Uncategorized
How a Quiet Dutch Retiree Helped Uncover Nazi-Stolen Art in Argentina
FILE PHOTO: Curator Ariel Bassano addresses the media next to a portrait of Contessa Colleoni, attributed to Italian artist Giuseppe Ghislandi, an iconic painting stolen decades ago by the Nazis, following its recovery by Argentine officials after it was spotted in a real estate photo, in Mar del Plata, Argentina September 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jose Scalzo/File Photo
Dutch systems specialist Paul Post had glimpsed the notebooks that contained his father’s Nazi-era diaries before, but when he rediscovered them in an attic 15 years ago, the recent retiree finally had time to closely examine them.
Post, 74, had no idea that they would ultimately lead to Argentina, where in September the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi official was charged with concealing an 18th-century painting looted during the Holocaust.
In his diaries, Post’s father described working in the Netherlands’ diamond bureau when it was taken over by the Nazis. As Post began researching the events, one name jumped out: the Nazi official Friedrich Kadgien.
Kadgien oversaw the Nazi looting of diamonds and gold from occupied countries. Post began to follow Kadgien’s wanderings after the war, hoping to solve the mystery of the diamonds that historians say are still missing. He learned by chance that Kadgien was believed to have also possessed looted art.
The hunt led him and Dutch journalists to the peaceful residential neighborhood home of Patricia Kadgien, 60, in the seaside town of Mar del Plata in Buenos Aires province, where “Portrait of a Lady” had been hanging prominently in her living room. The reporters spotted it in a real estate listing in August.
Her attorney, Carlos Murias, told Reuters that she did not know about claims the painting had been looted from the collection of Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker and she has denied having hidden it.
Nazi-related discoveries like this occasionally pop up in Argentina, which after the war received both Holocaust survivors and dozens of Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. In February, President Javier Milei met with representatives of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who asked for help accessing materials to investigate Nazi banking activities in Argentina. And last May, the Supreme Court announced it had found thousands of Nazi labor organization membership booklets in its basement archive.
Post’s unlikely role in the painting’s discovery underscores the complexities of finding Nazi-looted art today. An estimated 600,000 pieces were stolen from Jewish families, and more than 100,000 have never been returned.
“I’m just an amateur, I’m not a historian, nothing at all,” said Post. “I knew I was right on Kadgien.”
A FATHER’S WAR DIARIES RESURFACE
In 2010, Post’s family was cleaning out his mother’s house in Driehuis, a town just outside of Amsterdam. In the attic, they found three diaries written by his father, who died in 1976 at age 60.
In the diaries, Wim Post recounted how in 1942 the Nazis ordered the country’s diamond traders to turn over their precious stones, confiscating about 71,000 carats at the Amsterdam Diamond Exchange.
Paul Post, then recently retired from Hewlett-Packard, began visiting the Netherlands’ national archives to research the diamond confiscation. There he came across Kadgien’s name.
Shortly before Germany’s surrender in May 1945, Kadgien fled to Switzerland, where officials received a tip that he had carried out large transfers of diamonds, according to Regula Bochsler, a historian in Zurich. But in 1950, Kadgien received a visa to travel to Brazil, ultimately making his way to Buenos Aires.
Post reached out to the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad to share his father’s account of the diamond raid, and in 2015, investigative reporter Cyril Rosman published a piece about the diaries. Post later published “The Diamond Heist,” a book on the subject.
In 2020, Post noticed that the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands listed Kadgien online as possibly having possessed “Portrait of a Lady” by the Italian artist Giuseppe Ghislandi — although art historians have said the painter was likely his contemporary Giacomo Ceruti — as well as an Abraham Mignon still life. He met with the agency’s researcher Perry Schrier, and told him he had tracked Kadgien’s family to Mar del Plata. But Schrier, who confirmed he had met with Post, couldn’t help him.
“I said, ‘I think I know the location, where it could be, and that is in Argentina,’” recalled Post. “But he said, ‘Yeah, ok, it could be possible, but how can we know that it is on the wall in their homes?’”
In June 2024, Post contacted Yael Weitz, an attorney for Goudstikker’s family. In an email exchange seen by Reuters, he offered to provide leads on the two missing paintings if she could provide him with information on Kadgien. She ultimately said that her team didn’t have anything to share.
Post then turned to journalists again. Last April, he reached out to Rosman with more information on Kadgien’s post-war travels. They had tried to contact Kadgien’s daughters in Argentina through the years and Rosman asked Peter Schouten, a freelance journalist in Buenos Aires, to try again.
“We were not looking for the paintings in particular,” said Rosman. “At that time we were mostly thinking about the diamonds that were looted, so we wanted to know what happened to that.”
When Schouten rang the bell at Patricia Kadgien’s home in August, there was no answer. But he saw a for-sale sign in her yard. The reporters checked the real-estate listing and spotted the painting in one of the photos of the property. They could barely believe their luck.
“I thought, ok, is it really this simple, a picture that’s missing for 80 years is here above a couch in the living room?” said Rosman.
The day after they published a story on the painting’s discovery, police raided the home. But in the painting’s place was a tapestry of horses. Eight days later, Kadgien’s attorney handed the painting over to authorities.
Federal prosecutors have charged Patricia Kadgien, who runs a small clothing business, and her husband, Juan Carlos Cortegoso, a go-kart mechanic, with aggravated concealment and are investigating more than 20 drawings and prints, as well as two portraits, also seized from their home and from the home of Patricia’s sister in Mar del Plata.
“The attitude was to hide the painting,” the case’s prosecutor, Carlos Martinez, told Reuters. “We think that isn’t indicative of someone that doesn’t know what they have.”
COMPETING CLAIMS TO THE PAINTING
Goudstikker’s family have fought for decades to get his paintings back.
The art collector died when he fell into the hold of a boat as he was fleeing the advancing Nazis with his family in May 1940. But in a small black book, he had listed “Portrait of a Lady” along with more than 1,000 pieces in his collection.
In what historians describe as a forced sale after his death, top Nazi official Hermann Goering purchased about 800 of Goudstikker’s paintings. Weitz, the attorney who represents Goudstikker’s family, said that Goering’s associate, Alois Miedl, sold “Portrait of a Lady” to Kadgien in 1944.
The family has recovered 300 to 350 works of art, including 200 that had been mostly hanging in museums that the Netherlands agreed to return in 2006.
Charlene von Saher, Goudstikker’s granddaughter who lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, said her family informed the Kadgiens of their claim to “Portrait of a Lady” after the journalists published their story. Paolo Plebani, curator at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, said it is worth upwards of $100,000, but attorneys for the Goudstikker family said it is impossible to determine the value before examining the condition and confirming the artist’s identity.
“I just hope that they would be people who would feel like doing the right thing and correcting a historical injustice,” von Saher told Reuters, saying that the discovery was “like a movie.”
But Patricia Kadgien hasn’t relented. She has filed a claim in civil court that says her father’s sister-in-law bought the painting from the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne in 1943. It said the painting was “legitimately possessed” by her father and that she inherited it after he died. The museum told Reuters the painting was never part of its collection.
The claim said that she removed the painting from her home “for security reasons,” thinking she was the victim of “a virtual scam” when she started receiving calls from a journalist in August.
As for Post, he still wants to know what happened to the diamonds that were tied to Kadgien. Martinez, the prosecutor, said authorities did not find jewels of value or from the war-period in the Mar del Plata home.
Saskia Coenen Snyder, a Dutch professor of modern Jewish history at the University of South Carolina, said it is very hard to prove that Nazis took diamonds with them to South America. “I’ll give him credit for at least spending years of his time pursuing, uncovering stories and truths that not everybody wants to do or has been able to,” she said of Post. “He’s a bit of a pit bull.”
Uncategorized
Ilhan Omar Poses for Photo With Swedish MP Wearing Garment Depicting Erasure of Israel
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) speaks at a press conference with activists calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in front of the Capitol in Washington, DC, Dec. 14, 2023. Photo: Annabelle Gordon / CNP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MI) has come under fire after being spotted posing for a photo with Malcolm Jallow, a virulently anti-Israel member of the Swedish parliament.
The picture, which was posted on Jallow’s Instagram page on Sunday, showed the controversial Swedish politician posing alongside Omar and anti-Israel political pundit Medhi Hasan. Jallow draped a stole around his shoulders depicting the complete erasure of the state of Israel and its replacement by a Palestinian state.
“Spending these days with so many inspiring leaders from around the world — including two of the most inspiring and courageous voices of our time, Congresswoman @ilhanmn Omar and international journalist @mehdirhasan — has been like reigniting an inner flame. I feel recharged with energy, hope, and determination,” Jallow wrote on Instagram.
Jallow has an extensive history of attacking Israel and promoting antisemitic conspiracy tropes. For example, he has “liked” a comment on social media that accused Jewish organizations of participating in freemasonry, fueling a false conspiracy theory that claims a secret coalition of Jews and Freemasons is working to control the world.
The Gambian-born lawmaker also lambasted Sweden for its supposed complicitly in a “genocide” in Gaza and stated in another social media post that Europe “betrayed” the Palestinian enclave by “financing the bombs” and “legitimizing the apartheid & the occupation.” He further appeared to threaten Swedish civilians who support Israel, writing, “To every ordinary citizen who waved the flag of the oppressor & laughed while Gaza burned, We will not forget you. We know your names. We save your statements. We screenshot your posts.”
He also seemed to threaten legal action against Swedish citizens who publicly demonstrate support for Israel’s defensive military operations against Hanas.
“And one day, whether in courtrooms of law or the court of history, In this life or the hereafter, you will be held to account,” Jallow posted. “That is not a threat. That is a promise to the people of Gaza.”
“Why is the Swedish government complicit in Israel’s acts of genocide against the Palestinian people?” he added on Instagram.
Jallow has also criticized Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson for taking certain measures to combat antisemitism, arguing that such actions endanger the country’s Muslim population.
“The Swedish Prime Minister’s statement that antisemitism holds a ‘special status’ and is worse than anti-Muslim propaganda is deeply problematic and dangerous. It not only diminishes the severity of hatred against Muslims but also normalizes the growing Islamophobia in Sweden,” Jallow wrote in an official statement last year.
“Ranking hate and prioritizing one group’s suffering over another is not only ignorant and offensive — it undermines our collective struggle against all forms of intolerance and discrimination,” he continued.
Sweden has reported a notable increase in antisemitic incidents since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, prompting alarm within both the Jewish community and governmental bodies.
According to a report released by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRA) last year, hate crimes motivated by antisemitism in the country surged in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocities, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. The BRA found that police registered 110 complaints between the Hamas invasion and Dec. 31 in 2023, compared to just 24 incidents the prior year.
While Jews constitute a small fraction of Sweden’s population, they have represented a disproportionately high share of religious-hate-crime victims. In 2020, for example, antisemitic incidents made up about 27 percent of all religion-based hate crimes documented by police despite Jews making up only 0.1 percent of the population, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.
Omar for years has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel in the US Congress, calling on Washington to impose an arms embargo on the Jewish state.
Uncategorized
Groundbreaking analysis of Hitler’s DNA shows no Jewish ancestry — but finds a genetic disorder
Adolf Hitler had a sexual disorder that made it more likely for him to have a micro-penis, according to the first-ever analysis of his DNA. He also did not have the Jewish ancestors that some have claimed he had.
The analysis is being revealed in detail in “Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator,” a new documentary premiering Saturday night in the United Kingdom. The documentary looks at the researchers who decided to tackle the genetic makeup of one of history’s greatest villains, as well as what they learned — and cannot learn — from his DNA.
They found that he had Kallman syndrome, a genetic disorder characterized by incomplete puberty, according to an exclusive report published Wednesday in the Times of London. They also found that he had genes making him more likely to have autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, though they cautioned that the DNA alone is not sufficient to deliver a diagnosis.
Among those quoted in the documentary is the prominent British Jewish psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen (father of actor Sacha). “Behavior is never 100% genetic,” he said in the Times report. “Associating Hitler’s extreme cruelty with people with these diagnoses risks stigmatizing them, especially when the vast majority of people with these diagnoses are neither violent nor cruel, and many are the opposite.”
The analysis, conducted by a team led by a prominent British geneticist, is more definitive on the subject of Hitler’s possible Jewish ancestry. Rumors about such a background were prevalent during Hitler’s rise: In one notable example, a newspaper aligned with the Austrian chancellor who the following year would be assassinated by Nazis in 1933 challenged German authorities to disprove his Jewish ties.
And the rumors have endured: In 2022, Russia’s foreign minister repeated the claim that Hitler had Jewish ancestry to rebuff criticism that Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine, that it needed to be “denazified,” was undermined by the fact that Ukraine’s president is Jewish.
But while previous analyses of the DNA of Hitler’s relatives suggested that he may have had some genetic links to groups that he sought to destroy, including Jews, the new analysis, on Hitler’s own DNA, shows only Austrian German ancestry.
The analysis is based on a swatch of fabric stained with blood that a U.S. soldier cut from the couch upon which Hitler shot himself. The researchers were able to confirm without a doubt that the blood came from Hitler by comparing the DNA found in it to DNA previously confirmed to have come from one of his relatives.
—
The post Groundbreaking analysis of Hitler’s DNA shows no Jewish ancestry — but finds a genetic disorder appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
German Authorities Arrest Another Suspected Hamas Operative Amid Growing Terror Threat to Jews in Europe
Supporters of Hamas gather in Berlin. Photo: Reuters/M. Golejewski
As concern mounts over a potential surge in Hamas-linked attacks in Europe, German authorities have arrested another suspected member of the Palestinian terrorist group accused of acquiring firearms and ammunition to target Jewish communities.
On Tuesday, local police arrested Lebanese-born Borhan El-K, a suspected Hamas operative, after he crossed into Germany from the Czech Republic — part of an ongoing probe into the Islamist group’s network and operations across the continent.
The German federal prosecutor’s office confirmed the suspect obtained an automatic rifle, eight Glock pistols, and more than 600 rounds of ammunition in the country before handing the weapons to Wael FM, another suspected member of the terrorist group, in Berlin.
Local law enforcement arrested Lebanese-born Wael FM last month, along with two other German citizens, Adeb Al G and Ahmad I.
Prosecutors believe the three men acted as foreign operatives for Hamas and procured firearms and ammunition intended for attacks on Israeli and Jewish institutions in Germany.
Hamas, long supported by the Iranian regime as well as Qatar and Turkey, is designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union and several other Western countries, including the United States.
Earlier this month, Mohammed A, another alleged member of the Palestinian terrorist group, was arrested in London at the request of German police. He is accused of taking five handguns and ammunition from Abed Al G before moving them to Vienna for storage.
Last week, Vienna authorities uncovered a hidden arsenal linked to Hamas, reportedly intended for “potential terrorist attacks in Europe” targeting Jewish communities.
The Austrian government confirmed that the Directorate for State Security and Intelligence Service (DSN) has been conducting an internationally coordinated investigation into a global terrorist network with ties to the Islamist group.
During the investigation, Austrian authorities uncovered evidence suggesting that this group had brought weapons into the country for potential terrorist attacks in Europe.
For its part, Hamas issued a statement denying any connection to the criminal network, calling the allegations of its involvement “baseless.”
However, experts have warned that Hamas has expanded its terrorist operations beyond the Middle East, exploiting a well-established network of weapons caches, criminal alliances, and covert infrastructure quietly built across Europe over the years.
Last month, West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center released a study detailing how Hamas leaders in Lebanon have been directing operatives to establish “foreign operator” cells across Europe, collaborating with organized crime networks to acquire weapons and target Jewish communities abroad.
In February, four Hamas members suspected of plotting attacks on Jewish institutions in Europe went on trial in Berlin, in what prosecutors described as the first court case against terrorists of the Islamist group in Germany.