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(CNN) – The Supreme Court on Monday will delve into the atrocities committed during World War II and hear two cases brought by victims and their families seeking compensation for property they say was stolen from them during the Holocaust.
The judges will ultimately decide whether the cases against Germany and Hungary can proceed in the US courts.
The court’s decision could open the door to the possibility of similar lawsuits against foreign countries, but it also raises difficult questions about entangling the judiciary in matters related to sensitive foreign policy issues.
It is a federal law that allows lawsuits against a foreign government when property is taken “in violation of international law.” The US Department of Justice is on the side of lawyers from Germany and Hungary arguing that the cases should be dismissed.
The lawsuit against Hungary was initially filed in 2010 by 14 Jewish survivors, including four American citizens, who sued Hungary and its state railway company seeking compensation for property that was stolen from their families in 1941. They say their possessions and those of their families were taken from them when they boarded trains bound for concentration camps and seek to represent a class of victims who have been similarly injured.
While the Alien Sovereign Immunities Act generally provides immunity to foreign states from lawsuits in US courts, the plaintiffs argue that their case is an exception because the property was stolen in violation of international law.
“Hungary promised in the 1947 peace treaty to fully compensate its victim and has never done so,” Sarah Harrington, the victims’ attorney, said in an interview. “Congress said that the courts could hear these claims and even the United States has said that it is a moral imperative to bring justice to the victims of the Holocaust in their lifetime.”
But Hungary’s lawyers say such litigation would interfere with US foreign policy, and that US courts have long rejected such claims to avoid “international discord.”
“The adjudication of these claims would inevitably disrupt foreign relations and could expose the United States to similar treatment by judges of other nations,” Gregory Silbert, a lawyer from Hungary, told the judges in court documents. He stressed that Hungary has made “substantial additional payments to Holocaust victims and Jewish organizations.” The “tens of billions of dollars” that the plaintiffs could seek “would devastate Hungary’s economy,” Silbert argues.
The US Department of Justice has filed a court brief in favor of Hungary’s position. Acting Attorney General Jeff Wall said the United States “deplores the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime” and has supported efforts to provide its victims with remedies for “heinous torts.”
However, in the case at hand, Wall said the United States has a “primary interest” in ensuring that its foreign partners handle the dispute, arguing that litigation in US courts could “undermine that objective.” He said courts have long recognized that, in appropriate cases, judges could voluntarily yield to another nation to resolve the conflict.
A district court dismissed the lawsuit and refused to get involved, holding that the survivors should have tried to file a lawsuit in Hungary first. A United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed that decision.
The second case, Germany v. Phillipp, takes a closer look at the scope of the law as it applies to the heirs of various Jewish art dealers who did business in Germany in the 1930s.
They seek to recover a collection of medieval relic art and devotional art dating from the 11th to 15th centuries. In court documents, his heirs say they were forced to sell the art to the Nazi-controlled state of Prussia at a price far less than the art was worth. They lost a claim in Germany after an advisory commission concluded that the sale of the artwork “was not a mandatory sale due to persecution.”
They then filed a lawsuit in US courts to get the art back, or $ 250 million, or both.
Nicholas M. O’Donnell, attorney for the victims, said that in 1935 the “Nazis – led by Hermann Goering and for Hitler’s personal benefit – forced the sale of the collection in question in this case” known as Welfenschatz.
“If such a forced sale is not an expropriation in violation of international law, then nothing is,” he said.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals held that according to the FSIA, the lawsuit could go ahead.
This story was first published on CNN.com, “Holocaust victims suing Germany and Hungary have their day in Supreme Court on Monday.”
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