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