Looted art, the art that never returned to its owner

Our foundation

The Claimants for Claimants Foundation, or “C4C”, aims to facilitate the restitution of art to claimants in an effective manner.

The administrative and legal barriers often prove too high for claimants. The foundation wants to offer an alternative form of support.

The C4C Foundation has the necessary expertise in genealogical and provenance research, as well as support for relevant legal aspects, and has extensive experience in these areas.

Joined forces

During the Second World War, Jews were stripped of their possessions on a large scale. After the war, the Allies transferred approximately 9,000 art objects to the Dutch state for restitution to their rightful owners.

By the 1950s, some of these had actually reached their rightful owners, and approximately 2,000 objects were sold by the state. The remainder were labelled “NK Collection”, where NK stands for “Nederlands Kunstbezit” (Dutch Art Property).

Fair and just

On 25 June 2021, former Minister of Education, Culture and Science Van Engelshoven decided to adopt the recommendations of the Kohnstamm Committee in their entirety and to make any remaining items – after extensive provenance research and the settlement of new restitution requests – available to the Jewish community.

Kohnstamm

After the Restitution Committee (RC) was established in 2001, several hundred objects were returned to their rightful owners. A total of 168 claims have been processed. However, since 2007, there has been a lull, until the Kohnstamm Committee – which evaluated the restitution policy in the Netherlands – concluded that the lack of further investigation is contrary to international principles to which the Netherlands has committed itself.

This led to the recommendation in 2020 to establish a clear assessment framework for requests for the restitution of Nazi-looted art, with due regard for the interests of the applicants.

Stichting Claimants for Claimants

more than 75 years later, a solution is opportune …

This foundation aims to facilitate restitution to the claimants (rightful owners and heirs of the rightful owners) in an effective manner. The administrative and legal barriers often prove too high for the average claimant. The foundation also wants to offer an alternative to purely commercial support.

The C4C Foundation has the necessary expertise in genealogical and provenance research, as well as support for relevant legal aspects, and has extensive experience in these areas.