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\n\tThe 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.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe bill offers a historic opportunity to finally deliver justice to victims of Nazi and fascist persecution and their heirs,\u201d said Gideon Taylor, president of the WJRO. \u201cWhile operational and legal details remain to be resolved as the bill moves forward, this is a vital step toward creating a framework for restitution,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\n\tA founding member of the Axis powers during World War II, Italy was allied with Nazi Germany under the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.\u00a0The Nazis looted about 20\u00a0percent\u00a0of the art in Europe, including from Jews in Italy, and more than 100,000 items have not been returned to their rightful owners.<\/p>\n
\n\tA 2024 study by the WJRO and the Claims Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against\u00a0Germany reported that of 47 countries surveyed, only seven\u2014Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States\u2014had made \u201cmajor progress\u201d in restituting Nazi-looted art since the landmark\u00a01998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art.\u00a0The same study found that Italy had made only \u201csome progress\u201d on looted cultural property over the past 25 years.<\/p>\n
\n\tAt the June 24 parliamentary meeting, Livia Ottolenghi, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), commented, \u201cWith 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\u2014which a legal system that respects fundamental human rights must, in any case, ensure.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-1139711601.jpg?w=1024″] 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2033726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2033726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2033726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2033726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2033726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2033726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}