Jumping further into what appears to be growing international efforts by Jewish heirs to reclaim artwork looted by Nazis during World War II, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday an international conference, to be held in May during the 75th anniversary of V-E Day, that he said will seek to help victims of Nazi-era crimes recover stolen property.

The conference will aim to bring more "common understanding" among the international community to "abstract phrases such as Nazi confiscated art, forced sale and sale under duress," according to a state webpage describing the upcoming event. Those terms and others like them often underlie what can be protracted and difficult litigation over the provenance and rightful ownership of valuable art that changed hands during and in the run-up to World War II as the Nazis stormed different parts of Europe.

In the last two decades, art restitution lawsuits and other efforts focused on alleged Nazi-stolen art have proliferated across numerous countries, according to legal experts in the field. It amounts to a movement, according to attorneys and experts, that some say former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau helped fuel with his bold 1998 seizure of the MOMA's "Dead City III" painting and his related, unsuccessful litigation aimed at keeping the painting from being shipped back to Austria.

The upcoming conference, announced on Monday because it is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, will include presentations and panel-led discussions between claimant representatives, lawyers, members of the art trade, professionals from cultural institutions, provenance researchers, historians and art historians, according to a news release from Cuomo's office.

Hosted in New York City by the state Department of Financial Services' Holocaust Claims Processing Office, the two-day event, to be held May 7 and 8, "will be aimed at improving the State's ability to help recover works of art and other property lost due to Nazi persecution," the news release said.

"The family of New York will never forget the atrocities of the Holocaust, and this international conference will build on our efforts to help victims of Nazi crimes recover stolen property," Cuomo added in the news release.

The release also noted that the Holocaust Claims Processing Office has "facilitated the restitution of over $178 million in bank accounts, insurance policies, and other material losses and the resolution of cases involving more than 160 works of art."

According to a Financial Services Department webpage about the conference, "the criteria for determining whether objects lost between 1933 and 1945 in a manner that justifies restitution were articulated by the Allied powers in 1943 and then codified in postwar restitution laws," but "in the modern era of Holocaust-era asset restitution, those standards were replaced by abstract phrases such as Nazi confiscated art, forced sale and sale under duress without any qualifications attached."

The conference, which will feature academic and other papers on the subject of Nazi-looted artwork, will examine the question of whether "the framers of modern restitution principles intend for the definitions promulgated by the Allies and postwar restitution laws to dictate the way these terms are interpreted?"

"Because there are no international guidelines on how to interpret these terms in the context of involuntary transactions that occurred in Nazi-controlled Europe, there are inconsistencies across and within groups of practitioners in the field on how to designate and characterize various forms of loss," the webpage also states.

"Our aim" continues the state's webpage, "is to inform and guide future discussions about the disparate views on these historical events and how a common understanding of these terms can effectively contribute to resolving claims in a more consistent and expeditious manner."

The webpage also notes that papers by historians and others accepted by the conference will be published in a free online book after a conference symposium ends.

Raymond Dowd, a Dunnington Bartholow & Miller partner in New York specializing in intellectual property and art cases, including many involving allegedly Nazi-stolen art, said Monday that he plans to attend the conference and believes it will be an important and helpful event.

"Right now, it's like 'Groundhog Day' because we have to keep litigating the question of whether or not Jews voluntarily abandoned their property in fleeing Nazi persecution," Dowd said in a phone interview.

"I think the conference will help the judiciary by providing reliable scholarship on these difficult topics," he also said, adding that he "salutes" the state's conference effort.

"The Nazi were the masters of doublespeak," Dowd added. "If you look at the bureaucratic language used by the Nazis, [it] is impossible to figure out."

Dowd also noted that "New York, out of the entire world, has shown leadership on this topic since the 1930s," and said that New York "may have more Holocaust victim survivors and families than anywhere else in the world."