WASHINGTON — A unanimous ruling from the Supreme Court has presented a significant setback for Holocaust survivors and their descendants in an ongoing legal battle for compensation from Hungary due to property confiscated during World War II.
The justices overturned a lower court’s decision that permitted the lawsuit to continue, defying a federal law designed to protect sovereign nations like Hungary from litigation in U.S. courts.
The Supreme Court deliberated on the case during December, which was initiated in 2010 by survivors of the Holocaust, most of whom are now in their nineties. These individuals include those who endured transport to the Auschwitz death camp during the Nazi regime in what was then German-occupied Poland.
Initially, the appeals court determined that the plaintiffs could potentially fit into an exception under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act for “property taken in violation of international law,” provided they could demonstrate a commercial link to the United States.
Survivors contended that Hungary had previously sold the property, mixed the proceeds with its general treasury, and utilized those funds to acquire military equipment and issue bonds in the U.S. during the 2000s.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that merely citing a “commingling theory” fails to meet the legal requirements established in this context.
Following this ruling, the case was remanded to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, leaving the future of the lawsuit uncertain.
This case is not the first for the Supreme Court. In a previous decision in 2021, the justices sided with Germany regarding a multimillion-dollar dispute over a collection of religious artworks, thereby complicating other lawsuits related to property claims stolen from Jewish individuals during the Nazi period.
The Court addressed the Hungary lawsuit concurrently, ultimately sending it back to the appeals court in Washington in light of the ruling concerning Germany.
After reviewing the case for a third time, the appeals court opted not to dismiss all the claims presented.
The survivors initiated this lawsuit to advocate for a class action suit against Hungary and its railway, which played a crucial role in the horrors of the Holocaust by transporting over 400,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz within a mere two months in 1944.
