Restitution, Justice, and Memory

LBI’s current exhibition, Stolen Heart, shows how the wide-ranging plunder of Jewish property by the Nazis unfolded in a small part of Berlin’s city center between 1933 and 1945. However, for the descendants of the owners of the 225 properties stolen there during this period, this story continues until the present day. Fewer than 10% of the former owners or their heirs have received restitution, and some heirs remain in protracted legal battles.

In his comparative survey of the history of restitution, The Guilt of Nations (2000), historian Elazar Barkan (Columbia University) presents an overview of restitution for historical injustices ranging from the Holocaust to the displacement and murder of the indigenous peoples of North America. While restitution aims to preserve human rights in the Enlightenment sense—as rights that accrue to individuals—Barkan argues that the negotiation of restitution agreements in the 20th century has engendered a new understanding of collective rights. Thus, restitution functions as a framework that shapes the identities and historical narratives of both victimized groups and perpetrator nations.

Barkan and a panel including acclaimed author Sarah Wildman and Joanne Intrator, a clinical psychiatrist who successfully fought for restitution of her family’s property in central Berlin, will discuss the legal, moral, and emotional implications of restitution of Nazi-looted property, with an eye toward the role that restitution plays in the formation of narratives for both individuals and groups over time.

Free admission. Reserve tickets.

From the Leo Baeck Institute