A New Exhibition in Amsterdam Explores the Holocaust Through Looted Objects

During World War II, the Nazis murdered more than 100,000 Jews from the Netherlands—some 75 percent of the Dutch Jewish population. Many of those who survived were left with nothing, as the Nazis had plundered their personal belongings. Now, a new exhibition in Amsterdam examines the Holocaust through the lens of these material losses.

Titled “Looted,” the show is organized by the Jewish Cultural Quarter and the Rijksmuseum. It explores eight personal stories from families and individuals whose artwork, clothing, books, religious items, porcelain, teapots, musical instruments and other items were stolen.

“We want to reach two goals with this exhibition: One, we wanted to show that the looting of Jewish objects was systematic, and secondly, how it impacted the lives of people,” Mara Lagerweij, a conservator at the Rijksmuseum, tells Jan Hennop of Agence France-Presse.

While many Holocaust museums and exhibitions focus on the horrors that followed the looting, this show highlights the link between personal belongings and identity, and the feelings of loss and erasure that arise when those items are forcibly stripped away.

“The theft of Jewish property was carried out with the same efficiency, brutality and scale as the physical genocide,” write Stuart E. Eizenstat, chair of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, and Julie-Marthe Cohen, curator of cultural history at Amsterdam’s Jewish Museum, in the Art Newspaper. “It was an essential effort to erase root and branch more than a thousand years of Jewish history, to dehumanize what the Nazis considered an inferior race.”

“Looted” is split across two locations in Amsterdam: Visitors can learn about five of the eight stories, which focus on the restitution of looted art, at the National Holocaust Museum. Meanwhile, the other three stories, which focus on the restitution of Jewish ceremonial objects, are on display at the Jewish Museum.

One of the items on view is a print titled Evil-Speaking Little Women by the Dutch artist Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, who was a tutor and friend to the artist M.C. Escher. After the Nazis raided De Mesquita’s home, Escher was able to salvage the print. De Mesquita and his family were sent to Auschwitz, and they did not survive.

“People think of theft as something impulsive, but this was also organized and systematic: isolation, theft, displacement and then murder,” said Taco Dibbits, general director of the Rijksmuseum, at a press opening, per DutchNews’ Senay Boztas. “In this exhibition, we think it is important to put the stories of people in the center, because these thefts changed their lives forever.”

Another story is that of Max Heppner, whose parents left Germany for the Netherlands after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Nearly a decade later, when Heppner was 8, the family fled the Nazis for a second time, leaving Amsterdam and hiding out in a chicken coop in a small farm town. The boy’s backpack and drawings he made while in hiding are also on display.

“The backpack really symbolizes everything, people on the run, people without possessions, people without a home,” Heppner, now 90, tells the New York Times’ Nina Siegal. “While we were on the run, stuff got lost along the way, or our things got taken. By the time we arrived in the chicken house, that backpack was all we had left.”

“Looted” is on view at the National Holocaust Museum and the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam through October 27.

Julia Binswanger | READ MORE

Julia Binswanger is a freelance arts and culture reporter based in Chicago. Her work has been featured in WBEZ, Chicago magazine, Rebellious magazine and PC magazine.