Legislation on Compensation to Victims of Nazi Persecution (1953)
 
The German Restitution Laws were a series of laws passed in the 1950s in West Germany regulating the restitution of lost property and the payment of damages to victims of the Nazi persecution in the period 1933 to 1945.
 
Such persecution included widespread theft of art and antiques and property owned by German Jews as well as the Aryanisation of Jewish companies in the early 1930s after the Nazis came to power.
 
The crimes escalated throughout their rule and culminated in the Holocaust from about 1939 on as Jews in Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia were isolated and deported to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps, Nazi ghettos and death camps.
 
Their remaining personal property such as wedding rings were stolen before their murder.
 
Collection Contains Three Documents on topic