In 1944, Hungarian officials sat down with pen and paper and recorded by hand the seizure of 90 Torah scrolls from Jewish families. This was not wartime chaos, but deliberate, state-organized cultural erasure.
That document, buried for decades in microfilm archives, was recently made public for the first time through the Holocaust Art Recovery Initiative. It is a single page, handwritten in a steady but chilling script. It doesn’t describe battles or casualties. It inventories sacred scrolls stolen from Jews who were soon to be deported.
These 90 Torahs were part of a larger pattern of thousands of cultural, artistic and religious items looted by Nazi-allied regimes across Europe. In Hungary alone, tens of thousands of Jewish-owned artworks, books and ceremonial objects were systematically stolen, catalogued and in many cases absorbed into state museum collections. Families were erased. Their heritage was buried — sometimes literally.
Today, many of those items remain in public institutions. And in the U.S., survivors and their heirs often face insurmountable legal barriers when trying to recover what was taken.
That’s why Congress must pass the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act Improvements of 2025, a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.). This legislation would strengthen and extend the original HEAR Act, first passed in 2016, which was designed to ensure Holocaust restitution claims could be heard on their merits.
That law is set to expire in 2026. Without swift action, survivors and families may permanently lose access to justice.
New evidence like the handwritten Torah document reinforces the urgency. This isn’t theoretical. It’s tangible. And it speaks to a broader truth: The Holocaust wasn’t just a genocide of people — it was a systematic looting of culture, identity and memory.
The legal fight is not easy. As recent cases like Republic of Hungary v. Simon demonstrate, foreign sovereign immunity laws, expired statutes of limitations and bureaucratic stonewalling have made it nearly impossible for families to recover what was taken. The HEAR Act Improvements of 2025 addresses these very challenges, extending the timeline and reinforcing the right to be heard in U.S. courts.
More than 25 national organizations have endorsed the legislation, including the World Jewish Restitution Organization and the Claims Conference. They rightly note that each object stolen represents not just property, but a life interrupted — and a legacy denied.
Restitution is not about money. It is about dignity. It is about accountability. And, yes, it is about history. When lawmakers see the original documents — handwritten proof of cultural theft — they begin to understand why this work cannot wait.
Congress still has time to do the right thing. But the clock is ticking, and the handwriting is on the page.
Jonathan H. Schwartz is a litigation partner at Taft-Detroit and co-founder of the Holocaust Art Recovery Initiative. He also serves as president emeritus of the Jewish Bar Association of Michigan and recently authored an evidence report on Hungarian Holocaust-era art theft.
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