Dear visitors,
No matter whether purposefully or by chance, you have reached the pages of the server www.restitution-art.cz, displaying works of art from public collections in the Czech Republic that come, or may come, from the property of the victims of the holocaust; their original owners mostly perished under the Nazi terror. This utility has been prepared by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic in cooperation with the Moravian Museum. The work, carried out by the Ministry of Culture, is a part of the research, initiated by the Joint Working Group of the Government of the Czech Republic, pertaining to certain property injustices caused to the victims of holocaust and dealing with Jewish property, Aryanised during the time of holocaust, not returned to their owners after the War, and stolen again by the communist regime. The present list should serve mainly the original owners or, if they are not living any more, to their surviving spouses and offspring, to identify places where they can make a request for the transfer of ownership for the works of art. The list is not, and cannot be, complete; the Ministry of Culture will carry out its further updating in the course of year 2001. Besides state collections, works of art of that origin are also in the collections of the Jewish Museum in Prague. Information on these is available at the website of the Jewish Museum in Prague: http://www.jewishmuseum.cz.
The very fact of the works being published does not mean that they will be automatically returned to anybody who will make a claim on them. The requests for return of works must positively prove the claimant’s legitimacy according to Act No. 212/2000 Coll., on the alleviation of certain property injustices caused by the holocaust and on the change of Act No. 243/1992 Coll., modifying certain issues relating to Act No. 229/1991 Coll., on modification of proprietary relations to the ground and other agricultural property, in the wording of Act No. 93/1992 Coll., in the wording of later regulations. The mentioned Act, whose full wording is to be found on the next page, allows returning works of art from the property of state to physical entities, their spouses or offspring, under the condition that the work had been purloined as a consequence to the transfer or transition of property rights between 29 September 1938 and 4 May 1945, such transfers or transitions having been declared invalid by the President of the Republic Decree No. 5/1945 Coll., or by Act No. 128/1946 Coll. The name and address of the organisation administering respective property are given for each work of art included in the database. The original owners or their offspring should address their requests for return of property to the organisation administering the concrete work of art. If there is awareness of further objects of cultural value, not included in this utility, the above-mentioned Act allows adopting the same process. Possible arguments arising from the exercise of claims shall be decided by tribunals in the Czech Republic.
The Ministry of Culture has published these works of art with all due esteem to their original owners and with full respect to their offspring, not only as a result of research work, but first of all as a commemoration of our fellow citizens who lost their lives in concentration camps of World War II, or who were forced to emigrate due to the Nazi jeopardy.
Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic
The Documentation Centre for Property Transfers of Cultural Assets of WW II Victims (www.centrum.usd.cas.cz) was founded November 1st. 2001 upon a decision of the Joint Working Governmental Committee (headed by the vice-chairman of the Czech government Pavel Rychetsky, PhD) by adoption of the resolution nr. 773 of the Czech government from November 1998. This Committee finished its activities in May 2002 and the Centre is the follow up of earlier activities of a group of researchers working on the clarification of the historical and economical questions in connection with the confiscated Jewish property, in particular art objects. Thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic the Centre has extended its activities to the field of heuristic research in Czech and foreign archives, museums and galleries. The mission and the acticities of the Centre were approved by the Czech government resolution nr. 87 from January 22nd 2003 in the "Concept of Effectual Care of the Movable Property of Cultural Heritage in the Czech Republic in the Years 2003-2008". In 2006 the Czech Government approved financing of the Centre activities for 2007 - 2011. In the year 2006 - Czech Parliament decided to cancel the restitution limit for the Act 212, (signed by President on November 30, 2006).