And Justice for All

A few weeks back, I wrote about Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and her widely covered analysis of the 2020 election. Now, thanks to constituent Rabbi Dovid Asher, a rav in Richmond, Virginia, she’s in the news again, going to bat for the families of survivors who are the plaintiffs in two Holocaust restitution cases that are now before the US Supreme Court.

In one case, Republic of Hungary v. Simon, the plaintiffs are 14 Hungarian Jewish survivors whose property was confiscated by the Hungarian government in a “wholesale plunder” prior to their deportation to death camps as part of the Nazi annihilation of more than two-thirds of Hungary’s Jews. In the other litigation, Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp, the plaintiffs are heirs of German Jewish art dealers who were forced to sell a very valuable collection of artworks at a fraction of their worth to agents of top Nazi official Hermann Goering, who personally presented it as a surprise gift to Adolf Hitler yemach shemo. They sued in the US after the German Advisory Commission on the return of cultural property seized by the Nazis deemed the sale to not have been coerced.

Lower federal courts ruled that the suits could proceed, and the defendant governments appealed those rulings to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments in the cases last week. Although a federal statute, the Foreign Sovereignty Immunities Act (FSIA), protects foreign governments from having to defend claims in American courts, an exception under the FSIA does allow claims regarding property taken in violation of international law to be made in US courts. The plaintiffs argue that the property taken was part of the Nazi program of genocide, and was thus without question in “violation of international law.”

Arguing before the Court, the defendant’s attorney claimed, however, that the exception did not apply because the Nazis had taken property from German citizens within German territory. The defendants in both cases have also invoked the doctrine of international comity, which compels courts to abstain from hearing a case to show due respect for the sovereignty of another country.