Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) (Amendment) Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 9th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I too commend my noble friend Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury for agreeing to steer this short but important Bill through your Lordships’ House.

I do not know about other noble Lords, but I have found that there tends to be an inverse relationship between the length of the Bills we have been asked to consider and their effects. Or is it simply that my perception of these matters has been influenced too much by the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which, as noble Lords will recall, occupied this House for 160 hours and 44 minutes without, as far as I can tell, having any effect on our long-term relationship with the European Union?

This Bill, per contra, although it consists of only one short substantive clause, will, when it passes into law, as I hope it will do very soon, make an enormous difference to a large number of people, not only in the European Union but throughout the world. As my noble friend Lord Sherbourne has already pointed out in his excellent introduction, there are many ways in which this short Bill will make a difference; some of them are practical, while others are symbolic or presentational. We have already heard from my noble friend how the Bill will send a message to the whole world that this House, and indeed this country, believe strongly that there can never be a statute of limitation on Holocaust crimes—not 10 years, 20 years or 50 years. We will never forget or forgive those responsible for the Holocaust, and we will remember them not only by building memorials to their victims and learning centres to tell the story of their atrocities, but by ensuring that no one ever benefits from their activities, even when these benefits are enjoyed by the public at large through national and local galleries and museums around the world.

If for no other reason but this symbolic one, I believe that the Bill deserves to be passed into law as quickly as possible. But there are also significant practical reasons why we must get it passed into law quickly, and I will discuss them briefly now. Before I do so, however, I must make it clear that before I began preparing for this debate, I knew very little about these matters. However, in the last few days, I have had the benefit of a tutorial from an old friend, Laurie Stein, who happens to be one of a handful of world experts in this field. It is the full-time job of these experts, who work for museums, galleries and private clients around the world, to research the provenance of pictures and other cultural objects which are the subject of claims that they were looted, stolen or otherwise illegitimately taken from their rightful owners during the Nazi regime. I am grateful to Ms Stein for helping me to understand why and how the Bill would make a very significant practical difference to the valuable work which she and others are doing to ensure that cultural objects which were taken illegitimately from innocent Jews and others during the Nazi regime are returned to their rightful owners.

First, although it may be difficult to believe, as some noble Lords have already mentioned, new claims concerning objects stolen and looted by the Nazis are emerging in various parts of the world even now, more than 70 years after the defeat of the Nazis. Even experts like Laurie Stein have been surprised by this. They thought that the flow of contested objects seized by the Nazis would have dried up years ago. But, as I now understand, there are many good reasons why new claims are still being filed. One of these is the fact that only recently have large collections of personal files about victims of the Nazis, held in restitution and compensation offices in Germany and elsewhere, been opened to the public. I understand that these files, which had previously been closed for privacy reasons, contain masses of invaluable information about property seized illegitimately from the victims.

In other cases, the disappearance of family treasures in the 1930s and 1940s was simply unknown to the present generation of family members. Such a situation was the subject of a very moving article in the Jewish Chronicle of 26 April. In it, the granddaughter of noted French art dealer and collector René Gimpel, from whom a collection of major paintings was seized by the Vichy Government during the Second World War—it is now displayed in galleries owned and operated by the present French Government—wrote that he only learned what happened to his grandfather’s collection,

“10 years ago, when a US lawyer working on cases of Second World War spoliation contacted me saying that he keeps finding evidence of paintings stolen from my grandfather. After the war, the family wanted to move on and rebuild itself after the trauma. Like other Jews, they were advised to stop talking about what they’d lost if they wanted to become regular citizens again. I wasn’t even told I was Jewish”.

That is a moving story happening right now.

The other reason why an arbitrary cut-off date for filing claims is inappropriate is that judging claims about disputed objects is very difficult. Although there are many who would like to see these issues in black and white terms, I am assured by Ms Stein that 95% of the evidence adduced for supporting claims about objects seized or looted during the Nazi regime falls into the grey area between black and white and requires meticulous research and a good deal of international travel to ensure that both sides to any claim are treated fairly and justly. It should not surprise anyone to know that such research takes a great deal of time and cannot be rushed to meet arbitrary time limits.

It may be difficult for some people to accept, but the truth is that not every object which might have been in Jewish ownership in Germany, France, Austria or a number of other countries controlled by the Nazis was seized or looted or taken illegitimately. Some were disposed of by their owners for a variety of innocent reasons, reached their present homes entirely legitimately and should be allowed to remain there.

What we must not do is create fresh injustices in an effort to remedy old ones. That is why we must not set arbitrary limits on the time allowed to complete this research. Such limits are unnecessary and inimical to the search for justice. Although this is not relevant to the Bill before us, I want to put on record Ms Stein’s view that the UK’s Spoliation Advisory Panel, which adjudicates on disputed claims, is seen by the experts in this field as a model for how these matters should be handled.

I have gone on long enough. I hope that I have made my point that there are important practical and symbolic reasons why this small Bill should find its way on to the statute book as soon as possible. Although it consists of only one substantive clause, the implications of the Bill for those who seek justice for extraordinary wrongs are immense and will be welcomed as such around the world.