U.S. policy on restitution of Holocaust-era looted art.

• Author: Crook, John R.

In January 2013, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a press statement marking the seventieth anniversary of the 1943 London Declaration on the looting of art and other property by the Axis powers (10) and summarizing U.S. policy regarding restitution of Nazi-confiscated art. Her statement follows:

This month we commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the Inter-Allied Declaration against Acts of Dispossession Committed in Territories under Enemy Occupation and Control, known as the London Declaration of January 5,1943. Beginning with the London Declaration, the United States implemented a policy of returning Nazi-confiscated art, including art taken through forced and coerced transfers, to its countries of origin, with the expectation that the art would be returned to its lawful owners. Under U.S. leadership, the international community has endorsed these principles as well. In the 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art and the Terezin Declaration of the 2009 Prague Conference on Holocaust Assets, more than forty countries joined the United States in agreeing that their respective legal systems or alternative dispute resolution processes should...