These are just some of the 20,000 heirlooms and artifacts languishing in museums and storage rooms around the Czech Republic, waiting to be claimed by their rightful owners: the descendants of the country's 80,000 Holocaust victims.

Thanks to a planned amendment to national law, the chances of these pieces being claimed just increased.

Earlier this month, the Chamber of Deputies voted to scrap a Dec. 31 deadline for Jewish descendants of Holocaust victims to come forward to claim artifacts confiscated or looted by the Nazis during World War II. A new amendment now extends that deadline indefinitely. The Senate approved the measure Nov. 16, and now the bill needs only the president's approval before it becomes official.

Lawmakers expect that to come soon.

The Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic (FŽO) has been pushing to extend the deadline for years and gladly welcomed Parliament's move, Director Tomáš Kraus said.

"We are very glad this change has happened," he said. "There should be no deadline connected with the claims as many things still remain undiscovered and there are yet many archive documents to study."

The head of the Prague Jewish Community agreed.

"I feel very positive about the deadline being removed. It didn't really make any sense at all to have one in the first place," said František Banyai. "To deal with claims takes time, and some galleries and museums are only now finding out the origins of their art pieces."

Kraus agreed that restitution is a lengthy process that cannot be rushed.

"It's calling for a lot more time than we originally expected," he said.

The legal process to reclaim the lost artifacts was first established in the Czech Republic eight years ago, with only small success seen so far.

In 1998, the government formed a commission to look at the restitution issue, organize the search for lost art and artifacts and prepare legislation on the issue. In 2000, that legislation officially became law, and allowed the descendants of Holocaust victims to reclaim property that had been confiscated during World War II and had now fallen under state ownership.

The original legislation set a deadline of 2002, which was later extended until the end of this year. This recent amendment will mean Jewish descendants can claim what's rightfully theirs at any time.

The painstaking task of sifting through forgotten history falls on a group of government employees working in a Prague 6 office. The group's complex name — The Documentation Center for Property Transfers of Cultural Assets of World War II Victims — mirrors its complicated task. The employees dig through archives in order to trace the origins of artifacts in museums and galleries nationwide.

Institutions across the country, including the National Gallery, Prague Castle and the Museum of Decorative Arts, have come forward to have items from their collections examined. In the past four years, some 20,000 pieces — textiles, liturgical objects, furniture, paintings and sculptures — have been identified as Holocaust spoils, said Kraus. About 3,400 pieces have been entered into a searchable online database: www.restitution-art.cz. The rest will be gradually added, but until then a complete list is kept at the Culture Ministry.

Anyone recognizing a stolen piece can contact the ministry, but will have to deal with the museum or gallery that holds the piece in order to settle the claim, said spokeswoman Ludmila Kadrnová.

"The unfortunate thing is that the entire responsibility of proving the claim rests with the claimant," said Kraus. "A person has been robbed and has to prove that this was really the case."

Despite the amount already recovered, the Czech restitution initiative has met with only limited success.

"It is true that from a worldwide point of view, claims have not been that numerous in the Czech Republic: Some 500 total since the law became valid," said Kraus. The majority of these have been successfully resolved, he said.

"We have been spreading awareness of this. We inform all our partners abroad. [Yet] many people learn only by accident about the possibility to raise a claim."

But the Czech government is not to blame for the low number of successful claims, he said.

"Regardless of the current political stalemate, members of Parliament were able to reach agreement. They voted almost unanimously on this issue," he said. "I think this is evidence of their good will."

The Culture Ministry is dedicated to seeing this project through, Kadrnová said. "This is about trying to make up for the injuries of the past."