Looted

This service, which has always been kept in its original travel case, bears the coat of arms of the Morosini family of Venice. It is described in an inventory drawn up in 1937, which is how we know that the Oppenheimers, a married couple fleeing the Nazi regime, temporarily stored the service at a depot at the Austrian border.

These splendid Tora ornaments formed part of the collection of around 1,000 Jewish ritual objects owned by Leo Isaac Lessmann. This set comprises a pair of ornamental towers, a Tora shield and a pointer for reading from the Torah scroll. These objects of exceptional artistic, cultural and historical quality disappeared without trace at the end of the war. All that remains of them is this photograph.

Albert Heppner donated a Persian dish to the Rijksmuseum in 1939, when he and his wife Irene were applying for Dutch citizenship for themselves and their young son. Although it is not mentioned in the application, this gift, which was possibly intended to demonstrate the donor’s links with the Netherlands, may be connected with the application.

The Book of Esther is a scroll read on the Jewish holiday of Purim. This version was found after the war, well-hidden at the home of Louis Lamm, an antiquarian book dealer. Lamm was murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. The scroll came into the hands of a Jewish man who gifted it to his cousin Ittai for his bar mitzvah. Ever since, Ittai has treasured this Book of Esther and the accompanying letter about the tragic fate of Louis Lamm.

Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita and his wife Betsie decided not to go into hiding – they thought their connections with Portugal would mean they were in less danger. Their son Jaap lived with them while studying art history. When all three of them were deported, Jaap became separated from his parents. He died at Theresienstadt concentration camp on 30 March 1944. Samuel and Betsie were already dead by this time: they were murdered immediately after their arrival at Auschwitz on 11 February 1944.

Countless ritual objects were orphaned by the war; the people who owned and used them had been murdered. In 1949 the US handed over the orphans to a Jewish organisation which saved them for the Jewish community. Each object, including this tallit collar from a prayer shawl, was given an identification tag with the name of the organisation. This was to ensure that the former users of this object, who came from Eastern Europe, would never be forgotten.

The humiliation and dehumanisation of Jews by the Nazis went hand-in-hand with the desecration of Jewish books and ritual objects. The object that suffered most was the Torah scroll, the most sacred one of all to Jewish people. Torahs were traded and repurposed on a massive scale. In this case, a parchment with text from the biblical book of Exodus serves as the canvas for a painted portrait of a soldier.  

Jacques Goudstikker established his art dealership at 458 Herengracht, on the prestigious stretch of this canal known as the Golden Bend (Gouden Bocht). Goudstikker was particularly attached to this view of Amsterdam by Berckheyde, and when he was forced to flee the city in 1940 he took it with him. The painting was returned to his wife Dési Goudstikker in 1952 as part of her settlement with the Netherlands Art Property Foundation (Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit).

Margarete Stern-Lippmann bought this portrait in late 1941 for the Nazi Reich commissioner Arthur Seyss-Inquart in exchange for exit visas for herself and her family. The painting was passed on to a Nazi agency responsible for looting valuable goods but the visas never came. So the painting did not save the lives of Margarete or her eight family members after all. They were all deported and murdered.

Haggadahs are texts containing the biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt, which is read during Pesach, or Passover. In 1941 this magnificent manuscript from the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana was taken to a place of safety by the librarian Louis Hirschel. Here we see Abraham being visited by three angels who tell him that his wife Sarah is expecting a child. Joseph ben David was one of the most important calligraphers of the 18th century.