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A German museum curator is personally returning art looted by the Nazis to the descendants of Holocaust victims
(JTA) — For descendants of Jews persecuted by the Nazis, reclaiming art that was allegedly looted from their families can involve years-long court battles or negotiations with European officials.
But one museum curator in Germany, Matthias Weniger, is devoting his energy to restituting stolen art at his institution. Weniger is making it his personal business to return 111 silver objects at the Bavarian National Museum in Munich to the descendants of the Jewish families who owned the pieces before the Holocaust.
The pieces include ritual objects such as kiddush cups and Shabbat candlesticks that wound up in Nazi hands as the result of a 1939 law ordering Jews to surrender their precious metals and stones, often in exchange for just a fraction of their price. The law was one of a series of acts designed to strip Jews of their political and civil rights before the Nazi campaign of mass extermination began.
Most of the confiscated silver went to pawn shops, and much of it was ultimately melted down and used to aid the Nazi war effort. Some of the items that were not melted were returned to Holocaust survivors in the decades after the war, but only if they came forward to retrieve their stolen possessions.
“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,” Weniger told the Associated Press on Tuesday. “Therefore it’s really important to try to find the families and give back the objects to them.”
So far, Weniger has managed to return about 50 objects to relatives of their original owners, and he expects that he will be able to return the rest by the end of the year. His campaign comes amid attempts to speed up the process of restitution in Europe and the United States. The Netherlands recently decided to return multiple artworks to Jewish families, and a 2022 law in New York state compels museums to identify art in their possession that was looted during the Nazi era.
Weniger makes an effort to personally deliver the pieces to their owners’ descendants. Last week, he returned 19 silver pieces to families in Israel, including a goblet that was likely used as a kiddush cup, to Hila Gutmann, 53, and her father Benjamin Gutmann, 86, who reside near Tel Aviv.
The original owners of the cup were Bavarian cattle dealer Salomon Gutmann and his wife, Karolina, who were Benjamin Guttman’s grandparents. They were murdered by the Nazis in the Treblinka extermination camp. Their son Max, Benjamin’s father, survived because he fled to British Mandatory Palestine.
“It was a mixed feeling for us to get back the cup,” Hila Gutmann told the AP. “Because you understand it’s the only thing that’s left of them.”
Weniger is able to identify the objects’ provenance due to yellow stickers that the pawn shops affixed to the bottom of each piece in 1939. Those stickers have numbers that correspond to documents naming the original owners. Weniger also looks into the genealogies of the owners’ descendants, using databases, obituaries, phone books, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and email addresses.
Last July, Weniger returned a partially gilded 300-year-old silver baptismal cup that had been stolen from a Jewish woman named Hermine Bernheimer in 1939. Bernheimer died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943. After her cup was returned to her descendants, they donated it to the Jewish Museum in Göppingen, the city in Germany where Bernheimer was born.
Weniger provides families with his genealogical research as well as the restituted silver. Along with the cup, relatives of Hermine Bernheimer from around the world learned of each other’s existence for the first time.
“Hermine was my great-aunt,” Naomi Karp, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., told The New York Times. “After I was told that the cup had been found, I learned I had about 30 relatives in the United States, Australia and Germany. I also learned that the cup was a baptismal cup. I have no idea how a Jewish family got a baptismal cup, but maybe it was a gift to them.”
Most of the descendants of the owners, Weniger said, live in the United States and Israel, but the museum is also in the process of returning silver pieces to France, the United Kingdom, Australia and Mexico.
“He’s really dedicated to it,” Hila Gutmann said of Weniger’s work to return the silver. “He treats these little objects with so much care — like they are holy.”
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IDF Soldier from Connecticut Killed in Southern Lebanon Combat
Sgt. Moshe Yitzhak Hacohen Katz. Photo: courtesy.
i24 News – The Israel Defense Forces announced on Sunday morning the death of Sgt. Moshe Yitzhak Hacohen Katz, 22, originally from New Haven, Connecticut, who was killed during combat operations in southern Lebanon on Saturday.
According to the military, Katz was killed in a rocket attack targeting Israeli forces operating during efforts to expand a security zone in southern Lebanon. The IDF said the strike occurred overnight between Friday and Saturday, during a large-scale barrage aimed at units deployed in the area.
An initial military investigation found that one rocket directly hit an infantry unit from the 890th Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade, killing Katz instantly. Three additional soldiers were wounded and are listed in moderate condition.
The IDF said the announcement of Katz’s death was delayed to ensure that all family members, including those in the United States, were properly notified.
The army also said that recent attacks have largely focused on the four IDF divisions operating in Lebanon. In the past 24 hours alone, approximately 250 rockets were launched toward Israeli positions, with 23 crossing into Israeli territory, according to military figures.
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AI-Generated Antisemitic Rabbi Racks Up Millions of Followers with Questionable Financial Advice
i24 News – An AI-generated character known as Rabbi Goldman has attracted millions of followers online by combining old antisemitic tropes with digital-age conspiracy theories. The avatar, presented as a caricature of a New York rabbi, plays off stereotypes of Jewish power and wealth while dispensing unsolicited “financial advice” and conspiracy-laden commentary about global elites.
In his videos, Rabbi Goldman claims that Jews have “known every secret for thousands of years,” weaving age-old prejudice into modern misinformation. Among his assertions: that the moon landing was faked, the US government will soon exert total control over its citizens, and billionaires stage yacht sinkings for insurance fraud—all allegedly foreknown by “the Jews.”
Before being removed on Sunday night, his Instagram account had racked up over 1.5 million followers. Yet the same page remains active on Facebook, which shares an owner with Instagram, with roughly 180,000 followers and thousands of interactions per post. The comments reveal an audience that is genuinely engaged with, and emboldened by, his vitriolic rhetoric.
Rabbi Goldman’s videos follow a simple formula designed to thrive in algorithm-driven ecosystems. They begin with a cryptic slogan implying secret knowledge or hidden wealth — invoking Jews as the keepers of these secrets — to draw viewers in and extend watch time, thus being featured on more people’s feeds. What follows is a cascade of AI-generated, factually dubious monologues, all culminating in a pitch: he can show you how to acquire the same “Jewish wisdom.”
That pitch leads to his website, where a manual titled How to Make and Invest Money sells for $9, and he claims it has been purchased by over 4,000 people. The real product, however, carries a fuller title — How to Make and Invest Money Like the Jews. The 62-page PDF amounts to generic, AI-spun financial advice labeled as “the Jewish method,” occasionally interspersed with random references to the Talmud. Just like the videos, it references how Jews have managed to be successful for thousands of years but offers little backup as to how that can translate to a real-world scenario.
Most of it plays off the stereotype of Jews being financially astute. But some lines, such as “Jews do not day trade… We buy the market — the entire market — and we hold it indefinitely,” remove the mask entirely.
Whether we like it or not, antisemitism thrives online—and platforms’ recent loosening of content restrictions under the banner of “free speech” has only amplified it. Social media has become an ideal environment for grifters to blend prejudice with profit. And that is, to their credit, what the creators of Rabbi Goldman have done.
They have clearly borrowed from the “manosphere” playbook—a cluster of influencers promoting hyper-masculine, materialistic lifestyles infused with misogyny and antisemitism. Like Andrew Tate and similar figures, Rabbi Goldman appeals to disaffected young men who feel alienated by the economy and society in which they live, eager to locate a scapegoat.
In Goldman’s case, the scapegoats are the elites and billionaires. But the framing of the Jews alongside the elites has, by proxy, made them the scapegoat too. By merging coded hatred with generic Instagram-style self-help language, the character transforms antisemitism into a marketable aesthetic.
So essentially, the creator of Rabbi Goldman has found a niche in an emerging market, playing off of antisemitism to sell cheaply produced slop to teenagers. Which is both entrepreneurial and morally awful. But the issue is that social media has bred the ground for this by rewarding shock content and letting antisemitism often go untouched. Even when they deleted his Instagram account, dozens of copycats popped up, including an absurdly ironic German-language version that uses the likeness of British politician Jeremy Corbyn.
And this is what happens when social media companies are reactive rather than proactive. They were chasing shadows after the account became so big. Instead, they need to cut it out at its source, be tougher on antisemitism, and be more vigilant with AI content.
And for social media users, it is hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t anymore. Just try not to get financial advice from an AI rabbi who thinks the moon landing was fake.
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Pezeshkian Clashes with IRGC Over Iran’s War Strategy and Economy
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Deep divisions have reportedly emerged within Iran’s leadership as the war enters its fifth week, with tensions growing between President Masoud Pezeshkian and senior figures in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a report by Iran International.
The report by Iran International claims Pezeshkian has sharply criticized the military escalation strategy led by IRGC commanders, warning of severe economic consequences if the conflict continues.
He is said to have cautioned that without a ceasefire, Iran’s economy could “completely collapse within three weeks to a month.”
According to the same report, Pezeshkian has called for the restoration of executive and administrative authority to the civilian government, a demand reportedly rejected by IRGC leadership, including Ahmad Vahidi.
Vahidi is said to have pushed back, blaming the current crisis on the government’s failure to implement structural reforms prior to the war and recent protest movements.
Meanwhile, signs of economic strain are becoming increasingly visible across Iran. Reports from several major cities describe ATMs that are empty, out of service, or inaccessible, alongside repeated disruptions to online banking systems.
Public sector employees have also reported delays in salaries and benefits over the past three months.