A German museum curator has made it his mission to return silver objects stolen by the Nazi’s to Jewish families across the world.
111 silver objects which the Nazis stole from Jews during the Third Reich in 1939 are currently at the Bavarian National Museum in Munich.
During this time, all German Jews were ordered to bring their personal silver objects to pawn shops. This was one of many laws created to humiliate, punish and exclude the Jews.
Curator Matthias Weniger has now pledged to return as many of the silver objects as possible to the descendants of the original owners.
Speaking to Associated Press, he said: “These silver objects handed in at the pawn shops are often the only material things that remain from an existence wiped out in the Holocaust.
“Therefore it's really important to try to find the families and give back the objects to them.”
Thousands of the pieces taken from the Jews were melted into some 135 tons of silver and used to help Nazi Germany's war efforts.
Following this, several museums ended up with hundreds of silver pieces such as candlesticks used to light candles on the eve of Shabbat, Kiddush cups to bless the wine, silver spoons and cake servers.
A baptismal cup was returned by the Bavarian National Museum to relatives of the original owners in 2022 (Photo: Bastian Krack/Bavarian National Museum)
Weniger has already returned 50 items to the relatives of the original owners and is seeking to return the rest using a combination of thorough detective work, dedication and deep knowledge of history.
The curator starts by searching for the identity of the original owners before looking up Jewish obituary and genealogy databases in hopes that direct descendants or more distant relatives may have posted their names online.
Weniger says he gets lucky and is able to track down the right relatives with the majority of descendants living in the United States and Israel. The museum is also in the process of restituting silver pieces to France, Great Britain, Australia and Mexico.
A storage cabinet at the museum with silver items (Photo: Bastian Krack/Bavarian National Museum)
He added: “And so you get from one generation to the next generation and you end up with telephone books, with LinkedIn, with Facebook, with Instagram or email addresses that correspond to a member of the younger generation of that family.”
The curator also pointed out: "Two thirds of the last owners did not survive the Shoah.”
