Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2025

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of S. 1884, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2025, or the HEAR Act.

As the lead House Democratic sponsor of this bipartisan legislation, I am proud to have helped bring together my colleagues to ensure this bill is passed and sent to the President's desk.

During the Holocaust, the Nazis stripped Jewish families of countless works of art, culture, and heritage. The effects of these atrocities are still being felt today by survivors and their families.

In 2016, former Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and I introduced the first HEAR Act, which was a landmark bill that aimed to aid these victims and their families in recovering their rightful property, a small act of light in the memory of the darkest period in human history. I am grateful that Congress passed that measure unanimously and that President Obama signed it into law.

Unfortunately, time has demonstrated that the original HEAR Act was not sufficient. In addition to the bill's impending expiration, more than 100,000 of the over 600,000 works of art looted by the Nazis remain unrecovered. We must confront this unacceptable and repugnant reality, which continues to allow entities and individuals to profit off the Jewish people's pain.

We must reaffirm that, in the United States, every family member with a credible claim deserves to have their day in court, with their case heard on the merits alone. Justice must not be denied due to procedural technicalities and legislative sunset provisions.

While we cannot reverse the horrors of the Holocaust, we can ensure that in an American courtroom, the truth of a family's legacy carries more weight than a legal loophole.

Some might have you believe, Mr. Speaker, that this bill addresses a problem mostly for Europe to resolve, but they would be wrong. In fact, the September 2025 report from the World Jewish Restitution Organization found that U.S. museums hold well over 100,000 objects that were in Europe during the Holocaust, yet only about 10 percent of those objects have been made publicly accessible online for provenance research. Additionally, among 160 major museums in the United States, only 21 percent provide easily accessible object-level Nazi-era provenance information.

If relevant pieces are not made available for research, how can we even know the true scope of this problem? What do the holders of these pieces have to hide?

This is not an issue that is relevant only to decades-old legal cases or an issue faced only by a few dying survivors and their families. Nazi-looted art is still being discovered regularly.

Just a few months ago, an online auction was intercepted in Ohio for two 17th century floral paintings by a famous Dutch still-life painter with original Nazi inventory numbers, S-16 and S-17, still on the back. The works had been sitting in an abandoned safe deposit box in Texas for decades before surfacing.

In 2023, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office seized seven works by a famous Austrian expressionist painter, valued at nearly $10 million, that had for decades been displayed in a variety of museums and collections in New York. The DA's office rightfully returned the pieces to the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum, a Jewish collector murdered at Dachau concentration camp in 1941.

That is why we must reauthorize and improve the HEAR Act of 2016 by passing the bill before us today, to ensure that the provenance of pieces that can be proven are able to be fully litigated on their merits alone, and to send a clear message from the Halls of Congress to those who knowingly hold Holocaust-looted art that the United States will no longer tolerate such barbaric behavior.

It is important for us to be abundantly clear about what this bill does and does not do.

Fundamentally, this bill seeks to ensure that claims regarding Nazi- looted art are decided on their merits alone, without hiding behind procedural technicalities.

The bill also eliminates the original HEAR Act sunset provision, which is scheduled to expire in December 2026. That deadline was intended to encourage museums and holders to complete provenance research on the relevant pieces and to resolve any applicable claims.

Unfortunately, this limited time frame has allowed some institutions to delay, withhold information, and run out the clock. I hope we can all agree, Mr. Speaker, that justice for victims of the Holocaust and their families should not come with an expiration date.

Here is what this bill does not do. It does not decide who wins and loses any case. It does not undermine, in letter or intent, any agreements made by any entity regarding any Holocaust-related or other matters. It does not impact or seek to influence any other categories of Holocaust claims outside of those that are art-related and specifically described in the legislation.

The issues this legislation seeks to address are not new. In fact, it even appeared in the early 2000s popular TV show ``The West Wing.'' In a second- season episode, a Jewish woman on a White House tour begins screaming after recognizing a painting that had belonged to her father in France before it was seized by the Vichy regime during the Holocaust and later gifted to the White House. In the television show, the painting is swiftly and voluntarily returned to the woman and her family.

The show is obviously a work of fiction, but if all similar claims were resolved in such a way in reality, there would be much less need for this legislation. Unfortunately, like much of ``The West Wing,'' such a resolution is too good to be true.

Finally, there are many individuals and organizations that have worked hard to draft and promote this legislation. I thank all of them, and especially the Art Ashes organization. Without their tireless advocacy, this day would not be possible.

I also thank the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Lee) for her partnership in introducing this bill in the House.

I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation to ensure that victims of the Holocaust and their families are able to have their claims heard on their merits alone.
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I urge my colleagues to support this measure. I yield back the balance of my time.

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