Marilyn Henry

Marilyn Henry (March 5, 1953 – March 1, 2011) was an American author, columnist, journalist, historian and archivist for matters pertaining to Holocaust reparations, survivor benefits and art looted by the Nazis.

Life and career Born Marilyn Cohen, into a Jewish family in Pennsylvania, Henry, was described as a "quintessential old-school girl reporter", and a "fierce advocate" for Holocaust survivors. Afterward, she changed her last name to Henry. Earlier in her career, she was a reporter for the Jacksonville Times-Union and became its wire editor. but kept a neutral stance in her coverage of the myriad thorny issues involved. Beginning in the late 1990s, Henry concentrated much of her efforts on art restitution issues, writing for the Jerusalem Post and also as a contributing editor of ARTnews. She traveled around the world to review records and interview pertinent officials from various European countries, and soon became known as the preeminent scholar on the topic. She was already considered an authority on German reparations and the recovery of Jewish properties looted and displaced in Europe during the Nazi and communist eras. She also sought to pressure U.S. and Czech officials to look into the apparent murder in 1967 of Charles Jordan, a top professional of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) at the time whose body was found floating in the Vltava. She also worked part-time as an archivist for the JDC. "

Selected works She was the author of Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the Claims Conference (Vallentine Mitchell), with a foreword by Sir Martin Gilbert (2007), a contributor to the Encyclopedia Judaica and the American Jewish Year Book.