Washington, D.C. — Today, Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander helped pass the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act Improvements of 2025, bipartisan legislation to help Holocaust survivors and their families reclaim artwork stolen by the Nazis. The bill removes the upcoming 2026 expiration date from the original HEAR Act, passed in 2016, and makes key updates to ensure that survivors’ claims are heard fairly in court. The bipartisan bill, which has already passed the Senate, now heads to the President’s desk to be signed into law.
“I truly believe we are what we remember — and that includes the artwork and artifacts we preserve,” said Congresswoman Goodlander. “By passing the HEAR Act Improvements of 2025, the House has taken an important step to help Holocaust survivors and their families reclaim artwork stolen by the Nazis. Returning these pieces is essential to preserving the Jewish identity and culture that the Nazi regime tried so brutally to erase. We must never forget the atrocities of the Holocaust, and this bipartisan legislation reaffirms our responsibility to deliver justice for families and remove barriers that have stood in the way of recovering what was wrongfully taken from them.”
The original HEAR Act was passed in 2016 to provide families with a fair opportunity to recover art looted by the Nazis during World War II. It created a six-year window for legal claims, starting from the time a family discovers where their stolen art is located. The law was meant to ensure that cases are decided based on facts, not thrown out due to complicated legal deadlines. However, in recent years, some courts have dismissed these claims using time-based technical defenses, which go against the original purpose of the law.
The new bill eliminates the 2026 “sunset clause,” which would have ended the protections offered by the HEAR Act. It also makes clear that as long as a family files within six years of discovering their artwork’s location, their case cannot be dismissed simply because of how much time has passed. This change is especially important as the number of living Holocaust survivors continues to decline.
The bill also responds to a 2021 Supreme Court ruling (Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp) that made it harder to sue foreign governments involved in looting or holding art stolen during the Holocaust. Under this legislation, families will be able to bring claims in U.S. courts as long as the foreign government or museum has ties to the United States. The bill also blocks other legal defenses that could be used to avoid facing the facts in court and allows families to sue foreign defendants if they have any significant contact with the U.S., not just in one state.
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