Work of the European Restitution Committees: Lord Pickles’ speech
UK Special Envoy for post-Holocaust issues Lord Pickles gave a speech about restitution for art stolen by the Nazi German regime.
This speech was delivered on 23 May 2024, during the 2022 to 2024 Sunak Conservative government, and was published later.
It is an honour to be at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It seems an appropriate setting for this conference.
As I am sure many of you are aware the V&A holds the only known copy of a complete inventory of the Entartete Kunst, or ‘Degenerate Art’, confiscated by the Nazi regime from public institutions in Germany, during 1937 and 1938.
There is a list of more than 16,000 artworks was produced by the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in 1942.
It seems that the inventory was compiled as a final record, after the sales and disposals of the confiscated art had been completed in the summer of 1941. The 2 volumes provide crucial cultural information about the provenance, exhibition history and fate of each artwork.
I am currently chair the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and recall when Switzerland held the chair in 2017 that they hosted an exhibition following the discovery of the Cornelius Gurlitt collection made up of ’degenerate art’ confiscated by the Nazis from German museums during the Third Reich.
Holocaust
The Holocaust was one of the darkest moments in human history.
The Holocaust did not begin with the mass murder of Jews. When the Nazi’s first came to power they used the full panoply of government to target and exclude Jews from German society. They took away your job, your home and your identity.
The Nazi German regime enacted discriminatory laws and organised violence targeting Germany’s Jews. The Nazi persecution of Jews became increasingly vile between 1933 and 1945.
This radicalisation culminated in a plan that Nazi leaders referred to as the ’Final Solution to the Jewish Question’. The ‘Final Solution’ was the organised and systematic mass murder of European Jews. The Nazi German regime implemented this genocide between 1941 and 1945.
By the end of the Holocaust, the Nazi German regime and their allies and collaborators had murdered 6 million European Jews.
The destruction wrought by the Nazis and their collaborators was so great that, for hundreds of thousands of victims, the only reminder of their existence in this world is a book with a name etched on the inside cover, a painting or very ordinary item of clothing: a shoe.
Many of us are familiar with the piles of shoes at Auschwitz-Birkenau or at Holocaust museums worldwide, often the only proof of a persons existence. They are stark reminders of the fragile nature of life during the Holocaust. Shoes were described by the Polish poet, Moshe Szulsztein, as “the last witnesses”.
Theft
The Nazis were many things: they were murderers; they were psychopaths; they were bigots; they were racists and they were antisemites.
But fundamentally, the Nazis were thieves and robbers. They looted and plundered throughout Europe. They stole from citizens; they stole from states, and, because there is no honour among thieves, they stole from one another.
Elie Wiesel pointed this out far more elegantly than me, saying that this was a process:
They stole your living, they stole your belongings, they stole your individuality. And they tried to wipe you out. To wipe out the fact that you ever existed.
Do not think for a moment that this was confined to a bunch of Nazis.
The looting undertaken against Jewish people was an important part of the German economy during the Second World War. That was how people got their fur coat, their bit of jewellery, a nice mirror, their book collections and pots and pans.
What was not looted by your neighbours was often taken by the state and sold outside your house or at special sales. The very clothes of the poor victims of Babi Yar, in the Ukraine who were stripped and laid in pits, were sold close to the execution site.
Throughout the world, thousands of artefacts, properties, and belongings remain in the wrong hands – in the hands of national collections, local authorities, museums, churches and private individuals.
People and communities are often very proud of their collections and may even be well-meaning, but stolen property in the most benign and cultured hands is still theft. It is shocking that, even today, thousands of injustices remain uncorrected.
Next year marks 15 years since 47 countries signed the Terezin Declaration in June 2009.
There has been progress: 13 countries in Europe have adopted legislation that either addresses or partially addresses heirless and unclaimed property from the Holocaust era. However, only Serbia has put together legislation on heirless and unclaimed property.
Poland, the anvil of the Holocaust, is the only democracy refusing to address the concerns of dispossessed Holocaust survivors and their heirs. Time is running out; Poland has a moral obligation to ensure that Holocaust survivors and their families receive justice.
Prague -Terezin declaration
In November 2022, I attended a conference in Prague, to discuss progress around the 2009 Terezin Declaration. At that meeting I highlighted that a staggering 5 million artworks were stolen by the Nazis and their collaborators. According to Anne Webber, from the Commission for Looted Art in Europe:
Anything considered sufficiently Aryan, such as Rembrandts, were earmarked for the Furhermuseum that Hitler planned for his hometown of Linz in Austria. But anything seen as ‘degenerate’, such as work by Egon Schiele or Van Gogh, were sold at so-called ‘Jew auctions’ to raise cash for the Nazi war machine. Other paintings were simply burned.
Everybody always thinks it’s just rich people’s paintings the Nazis took, but they took everything – your tablecloths, your towels, your pots, and pans.
It was all part of Hitler’s aim to annihilate the Jewish people, he wanted to erase people’s identity.
In Prague, I was asked by Ambassador Stuart E Eizenstat, Special Adviser on Holocaust Issues to US Secretary Blinken, and the World Jewish Restitution Organisation to host a meeting for envoys in London who had restitution as part of their remit.
A successful meeting was held in London in March 2023 with the support of the Foreign Secretary where it was agreed we would focus on art restitution in the first instance and meet every 6 months. The United States agreed to host a second meeting in Washington in November. At the meeting it was agreed that we should develop some best practice guidelines to support the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art.
In March this year the guidelines were launched.
What makes this document stand out is that it brings together best practice but more importantly it is designed to be used. Signing up to declarations makes us feel good, and there is nothing wrong with that because that is the first step.
After all:
- 38 states endorsed The Vilnius Forum Declaration of October 5, 2000, endorsed
- 47 states endorsed The Terezin Declaration of June 30, 2009, and the 2010 Terezin Guidelines and Best Practices
We have to acknowledge that some countries have made progress over the last 25 years.
Five countries have established a restitution commission according to Articles 10 and 11 of the Washington Principles at a very early stage these are Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. Israel and Switzerland have also embarked on a process of setting up a commission.
Looking to the future, to the next 25 years we need to ensure transparency. Claimants, as well as the public in general, have a right to know about the existence and the whereabouts of all items in public collections. It is public property, or at least property serving public purposes.
If we are to implement the Washington Principles faithfully, we must ensure that in those countries where commissions have been set up are fully transparent. It is important to let the healing process of daylight enter in.
Research
We need to insist on research – without research we cannot know what museums hold.
This should include full public lists but also provenance research. This should also be public. We cannot move forward if we don’t know what are in collections.
Some countries do publish lists which allows those who had their art stolen to trace art works.
Since 1998 British museums have been researching the provenance of their collections to establish whether works that had previously been stolen by the Nazis in the period 1933 to 1945 had unwittingly been acquired. Details of these objects are published in a fully searchable database.
The UK’s Spoliation Advisory Panel considers claims from people or their heirs who lost cultural objects during the Nazi-era and which are now in public collections. Since its establishment in 2000, the Panel has considered 22 claims and 11 objects have been returned.
A good example of this is in respect of a painted wooden tablet, the Biccherna Panel, in the possession of the British Library.
After careful consideration, the Panel’s opinion was that the just and fair resolution of the claim was the transfer of the Biccherna Panel by the British Library Board to the claimants in accordance with the provisions of the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009 which allows national museums to return items following a recommendation by the Panel and where the Secretary of State agrees.
The Panel concluded that the Biccherna Panel formed part of an inventory owned by a Munich art gallery, of which the claimants are the surviving heirs of the Jewish shareholders, and that the sale of the gallery’s contents in 1936 by an Aryanised Berlin auction house, in response to an extortionate tax demand, constituted a forced sale.
Litigation
One of the key guidelines is to encourage mediation not litigation. Sadly, many institutions particularly in the United States prefer to litigate.
It can’t be right that 80 years on families who had their lives destroyed by the Nazi’s and their collaborators have to pay to get their property back. Why should families who have had their art stolen have to go to court to get their art returned? This practice simply exacerbates the loss.
This is not about Rubens or Rembrandt or a Vermeer or a Van Dyk. It is often about family pieces with huge sentimental value.
This is a about small pieces, which hung on the wall of homes across Europe. It is about Judaica – precious pieces related to the Jewish religion, deeply personal items like family candlesticks used on shabbat.
When the envoys met in London in March and in Washington in November, we all acknowledged that the time for action is now.
But this work can’t move forward if we don’t know what are in collections. Some countries invest in research but do not publish the results.
Again, daylight is key. Publishing list of holdings give families a fighting chance to recover their losses.
‘Just and fair solution’
The best practice guide mentions ‘Just and fair solution’.
It is important that these decisions are made public. Secret bilateral settlements may comfort the individual parties involved, but such settlements neglect the public dimension of the restitution process.
We need to understand the reasoning behind decisions. That is why transparency is key.
Conclusion
We need to remember that, whether it is a painting or a book or a porcelain jar, every object represents the life and lives of those who were lost. Their restitution restores a personal connection, a link with those lives so utterly transformed or destroyed by the Nazis.
After 80 years we need to proactive and not wait for people to come to us. The first step is for all institutions to publish list of holdings.
This is a mea culpa moment for us all. We need to pledge to do better and the Washington guidelines are step in the right direction.