On 2 April, UK Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues attended a meeting of the
Special Envoys Network on Holocaust-era Restitution in The Hague.
The meeting was hosted by the Netherlands' National Coordinator
on Combating Antisemitism, Eddo Verdoner, alongside the World
Jewish Restitution Organisation and the Dutch Ministry of Justice
and Security.
The US Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Ellen Germain updated
that 32 countries had now signed up to the Best
Practices for the Washington Conference Principles on
Nazi-Confiscated Art. She made a special plea to those
countries who had signed the original Washington
Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art 25 years
ago to sign up to the best practices document.
made the point that no country
is immune from restitution claims. He reported that the
Tate Britain art museum was set to reunite the
great-grandchildren of a Belgian Jewish art collector with a
painting looted from his home by the Nazis.
The oil painting ‘Aeneas and his Family Fleeing Burning
Troy' by English painter Henry Gibbs was stolen from the
home of Samuel Hartveld after he fled Antwerp with his wife in
May 1940. The piece, dating from 1654, was one of hundreds of
thousands the Nazis plundered from Jewish families during World
War II.
Its restitution has been a slow process, often involving legal
battles and complex international searches. The return of the
painting will mark the latest triumph for a special panel set up
by the UK Government to investigate such works that have ended up
in Britain's public collections.
The UK Spoliation Advisory
Panel ruled the Aeneas painting was “looted as
an act of racial persecution”, and has arranged for it to be
returned to Hartveld's heirs in the coming months.
welcomed the success of the
Special Envoys Network on Holocaust Era Restitution in developing
the best practices document, and in firstly tackling restitution
of movable property.
However, he acknowledged that there were still many Holocaust
survivors and their families who had waited 80 years for justice
and recognition of their loss of property. He added that
bureaucratic inertia had delayed the resolution of too many
restitution claims for too long.
reflected that in some
countries, the regulations were so stringent that it was very
difficult for survivors who no longer live in the country of
their birth to receive any restitution. This is a particular
obstacle for survivor communities living in the US and Israel, as
well as those in the UK. He stressed that it was time to focus on
getting individual property back to their rightful owners, before
it is too late.
said,
Eighty years after the Holocaust, we have undoubtedly made
progress, but there is still so much more to be done, and so
little time left to do it. Meetings like this are essential for
moving from principles to action. We owe it to survivors, their
families, and future generations to ensure that justice is not
only promised but delivered.
On 3 April, the special envoys travelled to Amsterdam to visit
the recently opened Dutch National Holocaust Museum. This is the
first museum to tell the entire story of the persecution of the
Jews in the Netherlands.
