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| - The fate of an important medieval art collection that Nazi Germany bought from Jewish dealers was in the balance in a US Supreme Court hearing Monday. Justices heard arguments related to a claim on ownership of the gold crosses, jewels and other religious works from the 11th to the 14th centuries that make up the storied Guelph Treasure. The sellers were forced to offer the collection at cut prices in 1935 to Prussia, then run by Gestapo founder Hermann Goering, say their heirs, as the Nazis increasingly threatened Jews. The treasure ended up after the war on display in a museum in Berlin. The United States has been firm in its support for restitution of art treasures taken from Jews by the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s as they carried out a genocidal campaign against Jews. But the Guelphe Treasure case is more complicated. Germany, the defendant, says the consortium of dealers were not robbed, but simply cut their losses after paying too much on the eve of the global depression of the early 1930s. Descendants of the dealers have turned to the US courts to recover the treasure, which they say is worth at least $250 million. "It was simply not possible in 1935 for any Jewish business, least of all dealers who are in possession of the German national treasure, to get a fair deal with perhaps the greatest, most notorious art thief of all time," said Jed Leiber, a California musician whose grandfather Saemy Rosenberg was one of the dealers, Germany does not see it this way, and says the case is one for the German courts, and not US judges. "The Guelph Treasure's sale in 1935 was not a forced sale due to Nazi persecution," said The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which holds the collection. The foundation cites the conclusion of an independent committee that ruled that the works were sold in 1935 for market prices, and there was no evidence of Nazi pressure. The case before the nine justices -- who are expected to rule by June next year -- focused on whether the plaintiffs have the right to sue in US court. Since 1976 US law has given foreign governments immunity from lawsuits in US courts, except when the issue is property taken in violation of international law. Germany's attorney, Jonathan Freiman, told the court that the 1976 law allowed only for suits against countries like Cuba, where the communist government simply seized Americans' properties. The Guelph Treasure case, he said, involved a sale by Germans on German soil, and should be argued in German courts. The plaintiffs were asking the court to create "a novel tool for suing foreign sovereigns" for human rights violations. That would "cause frictions in foreign relations and risk reciprocal treatment" by other countries, he said. Arguing for the dealers' heirs, attorney Michael O'Donnell said Nazis in fact did not view Jews as Germans with German legal protections, and that the Holocaust was hardly just a domestic matter. The Germans "took their property because of who they were," he said. Justices noted that genocide does violate international law, but also worried that if countries could be sued in US court based on human rights violations abroad, it would overburden the US justice system. That would lead to "chaos if they are brought everywhere," Justice Stephen Breyer said. "It would have 700 district judges in the country adjudicating all these kinds of claims," added Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Leiber wrote before the hearing that, despite all the legal arguments, "just on a human level it doesn't sound like justice." "And it sounds like the kind of thing that leads to a denial of Holocaust reality," Leiber said. But Freiman argued that the German government has already provided "roughly $100 billion (in today's dollars)" to compensate Holocaust survivors and other victims of the Nazi era. chp-pmh/ft
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