Federal courts have started to confront many claims involving works of art that were stolen during World War II. During the war, massive looting of artwork took place—it was perhaps the greatest looting in human history. Following the war, Germany and Austria enacted some of the world’s strictest personal privacy laws, and the Iron Curtain went up. Ostensibly to protect minorities from a future Adolf Hitler, Western privacy laws had the effect of concealing the extent and nature of the looting and making it impossible for families—many of whom had lost multiple members—to recover lost property.
