44 Nations Set Guidelines for Retrieving Nazi Loot

Representatives of 44 nations agreed Thursday on comprehensive guidelines intended to identify artworks looted by Nazis during World War II, locate the prewar owners and settle conflicting claims to property worth billions of dollars on today’s market.

“This is a major achievement which will reverberate through our museums, galleries, auction houses and in the homes and hearts of those families who may now have the chance to have returned what is rightfully theirs,” said Undersecretary of State Stuart E. Eizenstat, chief of the U.S. delegation to the Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets here.

The conference also dealt with wartime insurance policies and religious property in Central and Eastern Europe that was seized by the Nazis or subsequent Communist regimes.

Although high-level delegations from every country affected by Nazi atrocities agreed unanimously on the art guidelines, the consensus is not legally binding.

Nonetheless, Eizenstat said the decisions of the conference “represent a moral commitment among nations which all in the art world will have to take into account.”

Another member of the U.S. delegation, Rep. James A. Leach (R-Iowa), added: “We might well find that a moral undertaking is more powerful than an international agreement.”

At the heart of the art guidelines is a proposed master list of all stolen art.

All the participating nations were urged to inventory each work in their museums and galleries, an effort that will probably take years, to determine if it was looted during the war. Every country represented here was also asked to supply any information it may have concerning ownership of artwork, whether or not the art is now in the nation.

The conference said the inventories should make allowances for “unavoidable gaps or ambiguities” in ownership records caused by the passage of time or the chaotic conditions of World War II.

Eizenstat said the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the National Gallery in Washington have agreed to conduct a comprehensive inventory of their collections.

Prewar owners and their heirs should be encouraged to file claims for return of artworks with the governments of the countries where the works are now held, the conference said. The guidelines, however, recognize that most of the looted art has passed through several hands since the war and may now be held by collectors and museums unaware that the pieces had been stolen.

In cases of conflicting claims, the conference urged that compromise solutions be reached. Such solutions, Eizenstat said, might include selling the work and splitting the proceeds or for one party to buy out the other.

Russia surprised conference delegates by agreeing to participate in the global inventory. Earlier this year, Russia’s parliament passed a law prohibiting the return of any art captured by Soviet troops from defeated Nazi forces at the end of the war.

Russia considers this “trophy art” to be a partial compensation for the suffering of the Soviet population at the hands of the Nazis. However, Russian delegates said the law does not prohibit the return of “victim art” stolen by the Nazis from individuals or religious institutions.

At the gathering’s concluding news conference, Russian delegate Valery Kulishov handed Eizenstat copies of three documents, now held in Russian archives, cataloging hundreds of paintings, manuscripts, gold coins and other art confiscated by the Nazis in Austria.

The lists indicated that the best works were sent to Adolf Hitler’s private gallery and that the rest were distributed to other Nazi-controlled museums.

One of the documents included a catalog of gold coins taken from Louis Rothschild of the famous Jewish banking family. Another related that a valuable manuscript was seized from a person identified only as “the Jew Gutmann.”

Kulishov said the letter should help Gutmann’s heirs find their stolen property.

Conference participants, including representatives of 13 nongovernmental organizations, also agreed unanimously to back a recently created international commission to sort out life insurance policies on those who died during the Holocaust, many of which have never been paid.

Life insurance is an explosive issue because the Nazis often seized the cash surrender value of policies on Jews sent to concentration camps. After the war, the heirs of Holocaust victims were often refused payments because the policies had been cashed out, premiums had not been paid or no death certificates were supplied.

Earlier this year, six insurance companies--which had controlled about 25% of the market in prewar Europe--agreed to establish a commission to distribute $90 million to destitute survivors of the Holocaust as compensation for disputed policies. During the conference, Hungary and the Czech Republic said companies in their countries will also participate.

The conference said the international commission should supersede class-action lawsuits that have been filed in U.S. courts on behalf of policyholders. Eizenstat said that, under the commission plan, all of the $90 million or more would go to needy victims. If the cases are adjudicated in the courts, he said, the cost for lawyers, auditors and others would far exceed $90 million.

Despite the agreements on life insurance and artworks, the conference was unable to reach a consensus on the way to handle synagogues, churches, hospitals, schools, cemeteries and other religious property expropriated either by the Nazis or later Communist governments in Central and Eastern Europe. Although Eizenstat said the delegates thought that the matter of religious property should be resolved promptly, there was no agreement on how to go about it.