Internet resources: Database of artworks looted by Nazis goes online

A free historical online database of more than 20,000 art objects stolen in Germany-occupied France and Belgium from 1940 to 1944 went online on October 18 2010.

The database is unusual because it not only covers information on pictures or sculptures but has been built around Nazi-era records that were digitized and rendered searchable, showing what was seized and from whom, along with data on restitution or repatriation and photographs taken of the seized objects.

The database is a joint project of the New York-based Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The database combines records from the U.S. National Archives, the German Bundesarchiv, the federal archive in Koblenz; and repatriation and restitution records held by the French government.