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How the Holocaust is remembered in the land of Anne Frank
(JTA) — You’d think that in a country so closely identified with Anne Frank — perhaps the Holocaust’s best-known victim — cultivating memory of the genocide wouldn’t be a steep challenge.
That’s why a recent survey, suggesting what the authors called a “disturbing” lack of knowledge in the Netherlands about the Holocaust, set off alarm bells. “Survey shows lack of Holocaust awareness in the Netherlands,” wrote the Associated Press. “In the Netherlands, a majority do not know the Holocaust affected their country,” was the JTA headline. “The Holocaust is a myth, a quarter of Dutch younger generation agree,” per the Jerusalem Post.
“Survey after survey, we continue to witness a decline in Holocaust knowledge and awareness. Equally disturbing is the trend towards Holocaust denial and distortion,” Gideon Taylor, the president of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which conducted the study, said in a statement.
Like other recent studies by Claims Conference, the latest survey has been challenged by some scholars, who say the sample size is small, or the survey is too blunt a tool for examining what a country’s residents do or don’t know about their history. Even one of the experts who conducted the survey chose to focus on the positive findings: “I am encouraged by the number of respondents to this survey that believe Holocaust education is important,” Emile Schrijver, the general director of Amsterdam’s Jewish Cultural Quarter, told JTA.
One of the scholars who says the survey doesn’t capture the subtleties of Holocaust education and commemoration in the Netherlands is Jazmine Contreras, an assistant professor of history at Goucher College in Maryland. Contreras studies the historical memory of the Holocaust and Second World War in Holland. In a Twitter thread earlier this week, she agreed with those who say that “the headline that’s being plastered everywhere exaggerates the idea that young people in NL know nothing about the Holocaust.”
At the same time, she notes that while the Netherlands takes Holocaust education and commemoration seriously, it has a long way to go in reckoning with a past that includes collaboration with the Nazis, postwar antisemitism, a small but vocal far right and a sense of national victimhood that often downplays the experience of Jews during the Shoah.
“It’s such a complex issue,” Contreras told me. “There’s no one answer to how the Holocaust is remembered in the Netherlands.”
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I took the opportunity to speak with Contreras not only about Dutch memory, but how the Netherlands may serve as an example of how countries deal with Holocaust memory and the national stories they tell.
Our interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Tell me a little bit about when you saw the survey, and perhaps how it didn’t mesh with what you know about the Netherlands?
Jazmine Contreras: My major problem is that every single outlet is picking up this story and running a headline like, “Youth in the Netherlands don’t even know the Holocaust happened there. They cannot tell you how many people were killed, how many were deported.” And I think that’s really problematic because it paints a really simplistic picture of Holocaust memory and Holocaust education in that country.
There are multiple programs, in Amsterdam, in other cities, in Westerbork, the former transit camp. They have an ongoing program that brings survivors and the second generation to colleges, to middle schools and primary schools all across the country. And they also have in Amsterdam a program called Oorlog in Mijn Buurt, “War in My Neighborhood,” and basically young people become the “memory bearers” — that’s the kind of language they use — and interview people who grew up and experience the war in their neighborhood, and then speak as if they were the person who experienced it, in the first person.
You also have events around the May 4 commemoration remembering the Dutch who died in war and in peacekeeping operations, and a program called Open Jewish Houses [when owners of formerly Jewish property open their homes to strangers to talk about the Jews who used to live there]. It’s really amazing: I’ve actually been able to visit these formerly Jewish homes and hear the stories. And, of course, the Anne Frank House has its own slew of programming, and teachers talk a lot about the Holocaust and take students to synagogues in places like Groningen, where they have a brand new exhibit at the synagogue. They are taking thousands at this point. The new National Holocaust Names Memorial is in the center of Amsterdam.
I think, again, this idea that children are growing up without having exposure to Holocaust memory, or knowledge of what happened in the Netherlands, is a bit skewed. I think we get into a dangerous area if we’re painting the country with a broad brush and saying nobody knows anything about the Holocaust.
Have you anecdotal evidence or seen studies of Dutch kids about whether they’re getting the education they need?
Anecdotally, yes. I was invited to attend a children’s commemoration that they do at the Hollandsche Schouwburg theater in Amsterdam, which is the former Dutch theater that was used as a major deportation site. And it’s children who put on a commemoration themselves. Again, not every child is participating in this, but if they’re not participating in the children’s commemoration, then they’re doing the “War in My Neighborhood” program, or they’re doing Open Jewish Houses, or they’re taking field trips. That’s pretty impressive to me, and it’s pretty meaningful. They want to help participate in it in the future. They want to come back because it leaves a lasting impression for them.
Let’s back up a bit. Anne Frank dominates everyone’s thinking about Holland and the Holocaust. And I guess the story that’s told is that she was protected by her neighbors until, of course, the Nazis proved too powerful, found her and sent her away. What’s right and what’s wrong about that narrative?
Don’t forget that Anne Frank was a German Jewish refugee who came to the Netherlands. And I think that part of the story is also really interesting and left out. She’s this Dutch icon, but she was a German Jewish refugee who came to the Netherlands, and the Dutch Jewish community was single-handedly responsible for funding, at Westerbork, what was first a refugee center. I think that’s really complicated because now we also have a discourse about present-day refugees and the Holocaust.
Jazmine Contreras, an assistant professor of history at Goucher College, specializes in Dutch Holocaust memory. (Courtesy)
I’ve also never quite understood the insistence on making her an icon when the end of the story is that she’s informed on and dies in a concentration camp. The idea that the Franks were hidden here fits really well into this idea of Dutch resistance and tolerance, and her diary often gets misquoted to kind of represent her as someone who had hope despite the fact that she was being persecuted. In the 1950s, her narrative gets adopted into the U.S., and we treat it as this globalizing human rights discourse.
We don’t talk about the fact that she’s found because she’s informed upon, and we don’t talk about the fact that you had non-Jewish civilians who were informers for a multitude of reasons, including ideological collaboration and their own financial gain.
And when it was talked about most recently, it was about a discredited book that named her betrayer as a Jew.
That was a huge controversy.
I get the sense from your writing that the story the Dutch tell about World War II is very incomplete, and that they haven’t fully reckoned with their collaboration under Nazi occupation even as they emphasize their own victimhood.
On the national state level, they have officially acknowledged not only the extensive collaboration, but the failure of both the government and the Crown to speak out on behalf of Dutch Jews. [In 2020, Prime Minister Mark Rutte formally apologized for how his kingdom’s wartime government failed its Jews, a first by a sitting prime minister.] Now, the question is, what’s happening in broader Dutch society?
Unfortunately, there was an increase in voting for the Dutch far right, although they’ve never managed to get a majority or even come close to it.
Something else that’s happening is that many ask, “Why should Dutch Jews get separate consideration after the Second World War, a separate victimhood, when we were all victimized?” The Netherlands is unique because it’s occupied for the entirety of the Second World War — 1940 to 1945. There is the civil service collaborating, right, but there’s no occupation government. So it’s not like Belgium. It’s not like France, not like Denmark. And there was the Hunger Winter of 1944-45 when 20,000 civilians perished due to famine. You have real victimhood, so people ask, “Why are the Jews so special? We all suffered.”
And at the same time, scholarship keeps emerging about the particular ways non-Jewish Dutch companies and individuals cooperated with the Nazis.
The NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, which has done so much of this research, found that Jews who were deported had to pay utility bills for when they weren’t living there. You have a huge controversy around the the Dutch railway [which said it would compensate hundreds of Holocaust victims for its role in shipping Jews to death camps]. The Dutch Red Cross apologized [in 2017 for failing to act to protect Jews during World War II], following the publication of a research paper on its inaction. A couple of decades ago, the government basically auctioned off paintings, jewelry and other Jewish possessions, and in 2020 they started the effort to give back pieces of art that were in Dutch museums. Dienke Hondius wrote a book on the cold reception given to survivors upon their return. Remco Ensel and Evelien Gans also wrote a book on postwar Jewish antisemitism.
So a lot has been happening, a lot of controversies, and, thanks to all of this research, a lot happening in order to rectify the situation.
It sounds like a mixed story, of resistance and collaboration, and of rewriting the past but also coming to terms with it.
There’s a really complex history here of both wanting to present it as “everybody’s a victim” and that the resistance was huge. In fact, the data shows 5% of the people were involved in resistance and 5% were collaborators. So it’s not like this wholesale collaboration or resistance was happening. It was only in 1943, when non-Jewish men were called up for labor service in Germany, that they got really good at hiding people and by then it was too late.
Right. My colleagues at JTA often note that the Nazis killed or deported more Dutch Jews per capita than anywhere in occupied Western Europe — of about 110,000 Jews deported, only a few thousand survived.
Yes, the highest percentage of deportation in Western Europe.
A room at the Anne Frank House museum where she and her family hid for two years during the Holocaust in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. (Photo Collection Anne Frank House)
Since this week is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let me ask what Holland gets right and wrong compared to maybe some other European countries with either similar experiences or comparable experiences.
The framing of that question is difficult because there’s so many unique points about the Holocaust and the occupation in the Netherlands. Again, it was occupied for the entirety of 1940-45. You have a civil service that was willing to sign Aryan declarations. The queen, as head of a government in exile in London, is basically saying, “Do what you need to just to survive.”
One of the big problems is there are people like Geert Wilders [a contemporary right-wing Dutch lawmaker] who practice this kind of philo-Semitism and support of Israel, but it’s really about blaming the Muslim population for antisemitism and saying none of it is homegrown. They don’t have to talk about the fact that there was widespread antisemitism in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
In the Netherlands they’re not instituting laws around what you can and can’t say about the Holocaust like in Poland [where criticizing Polish collaboration has been criminalized]. There are so many amazing educational initiatives and nonprofit organizations that are doing the work. And even these public controversies ended up being outlets for the production of Holocaust memory when survivors, but mostly now the second and third generations, use that space to talk about their own family Holocaust history.
Tell me about your personal stake in this: How did the Holocaust become a subject of study for you?
I specialize in Dutch Holocaust memory. I’m not Jewish, but my grandparents on my mother’s side are Dutch. For my first project I looked at relationships between German soldiers and Dutch women during the war during the occupation, and I eventually kind of made my way into the post war, when these children of former collaborators were still very marginalized in Dutch society. It ties into this. I do interviews with members of the Jewish community, children of resistance members and children of collaborators and how these memory politics play out.
What is the utility of events like International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the major Holocaust memorials in educating the public about the Holocaust and World War II?
International Holocaust Remembrance Day and May 4 result in the production of new memories about the Holocaust and the Second World War. I was at the 2020 International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration when the prime minister formally apologized. It was a really big moment, and it allowed the Jewish community, and the Roma and Sinti community, a space to remember and to share in that and to speak to it as survivors and the second and third generation.
Unlike the United States, the Netherlands is a small, insular country, so the relationship between the public and the media and academics is so close. So in the weeks before and the weeks after these memorials, academics, politicians and experts are publishing pieces about memory. That’s useful to the production of new memories and information about the Holocaust.
But what about the other days of the year? Will putting a monument in the center of Amsterdam actually change how people understand the Holocaust? That is a question that I think is harder to answer. The new monument features individual names of 102,000 Jews and Roma and Sinti and visually gives you the scope of what the Holocaust looked like in the Netherlands. But does that matter if somebody lives outside of Amsterdam and they’re never going to see this monument?
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Israel’s opposition has the numbers to defeat Netanyahu. Will it let him survive anyway?
According to exit polls, Israel’s opposition appears to have achieved something remarkable: a parliamentary majority of up to 70 seats, including the Arab parties, over Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies. In almost any other parliamentary democracy, such a result would be understood as a decisive victory for the forces seeking a change of government. Yet Israel may be heading toward the extraordinary spectacle of an opposition that wins a commanding majority and nevertheless allows the incumbent to remain in power.
The reason is a political taboo: several opposition leaders have promised not to form a government dependent on the support of Arab parties, even though virtually every plausible path to replacing Netanyahu requires precisely that.
And if the exit polls are right, those Arab parties have almost doubled their Knesset representation, to perhaps 18 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. This happened because of a huge increase in voter turnout among the 20 percent of Israelis who are Arabs.
In past elections, almost half the Arabs stayed home on election day, compared to participation levels of around 80 percent among Jews. The surge appears to have been driven by despair over the perceived hostility of the Netanyahu government, and anger over ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has displayed inaction and indifference about the lawlessness that bedevils the Arab sector.
The two Arab parties – Ra’am and the United Arab List – have already offered to back Gadi Eisenkot, the former military chief who heads the largest opposition party, Yashar.
This landscape presents the wider opposition with a real dilemma. Its leaders may end up breaking their most important promise to voters — to remove Netanyahu from office — in order to honor a secondary promise not to form a governing coalition with Arab parties and depend on the safety net they offer. That promise should have been no more than a white lie to reassure wavering Jewish voters who in the past supported the right. Sticking to it would be a spectacular case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
In his speech to supporters after polls closed Tuesday, Eisenkot promised to use the results to set up a government. “The Israeli public voted to end Netanyahu’s rule as the prime minister of Israel,” he said. “It’s my personal duty to do everything to bring about the will of the people.”
If Eisenkot and the rest of the opposition now show resolve, a minority government supported from outside by Arab lawmakers is one possibility. A coalition that includes at least Ra’am, the pragmatic Islamist party that participated in Israel’s 2021 governing coalition, is another. Defections from the right could also help assemble a government. These also should be considered, as long as those joining it are not given the power to block essential reforms or perpetuate the policies that voters sought to reject.
None of the options are clean and simple. But the notion that Arab parliamentary support renders a government illegitimate is neither a democratic principle nor a reflection of Israel’s political history.
Indeed, a look at that history reveals something that Netanyahu’s long dominance has helped obscure. Since the political upheaval of 1977, Likud victories have generally depended on ultra-Orthodox support, while victories by the non-Likud camp have repeatedly depended on Arab votes.
In 1984, Shimon Peres managed to force a parliamentary tie with the help of six seats held by Arab parties. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin’s victory yielded a majority of 61 seats only when five Arab lawmakers were counted. In 1999, Ehud Barak won a landslide in the direct election for prime minister, but his reliable parliamentary bloc numbered only 60 seats, including 10 Arab lawmakers. The addition of right wing parties enabled him to govern.
The pattern continued in 2006, when Kadima’s victory was widely perceived as decisive, even though its assured parliamentary bloc numbered just 60 seats without additional Arab support. And in 2021, Yair Lapid’s success in assembling a government that ended Netanyahu’s 12 consecutive years in power depended on a parliamentary alignment of 61 lawmakers opposed to Netanyahu, including 10 Arab representatives.
With the notable exception of Ra’am in 2021, Arab parties generally did not become formal coalition partners. Peres formed a national unity government with Likud – and Rabin, his majority secured via the Arab parties, formally brought in the religious party Shas. In all these cases the Arabs’ parliamentary support for the opposition helped prevent Likud from forming a government and made alternative coalitions possible. In some cases, Arab lawmakers then supported the government from outside, while politicians from the traditional right-wing camp eventually crossed political lines to join the governing arrangement.
Against that historical background, the 2026 result should be understood as an extraordinary opportunity for Israel’s liberal and anti-Netanyahu forces. The central question is whether their leaders will recognize it or miss the opportunity.
Netanyahu remains the prime minister under whose watch the catastrophe of Oct. 7 occurred. His government has resisted the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the attack. His coalition has advanced measures widely criticized as threats to democratic institutions, while presiding over an increasingly polarized society.
Another term for Netanyahu and his present allies could deepen Israel’s institutional deterioration, social divisions and strategic vulnerability. For critics who believe the country is already approaching a dangerous democratic and societal crossroads, the stakes are difficult to overstate.
There is also a striking inconsistency in the argument that relying on Arab support is somehow beyond the bounds of legitimate politics.
Netanyahu himself explored the possibility of forming a government with the support of Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, in 2021. That possibility collapsed largely because Bezalel Smotrich, now one of Netanyahu’s most prominent far-right partners, refused to accept it.
The time has come for Israel to show some appreciation for its Arab citizens, who constitute roughly one-fifth of Israel’s population. They work, study, pay taxes and participate in the country’s civic and economic life. They vote in national elections and elect representatives to the Knesset. There is no coherent democratic justification for treating those representatives’ mandates as inherently less legitimate than those of Jewish lawmakers.
To be sure, Arab political parties hold positions, particularly on the Palestinian question, that many Jewish Israelis find deeply objectionable. Some of those disagreements are profound, and coalition negotiations involving Arab parties inevitably raise difficult questions about national identity, security and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But ultra-Orthodox parties also hold positions that many secular Israelis regard as fundamentally incompatible with their vision of the country, including on religious authority, military service and civil liberties. Far-right parties in Netanyahu’s coalition have promoted policies that critics see as far more damaging to democratic norms than anything the Arabs might do.
There will undoubtedly be pressure for a national unity government, possibly from Washington. President Donald Trump, who endorsed Netanyahu, seems likely to pressure Eisenkot to agree. The machinations might include restarting the war with Iran. Eisenkot should resist it all.
Israel’s declaration of independence promised equality. Israel’s opposition has a golden opportunity to keep that promise.
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A watch party without Netanyahu? Supporters tried to project cheer
(JTA) — JERUSALEM — Forty-five minutes after Israeli channels released their first exit polls, a silence had washed over the Likud election watch party held at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem.
Supporters had waited in anticipation for the exit polls to appear on the screen. When Channel 14 — which had a broadcast desk stationed in the corner of the room — first showed its poll, a cheer circulated through those in attendance. But as everyone looked down at their phones to track the results from the other channels, the mood became increasingly subdued.
Supporters hoping for a strong Netanyahu victory were disappointed by polls showing that his Likud party did not have enough support to form a governing coalition.
They had hoped to celebrate the moment with Netanyahu, who, in the end, did not show up.
The initial exit polls, released at 10 p.m. as polling stations closed, showed Likud as the largest party. However, neither it nor its committed coalition partners had gained enough seats for a parliamentary majority that would allow it to form the next government. Channel 12 had Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc, which at its height had 68 seats in the outgoing Knesset, dropping to 50, with the opposition parties at 53 across the network projections.
The Central Elections Committee hopes to finish counting the votes by Thursday. By law, the official results have to be published by Nov. 4.
The historic turnout in the election, billed by many as the most consequential in Israel’s history, stood in stark contrast to the empty convention center hall. It appeared that only the most dedicated of Bibi fans had decided to make the trip to the watch party. Three hardcore supporters held up a blue and white Likud flag while chanting “Malach Bibi,” meaning “King Bibi,” with a crowd of journalists pushing past each other to get footage.
Every two minutes, the Likud jingle echoed through the hall on a loop, and a string of AI-generated Likud election videos played on the screen. The lectern sat empty, and Netanyahu had not issued a statement in the wake of the first results. Netanyahu, along with Likud MKs, had been expected to address supporters in the hall had there been a clearer mandate; instead, journalists gathered, snacking on refreshments while waiting for more Likud supporters to show up.
Yossi Levi, 71, a pensioner from Eilat, made the long drive to Jerusalem to show his support. He said that for his entire tenure as prime minister, Netanyahu has had to fight the 120 members of the Knesset for his survival, and that he “thankfully” had so far always come out on top.
Levi recalled his time working on the Likud security team when Netanyahu first began his career and paused the interview to shake hands with Netanyahu’s head of security before returning to his story. Whether or not Netanyahu was able to form a coalition, he said, his support would remain unwavering.
That appeared to describe the crowd on Tuesday night: those who had stood by Netanyahu as he ascended to the heights of Israeli electoral power, and who were standing by him now, as his bloc appeared to shed 18 seats in the Knesset.
Boaz, who lives in the city center of Jerusalem, described the mood as not exactly disappointment “but something in the middle,” as the results did not yet indicate a clear winner or loser and adding that it was now time for coalition politics to begin.
Holding a blue-and-white Likud flag and milling about the lobby alone, he did not project confidence but insisted that he would stay at the event in case any of the party’s parliamentary members decided to show up.
With few audience members in attendance, the event center gave the appearance of something of a crashed party. By 11 p.m. Jerusalem time, the hall had begun to empty, with both supporters and those there to cover the event deciding to leave the scene.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Jewish treasures stolen by Nazis 88 years ago come home, thanks to an Arizona synagogue
(JTA) — What could one purchase with boxes of Crisco, bags of coffee and cartons of cigarettes in chaotic postwar Germany?
For Moishe Saksenhaus, a young Holocaust survivor from Belarus, the answer was: two Jewish ritual textiles, hundreds of years old.
The seller said he’d stolen them himself from a burning Berlin synagogue on Nov. 9, 1938 — the November Pogrom, commonly called Kristallnacht.
Moishe brought those two items — a Torah wimple, or sash, and a parochet, or Torah ark curtain — with him to America, taking them out of their suitcase only on special occasions. After Moishe’s death in 1993, his family donated them to his synagogue, Temple Chai in Phoenix, Arizona. They remained on display there until the building was deconsecrated in 2026. The congregation moved to a new location in nearby Scottsdale this spring.
Last week, nearly 88 years after Kristallnacht the two items made their way back to Berlin.
In a ceremony at the site of the New Synagogue Berlin Foundation-Centrum Judaicum museum and archive, on Oranienburger Strasse, Associate Rabbi Bonnie Koppell of Temple Chai handed them over to Berlin Jewish Community president Gideon Joffe.
“There were people who felt individually attached to the items” in Phoenix, Koppell told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a phone interview before her trip. “But ultimately, I think everyone realized that they belonged in their home. If the people from whom they were stolen wanted them back, that was where they belong.”
The handover took place Oct. 22 in the presence of Joffe, Rabbi Gesa Ederberg, historian Rabbi Andreas Nachama, members of the Berlin community and 29 visitors from Arizona.
“It’s been a very moving and touching journey, for both our guests from the United States and for these historical items,” said Nickolai Todorov, a Berlin Jew who accompanied the U.S. visitors as a tour guide. “It was just a special thing to be an eyewitness to.”
Rabbi Bonnie Koppell, left, and Sandy Koppell examine the Torah curtain (parochet) and Torah wimple during the handover ceremony at the New Synagogue Berlin–Centrum Judaicum, Oct. 22, 2026. (Nicolai Froundjian)
The large parochet is embroidered with the text of the Kiddush, the Jewish blessing over wine, in versions for the Sabbath and holidays. Along the lower edge of the text is what might be the signature of the artist, in Hebrew: “This handiwork of mine is not to bring me honor, rather to bring merit for the multitudes in accord [with the biblical verse] ‘And Yitzchak went out to pray at the field’ — Yitzchak Itzik ben C’harad Yehuda Leib z“l [of blessed memory] from Rivnitz,” a town in Moldova whose small Jewish community dated back to at least 1800.
The highly decorated wimple, which would have been used to bind a Torah scroll, bears a blessing for a child named Yitzchak “Itzik” ben Kavod Ha-rav Gistori, likely embroidered in honor of his brit milah, or ritual circumcision.
A spokesperson for the Berlin Jewish community, an umbrella for several congregations of various denominations, told JTA in an email that its experts had been unable to confirm which pre-World War II synagogue the Torah curtain came from, but that it would be added to the Centrum Judaicum collection. There are plans to display the wimple at the community center on the site of the former Fasanenstrasse synagogue.
Sol Saksenhaus, 72, a retired special-ed teacher, is one of those Arizona congregants who felt sad to let the objects go. It was his father who had bought them, protected and carried them across the ocean to his new home in America. Sol and his brother had grown up with these objects, which had taken on an aura of sacredness.
But they are “being given back as a sign of love from our community, to light them up again,” he told JTA in a telephone interview from Phoenix. “I can live with that, and I know my parents in heaven can live with that, too.”
Sol’s parents, Moishe and Rosa Saksenhaus, had escaped the Warsaw Ghetto through the sewers, and joined with partisans to commit acts of sabotage against the Germans. The Soviets eventually deported them to Siberia, where their first child died. After the war, Moishe and Rosa made their way back west, following American army lines and ending up in a Displaced Persons camp in the town of Feldafing, Germany.
Moishe, street-smart and multilingual, got a job translating for the U.S. military in Traunstein, Sol related. His father told him he became involved with black market activities, such as collecting British Army bicycles and having them sent to Palestine.
“My dad may have had a little bit of a reputation as one of the go-to guys, that if you wanted something, my dad knew how to get it,” Sol said.
Which may be why this particular German man approached him one day.
“He said he was a medical doctor. He kept approaching my dad with pictures” of the Jewish objects, Sol recounted. His father recalled the man’s name as “Ahgar.” He’d complained about conditions under American occupation: “’We don’t get anything; we’re on limited rations,’” the man told Sol’s father. “My dad said he was arrogant, and that he wanted the stuff he used to have from before.”
“He threatened my dad: He says, ‘I was part of the patrol that went into the temple’” on Fasanenstrasse in Berlin. He claimed to have taken the two items during the raid, and threatened to destroy them if Moishe did not procure Crisco, coffee, flour, cigarettes and cigars.
“My dad pretty much told him to ‘get the f–k away. I can’t look at you.’ But the guy was persistent. And the trade happened.”
Moishe Saksenhaus brought the objects to the U.S. when he and Rosa emigrated. “He cherished them, but he didn’t know what he was going to do with them,” said Sol. On rare occasions his father would show them to the family. “When that thing came out, it was like opening the holy ark… I kind of like froze, and just watched the emotions” on the family’s faces.
Sol’s father died in late 1993. There was a rise in Holocaust denial at the same time, Sol recalled; Deborah Lipstadt’s book, “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,” was published that June. It was also the year that Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film “Schindler’s List” came out, sparking new interest in the Holocaust and its legacy. His mother and aunt decided to donate the tapestry and wimple to Temple Chai, to help with Holocaust education. Before handing the tapestry over to Rabbi William Berk, then the temple’s spiritual leader, Rosa Saksenhaus tore the swastika off an old tag on the tapestry. “This is not going into a temple like this,” she told her son.
The centuries-old Jewish ritual textiles, stolen during Kristallnacht in 1938 and traded after the war to a survivor for coffee and tobacco, are returned to the Berlin Jewish community during a ceremony at the New Synagogue Berlin–Centrum Judaicum, Oct. 22, 2026. (Nicolai Freundjian)
Sol recalled that Berk sent the items to an expert at the University of California in Los Angeles, who determined they were from the 16th century. Berk, who moved to Israel with his family in 2007 after more than two decades with the congregation, could not be reached for comment.
And so the tapestry remained hanging on the synagogue’s north wall. Rosa died in 1999. In 2006, Bonnie Koppell was installed as associate rabbi. In 2022, Rabbi Emily Segal took on the role of senior rabbi.
Two years ago, Sol brought a friend to see the wimple and the tapestry.
“I had seen these objects in our sanctuary for 30 years, knowing only that they had been ‘rescued’ during Kristallnacht,” recalled Joan Neer, assistant to Koppell, who heard Sol’s story for the first time that day. “In reality they were brutally taken,” she said.
The encounter “ignited my curiosity and set me on a journey to uncover their story,” Neer told JTA in an email. The more she learned, the more she became convinced: “It would be great if we could return them to the Jewish community in Berlin,” she wrote to Koppell and synagogue president Debbie Berkowitz.
“What began as a simple conversation in my office has become a journey of discovery, connection, and restoration,” she said.
Once the Berlin community said yes, the task of packing and transporting the objects began. The large tapestry was wrapped in artisanal paper and shipped.
“We had an AirTag on it, so we watched it sitting in the Cologne airport,” said Koppell. “And then it got moved to the customs building.”
“Then we got word that they wanted €5,000 [$5,567] in [customs] tax. And that if we didn’t pay it, they were sending it back in five days.”
The German Jewish community stepped in and used its tax-exempt status to get the package released, she said, adding that she carried the wimple in her hand luggage.
“We have come to remember, to learn and to return something that has traveled a very long road,” she told the Berlin Jewish community on Oct. 22. “This time, they are going home.”
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