Italy Advances Legislation on Restitution of Nazi-Looted Art

The Italian parliament is advancing legislation to create a formal process for restituting art and cultural property looted by the Nazis under Italian Fascist racial laws. The news was reported by the Jewish News Syndicate following a statement by the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO), a Jerusalem-based nonprofit that works toward the return of Jewish-owned property in Europe.

“The bill offers a historic opportunity to finally deliver justice to victims of Nazi and fascist persecution and their heirs,” said Gideon Taylor, president of the WJRO. “While operational and legal details remain to be resolved as the bill moves forward, this is a vital step toward creating a framework for restitution,” he said.

A founding member of the Axis powers during World War II, Italy was allied with Nazi Germany under the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. The Nazis looted about 20 percent of the art in Europe, including from Jews in Italy, and more than 100,000 items have not been returned to their rightful owners.

A 2024 study by the WJRO and the Claims Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany reported that of 47 countries surveyed, only seven—Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States—had made “major progress” since the landmark 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. The same study found that Italy had made only “some progress” on looted cultural property over the past 25 years.

At the June 24 parliamentary meeting, Livia Ottolenghi, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), commented, “With the bill under discussion, Italy is finally taking steps . . . to fill a gap aimed at clearly establishing, in our country as well, right to redress, certainly not [only] for the lives lost and the suffering endured, but for the dispossession of artistic heritage—which a legal system that respects fundamental human rights must, in any case, ensure.”