By Linda Laderman
Legal News
Copyright attorney Raymond Dowd will be the keynote speaker for the Jewish Bar Association of Michigan’s presentation, “The Holocaust? Legal and Ethical Issues over Nazi Art Looting,” on Wednesday, Sept. 14 at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills.
The lecture begins at 7 p.m.
Dowd, a partner with the New York firm, Dunnington, Bartholow and Miller, litigates cases involving art law, copyright, and trademark issues.
Along with Prof. Howard Lupovitch, director of the Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies at Wayne State University, Dowd will address issues stemming from the claims of Holocaust survivors and their families, who have fought to return art looted from their families during Hitler’s attempt to permanently purge Jewish life from Europe.
Dowd’s appearance is the result of efforts by Detroit area attorneys Rick Herman and co-chair of the event, Jonathan Schwartz, to bring the issue to a local forum.
Herman, who also practices copyright law, met Dowd through their affiliation with the Copyright Society of the U.S.A.
“Since I met Dowd, I’ve become interested in the issues related to art looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust,” Herman said. “We would talk for hours about the issue so I asked him if he’d be interested in doing something here.”
Herman said his wife, former Oakland Circuit Court Judge Debbie Tyner and a docent at the Holocaust Memorial Center, provided additional motivation to get Dowd’s talk on the calendar.
“We started having conversations because of my interest and my wife’s interest,” Herman said. “I thought this was a good mix—– we could pull it off.”
For Herman, the issue of looted art extends has relevance, not only on a religious level, but also on an ethical and philosophical plane.
“I’m not doing this just out of a deep hearted religious sense, but because of a deep rooted humanistic sense,” Herman said.
According to Herman, Dowd is expected to give his audience a moral view of what happens when victims of war-related atrocities lose ownership of what is rightfully theirs.
“Copyright law is about ownership and this is about ownership,” Herman said, adding, “My hope is that the audience takes it back to the community to discuss with others. I know people here are hungry for more information. It’s important to know —– we don’t want to forget any aspect of that terrible time.”
Registration information for Dowd’s talk is available at www.tinyurl.com/JBAM0914 .
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