10 January 24 • 2019
jn
J
onathan H. Schwartz is leading
a local effort by the Jewish Bar
Association (JBAM) to right a his-
toric wrong that’
s existed for more than
70 years as, he says, “part of the Nazis’
attempt to wipe out our
Jewish identity.
”
JBAM, co-founded in
2014 by Schwartz, a part-
ner at Jaffe Raitt Heuer &
Weiss P
.C. in Southfield,
recently launched the
Holocaust Art Recovery
Initiative, a partner-
ship with the Arts, Communications,
Entertainment and Sports (ACES)
Section of the State Bar of Michigan. It’
s
a response to passage of a federal law
that allows more time — until Jan. 1,
2027 — for Holocaust victims and/or
their descendants to file for the return of
valuable artwork stolen from their fami-
lies during the Nazi era (1933-1945).
Under the new law, the time period
for making such legal claims begins
when a family discovers the artwork’
s
loss, not when the theft actually took
place in Europe.
Restitution of Jewish-owned art has
been on the radar of the U.S. govern-
ment since efforts began in 1945 to help
recover the then-estimated 650,000
works of art stolen by the Nazis.
In 1998, a U.S. State Department-
hosted Washington Conference on
Holocaust Era Assets established princi-
ples for dealing with restitution claims.
More recently, Ambassador Ronald S.
Lauder, the cosmetics billionaire who
chairs both the Commission for Art
Recovery and Council
of the World Jewish
Restitution Organization,
provided leadership to
Congress on the resti-
tution issue. He urged
members to introduce the
Holocaust Expropriated
Art Recovery (HEAR)
Act, a bipartisan bill President Barack
Obama signed into law on Dec. 16,
2016.
“For too long, governments, muse-
ums, auction houses and unscrupulous
collectors allowed this egregious theft of
culture and heritage to continue, impos-
ing legal barriers like arbitrary statutes of
limitations to deny families prized pos-
sessions stolen from them by the Nazis,
”
Lauder said at the signing.
The difficulty was dramatized in the
popular 2015 film, Woman in Gold.
British actress Helen Mirren portrayed
jews d
in
the
on the cover
Wrong
Righting A
Historic
Group of lawyers helps
survivors and their heirs
recover artwork stolen
by the Nazis.
ESTHER ALLWEISS INGBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
continued on page 12
Jonathan
Schwartz
NEUE GALERIE NEW YORK/PUBLIC DOMAIN
ABOVE: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, also
known as The Woman in Gold, by Gustav Klimt
in 1907, is perhaps the most well-known piece
of Nazi-looted art to be recovered.
Ronald S.
Lauder