Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Nadler for his extraordinary leadership on this legislation and on this issue.

I rise in strong support of S. 1884, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2025. This bill, which has already passed the Senate by unanimous consent, amends the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 in a number of key ways to ensure that Holocaust survivors and their heirs have a fair opportunity in court to recover all of the artwork that was stolen by the Nazi regime or what is left of it. In doing so, this bill will provide these victims the chance to obtain some small measure of justice for the horrors and the injustices and indignities their families have endured.

During its reign of hatred and terror, the Nazis committed theft and murder on a mass industrial scale through the relentless killings of the Einsatzgruppen in the Bloodlands of Europe and through the death camps they established at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and many others.

For the victims' families, these pieces of art are both stolen objects and stolen connections to their own family members whose memories the Nazis have tried to permanently erase from history.

In many cases, the artwork serves as the final tangible connection of the victims' families to their lost family members, providing proof of their existence and a testament to their suffering and their loss.

Congress passed the 2016 HEAR Act, which established a 6-year Federal statute of limitations for claims arising from Nazi-stolen artwork out of concern that the State statutes of limitations would prevent most litigation. In its findings, Congress observed that the unique and horrific circumstances of World War II and the Holocaust make statutes of limitations especially burdensome to the victims and their heirs. It further noted the difficulty of piecing together their cases from a fragmentary historical record ravaged by persecution, war, and genocide. This costly process often cannot be done within the time constraints imposed by what was then the existing law.

Alas, several court decisions since the 2016 HEAR Act's passage have undermined the statute's purpose of trying to give victims a fair hearing on the merits of their cases regardless of the passage of time. These decisions have dismissed numerous cases precisely based on passage of time defenses like laches or adverse possession or other non-merits defenses like forum non conveniens, the act of state doctrine, or foreign sovereign immunity.

This bill addresses these court decisions and related concerns. It eliminates the HEAR Act's sunset provision so that defendants no longer have an incentive to simply run out the clock on victims' families. It also prohibits courts from dismissing lawsuits on grounds related to the passage of time or other non-merit defenses. Finally, it clarifies that claims for recovery of the artwork fall within an existing expropriation exception to foreign sovereign immunity regardless of the victim's citizenship or nationality.

This bill will help give victims and their heirs the chance to obtain a small measure of justice for the grave and dehumanizing wrongs they suffered as a result of the Holocaust. It will also give victims' families a chance to recover at least a partial connection to their loved ones, a connection that was stolen in every single way possible by the Nazis.

I applaud Representative Lee, and I applaud our Senate colleagues who have worked to advance this bill. I especially recognize my colleague Representative Nadler for his longtime aggressive and unswerving leadership on seeing justice done in this case and to see passage of both the 2016 Act and this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly advocate for this legislation, and I urge all of our colleagues to support it.

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