Brief Amicus Curiae on Behalf of The American Jewish Committee, Omer Bartov, Michael Bazyler, Haim Beliak, Michael Berenbaum, Donald Burris, Judy Chicago, Richard Falk, Hector Feliciano, Eugene Fisher, Irving Greenberg, Peter Hayes, Douglas and Marjorie Kinsey, Douglas Kmiec, Marcia Sachs Littell, Hubert Locke, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Bruce Pauley, John Pawlikowski, Carol Rittner, John Roth, Randol Schoenberg, William Shulman, Stephen Smith, Alan Steinweis, Melvyn Weiss, Donald Woodman, and Jonathan Zatlin, in Support of Plaintiffs-Respondents.

On December 16, 2016, President Obama signed into law the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 (the “HEAR Act”), which passed both the House and Senate unanimously. Amici have particular interests implicated by the HEAR Act, which are set forth in Appendix A. None of the Amici has any financial or economic interest in the outcome of this appeal.
Amici underscore one specific way in which Nazis victimized Jews: robbery on a grand scale. The grand larceny should not be overlooked merely because mass murder was the foulest crime perpetrated by the Nazi conspirators…

…In Part I of the brief, we suggest that the HEAR Act does exactly what the Washington Principles and the Terezín Declaration failed to accomplish: provide binding legal language enabling fair and just resolution of conflicts over Recovery of Holocaust Expropriated Art. In Part II, we explain how the HEAR Act intersects with various technical defenses in this case focused on two pieces of art that were indisputably the property of Fritz Grunbaum.