MUNICH (AP) — Matthias Weniger donned a pair of white cloth gloves and carefully lifted a gleaming silver candelabra, looking for a yellow label at the bottom of it.
The menorah is one of 111 silver objects in the Bavarian National Museum that the Nazis stole from Jewish families during the Third Reich in 1939. That’s when they ordered all German Jews to bring their personal silver items to pawn shops throughout the Reich – one of many laws designed to humiliate, punish, and exclude Jews .
What began with anti-Jewish discrimination and persecution in 1933, after the Nazis voted for power in Germany, led to the murder of 6 million European Jews and others in the Holocaust before World War II ended with Germany’s surrender in 1945.
Weniger, who is curator of the Munich Museum and oversees the recovery effort, has made it his mission to return as many pieces of silver as possible to the descendants of the original owners.
Weniger told the Associated Press in an interview last week in the museum’s workshop, where he displayed some silver containing items that had not yet been returned.
“So it’s really important to try to find the families and get things back to them,” he added.
Thousands of pieces taken from Jewish families were melted down into about 135 tons of silver, and used to aid the German war effort. But many museums ended up with hundreds of silver pieces like the candelabra used to light candles on Shabbat eve, Kiddush cups for blessing wine, silver spoons and cake servers.
Some items have been returned to Holocaust survivors in the 1950s and 1960s, if they come forward and actively try to recover their stolen property. But many owners were killed in the Holocaust or, if they managed to escape from the Nazis, ended up in remote corners of the world.
“Two-thirds of the previous owners did not survive the Holocaust,” Winegger said.
Despite these odds, and with a combination of exhaustive detective work, dedication, and a deep knowledge of history, Weniger has so far been able to return about 50 items to family members and relatives of the original owners.
He’s convinced he might be able to return nearly all of his remaining stuff by the end of this year.
First, it searches for the identity of the original owners. Small, yellowed paper stickers on some of the pieces often aid his efforts. They were put on things by pawn shops – a testament to the obsessive German bureaucracy even in times of dictatorship and war. The numbers on the labels are also listed in more than 80 years of documents identifying people who had to give away silver—sometimes much-loved heirlooms that have been passed down in families for generations.
Once Weniger finds out the names of the original owners, he begins searching Jewish obituary and genealogy databases, hoping that direct descendants or distant relatives may have posted their names on the Internet.
“And so you pass from generation to generation and you end up with phone books … with LinkedIn, with Facebook, with Instagram or email addresses that correspond to a member of the younger generation of that family,” the researcher explained.
In most cases, Weniger says he’s lucky and can track down suitable relatives.
The majority of the descendants live in the United States and Israel, but the museum already has or is in the process of returning the silver pieces to France, the United Kingdom, Australia and Mexico.
And Weniger makes sure to personally deliver the pieces to families. He traveled to the United States earlier this year and, last week, returned 19 items to families in Israel.
There, Weniger met Hila Gutman, 53, and her father, Benjamin Gutman, 86, at his home in Kfar Shmaryahu, north of Tel Aviv, and gave them a small silver goblet.
Weniger was able to track down the family with the help of the Magen David Adom tracing service – the Israeli version of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
It’s possible that the cup was used for Kiddush to bless wine on Shabbat eve—but no one knows for sure because the original owners, Bavarian cattle dealer Salomon Guttmann and his wife, Karolina, who were Benjamin’s great-grandparents, were murdered by the Nazis at the Treblinka extermination camp.
“It was a mixed feeling for us to take back the trophy,” said Hella Guttmann. “Because you understand that it is the only thing left of them.”
While Benjamin Gutmann’s grandparents were killed in the Holocaust, their son Max – Benjamin’s father – survived because he fled the Nazis to the British-mandated territories of Palestine, in what is now Israel.
Despite the pain of losing and returning the Silver Cup, Gottman says they are happy to have it back and plan to use it in a ceremony with all their other relatives on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, in September.
As for Weniger, the Gutmanns have nothing but praise for him and his work.
“He’s really devoted to that,” said Hila Guttmann. “He treats these little things very carefully – as if they were sacred.”
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The Associated Press’s religious coverage is supported by The Associated Press cooperation With The Conversation US, funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. , AP is solely responsible for this content.
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This story has been corrected to show that Benjamin Gutman is 86, not 83.
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