, as The New York Times recently reported, a powerful museum association is pushing back against proposals to strengthen the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act. This position risks undermining justice for victims’ families and public trust in cultural institutions.
The original HEAR Act of 2016 created a uniform six-year window to bring restitution claims once stolen art was identified. The bipartisan HEAR Act Improvements of 2025, now before Congress, would extend that window and address legal barriers created by the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Republic of Hungary v. Simon, which narrowed victims’ access to recovery of stolen items by requiring Holocaust-era property claims to have a direct commercial link to the United States.
Why does more time matter? Because new discoveries are still emerging — often decades after the theft.
Holocaust survivor and researcher Clara Garbon-Radnoti and I recently completed a yearslong review of 180 reels of wartime Hungarian government microfilm. Preserved by the Zekelman Holocaust Center, digitized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and supported by the World Jewish Restitution Organization, these records show in detail how the Hungarian state inventoried, signed for, and routed into public museums and libraries Jewish-owned paintings, sculptures, Torah scrolls and Judaica, jewelry, rare books, family photos, dolls and toys, and antiquities — all while 437,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz in just eight weeks in 1944.
Many of these works are still in public collections — mostly in Hungary and surrounding countries — but their ownership is buried in files, uncatalogued online, or mislabeled to obscure their history. Artificial intelligence and digital archives now make it possible to identify works that were invisible to claimants just a few years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic further slowed archival access and legal action. Without an extension, heirs who finally uncover evidence may still be turned away because of an arbitrary 2027 deadline.
Museums in the United States have a unique opportunity here. By supporting solutions that remove procedural barriers, they can demonstrate leadership, strengthen public trust, and model the ethical stewardship they claim to uphold. Holocaust art claims are not limitless; they are finite, based on specific evidence, and resolving them brings closure for families while enhancing institutional integrity.
The HEAR Act Improvements of 2025 reflect a broader truth: Justice for stolen cultural property depends on access — to archives, to courts, and to time enough for the evidence to be found and cases to be heard. For families, these works are not merely paintings or sculptures; they are fragments of stolen lives. Returning them is not charity; it is the fulfillment of justice long denied, part of an unfinished historical reckoning, one that museums should want to complete.
