On the trail of a gigantic Nazi raid | DW Documentary

Children's bedding,

a small inkwell,

an oil painting with a gold frame.

Going once, going twice,
going three times!

From underwear to valuable art:

everything was sold off.

Nazis used auctions to generate millions
that replenished their war chest.

A hunt for bargains
which left no stone unturned.

I think it was an open secret

should everything here
which was Jewish property,

was sold at public auction.

And people could figure out

that their real owners hadn't gone
on a holiday or to a health resort.

The items belonged to Jews

whom the Nazis had forced
to flee the country.

With their belongings
packed in so-called lift vans

they hoped to build a new life in exile.

But after the war began,
very few of these crates

went to their owners.

Here in Hamburg's south west harbor,

thousands of crates were stranded
from all over the German Reich.

The Nazis confiscated them
and auctioned off their contents.

Goods that were meant for shipment
went under the hammer in Bremen, too.

Most of the stolen objects
are still missing.

Kathrin Kleibl is one of a few hundred
provenance researchers in Germany.

She is determined to resolve the case
of Nazi looting once and for all.

In true German fashion, their records
back then were meticulous.

About 3,000 households
were auctioned off in Hamburg

and just under 1,000 more
were auctioned off in Bremen.

That makes a total
of 4,000 complete households,

whose contents were auctioned off.

It’s easy to see that this amounts
to millions of individual items.

Kathrin Kleibl searches for clues.

She’s on a mission for justice.

The families already had a hard time
leaving their homeland.

And once they arrived overseas,
for instance in America,

they waited for their belongings
to arrive and nothing came!

The major goal is to eventually return
these objects to the families.

A difficult task and one
that the descendants of the families

have long been hoping for,
mostly in vain.

The injustice suffered
by the Koch family, 80 years ago,

is still on their grandson’s mind today.

Where are these objects?

Where did my grandparents'
belongings end up?

These questions don’t give me
a moment’s peace.

He hopes Kleibl's research
provides answers.

Hello.

Hello.

Good morning! It’s nice to see you.

It’s nice to meet
in such a symbolic place.

His grandparents' belongings,
which included a valuable art collection,

were also stored
in a so-called lift van.

How many lift vans and crates
did your family have?

I know of one big one
and one smaller one

so there should have been two.

The Nazis rose to power in 1933.

Although Hitler’s plans for extermination
were made clear from the start,

there was still a window of opportunity
for the Jewish population

to leave the country.

Those who predicted what was coming,
and could afford to, fled abroad.

But in 1941, that window closed for good.

Anyone who made it out of Germany

believed they would be reunited
with their belongings

provided they had paid
for transport in advance.

The costs were immense.

But many of the crates
never reached their owners.

It was of course the goal
of the National Socialists

not only to push the Jewish minority
out of the country,

but also to completely disenfranchise
and plunder them financially.

And in that respect,
there was little incentive

to ship them their property
in the first place.

The Koch family came from Wiesbaden.

Georg, a doctor,
took an early interest in art,

which he bought together with his wife.

He died in 1933.

His children fled to London,
soon to be joined by their mother Lotte.

Her possessions, which included
the family’s art collection,

were to follow by way
of Hamburg’s south west harbor.

That was the promise.

But they never made it to London.

In 1941, her boxes were confiscated.

Photos, art, memories, documents

a life’s worth of objects disappeared.

In the end, everything
was taken from them.

And that is criminal, terrible, ghoulish.

There are really no words
bad enough to describe it.

In the harbors, the Gestapo
confiscated goods

that were meant for shipping
and auctioned them off.

Even newspapers advertised opportunities
to purchase cheap goods.

A portable gramophone,

an oil painting, circa 1750,

56 books.

Here in the Hamburg State Archives,

Kathrin Kleibl meticulously searches
through auction records.

The Nazis were good at bookkeeping.

Here we go.

The individual contents of the lift van
were neatly listed here,

and you always had the name of the object,

and the name of the person who bought it.

Here, for example,
it’s the Museum of Ethnology,

and what was offered for the object
or group of items in question,

and it goes on here, page by page,

from, say, art objects to books.

Everything was more or less sorted,
like bed linen and bed frames,

cookware, and so on.

Her research is funded
by the German Lost Art Foundation.

What she seeks to establish is,

Who was robbed, who was the buyer,

and where are the items now?

From the beginning
of an object’s journey

when it left its owner’s house
with the moving company

to the moment it was stored

with the bailiff tasked
with the job of auctioning it off.

It basically lists who bought what
and for how much,

so that we get an overview.

Were they private persons,

were they dealers?

And what happened
to the objects after that?

Much like a detective, Kathrin Kleibl
gathers all the clues in a database.

And from these puzzle pieces,

I think we can trace the path
of a lift van

from its starting point

leaving the house
to its point of sale in Hamburg.

Kleibl works as a provenance researcher

here at the German Maritime Museum
in Bremerhaven.

Her job is to find out whether
the items in the museum’s collection

were acquired legally.

The Nazis also auctioned off
personal effects

from Jewish households here in Bremen.

That’s how Kleibl first became aware
of this injustice.

It struck me that this whole topic
of Jewish migrants’ property

being auctioned off in Bremen and Hamburg

has never really been dealt with.

Who bought which items at these auctions?

This has never been researched,

even though it’s all in the documents.

Many people attended the auctions:
not just dealers and private individuals,

but also numerous Hamburg museums.

Today, they are cooperating
with Kathrin Kleibl's research.

For example, the Kunsthalle,
or art museum,

bought eight paintings at auction

and is now looking
for their rightful owners and heirs.

The dream, of course, is that this room
will eventually be empty,

that we can allocate all these items

to their former owners
and their rightful heirs

and return them.

This man’s grandparents
Georg and Lotte Koch from Wiesbaden

also owned valuable paintings
which have never been returned.

His family enquired
about the missing items early on.

At first they were told they had been
incinerated during bombing.

Later, they were stumped,
because there were no records.

But the grandson persisted
and managed to find clues

leading to a painting
once owned by his family.

"Vase With Poppies" by Nolde.

This set everything in motion again
and raised doubts

that the paintings
had actually disappeared,

or had been destroyed by fire.

They must actually still exist somewhere.

Johanna Plotschitzki is from Berlin.

Her family’s estate was also plundered.

Her husband Hermann, who had opened
a department store in Berlin,

had left his fortune to his wife.

The art-loving family had bought pieces

by Beckmann, Liebermann,
Braques and Schmidt-Rottluff,

artists who adorn museums today.

Their villa in Dahlem was taken over
by the National Socialists,

where they trained journalists
loyal to the Reich.

Johanna Ploschitzki saw what was coming,

and fled to Los Angeles, in the USA.

She hoped the contents
of her household would follow

except they never arrived.

Her property was sold off in Hamburg
in an auction that lasted three days.

The hammer fell 1,500 times.

Kathrin Kleibl is still amazed
by this case today.

People came from Berlin,
from Hanover, to buy at this auction.

And they weren't ordinary people,

they weren't people
who had been bombed-out,

they were traders who turned a profit
from buying these objects cheaply.

After the war, Johanna Ploschitzki
wanted her property back.

She had photos to prove
what belonged to her

and what had been looted by the Nazis,

but only a few items were ever returned.

Kleibl is researching the case.

She is painstakingly reconstructing
the objects’ journeys

in the hopes of finally solving
this case of theft.

This is not a commissioned job

it is about German guilt and justice.

This set of pictures shows the furniture
from Johanna Ploschitzki's house

with the corresponding item number
in the auction record.

There are even complete shots
of the living rooms,

where we also find objects
that correspond with the auction record.

Let's take a look at this one: 109,
what it could be?

A Biedermeier crown was bought
by Meyer for 760 Reichsmark.

The price was estimated at 200.

That would have been this lamp here.

With the help of a lawyer,

Johanna Ploschitzki managed
to identify 32 bargain hunters.

They all denied any responsibility.

My client does not recognise
a duty of restitution.

She acquired all items in question
here in the autumn

at an auction held
by the Hamburg bailiff's office

without having the slightest idea
they might be Jewish property.

Basically every file says the same thing.

We have no more records,
we are not aware of the guilt.

We have nothing at all to do with this,

something along those lines.

The files of the restitution
proceedings are stored here,

in the attic of what is now
the Hamburg District Court.

Jürgen Lillteicher researches them.

He wanted to know how the state
behaved towards the injured parties

and came across the Ploschitzki case.

It was an especially thick file
with a big strap around it.

I had to open it.

And then these photos
of the estate in Berlin

with these incredible artworks
jumped out at me.

It was an astonishing find.

Because it's very, very rare
in restitution files

that people still have photos
of their property.

Who photographs their furniture?

It was just so exceptional
that I had to look into it.

For victims, including Johanna Ploschitzki

there’s more at stake
than just their possessions.

You could tell it was important
to the victims

that they not only
got their property back,

but that German courts also acknowledge
that they had wronged them.

And that didn't always happen
because the courts were more concerned

with contracts,
sums of money and the like.

There was close scrutiny and regulation.

In 1965, after 17 years,
Johanna Ploschitzki was compensated

by the Federal Republic of Germany
with 960,000 DM,

upon condition that she dropped
all further claims.

A laughable sum compared
to the original value of her estate.

What was astonishing to me

was that the state
then actually stepped in

that the debt of private individuals
was repaired by the state.

That was a political decision,

in order to prevent
a lengthy social discourse.

We estimate that there are
about 100,000 buyers in Hamburg alone

that's not just a few dozen people
from some small fringe group.

What would have happened
if this active discourse

had actually taken place?

To this day, many paintings

from Johanna Ploschitzki's
priceless art collection

are classified as lost.

Her heir continues to search for them

with the help of a law firm in Munich.

He is concerned
with more than their value:

He is interested in his family history,

what happened to his grandparents,
especially to his grandmother.

He asks himself:

Where have all these objects gone?

Look at the photos from that time,
this great villa in Dahlem,

which was furnished
with beautiful objects of art.

And where has
all this family history gone?

A lifetime of pain and loss.

This Chinese Buddha head
was acquired in Paris

and auctioned off
by the National Socialists.

And here we have it:

one Old Head, item 626,

acquired by the Museum of Ethnology.

The bid was 500 Reichsmark.

And there’s also an invoice
to the Museum of Ethnology.

But later, in the post-war period,

during the restitution negotiations,

this head was apparently lost,

and that was probably due

to a clerical error
in the restitution records,

where it was listed as an Old Pot.

So, when they looked through the records,

they couldn’t find the head.

But the head didn’t actually disappear.

At the end of 2020,
it showed up, on display

in the former Museum of Ethnology
in Hamburg,

now named MARKK.

It had been unlawfully stored
in a depot, for 80 years,

until it was brought out
for an art exhibition.

Kleibl is seeing it for the first time.

Beautiful!

To be honest, I imagined
it would be much smaller.

It's great to finally see it
in real life and not just in pictures.

Now, the long-lost Buddha head
will finally be returned

to Johanna Ploschitzki’s heirs.

The museum was already familiar
with the name Ploschitzki,

because it had already returned six
art objects to its owner after the war.

But not the Buddha head.

A tip from Kathrin Kleibl
drew the museum's attention to it.

It can happen that in these large depots,

objects sit for a very long time
before they are brought in for a project.

That's the way it works in big museums.

We all wish we could simply
process it ourselves,

but that’s an illusion,
as it would take too much time.

It’s a lifelong task.

You see, I don’t buy that, it’s an excuse.

The Federal Republic of Germany
committed to carrying out this research

in the Washington Declaration.

So, it’s the responsibility of the state,

including the cultural senator
for Hamburg,
20:19
to ensure that there are adequate resources for provenance research
20:24
they committed to this and must honor this commitment.
20:32
The Buddha Head was tracked down thanks to the joint efforts
20:36
of Kathrin Kleibl and MARKK.
20:42
It’s the first piece in Kleibl's research project to be returned.
20:51
This shows that the impossible can be made possible.
20:54
We can track down the looted belongings
20:56
and recover them for thousands of families and people.
21:02
And we are lucky here that MARKK is a public institution,
21:06
so it is possible to find these items,
21:11
which would probably be much more difficult
21:13
to do if they were in private households.
21:20
This is the case of the missing Emil Nolde painting
21:23
owned by the Koch family.
21:26
Their grandson painstakingly searches for more clues.
21:31
It passed through many hands after being bought
21:33
by a cattle dealer at auction.
21:36
Christies, the auction house, also tried to sell it
21:39
in vain.
21:41
It was delivered there by a gallery in Kiel.
21:44
Eventually, it was sold via Austria to France.
21:48
But nobody will say who has it now.
21:55
There’s the impression that people are stonewalling.
21:58
Information is not being laid out on the table,
22:00
there is no transparency.
22:02
Why are they only sharing this information after 4, 5, 6 enquiries,
22:06
why not right away?
22:10
The Nolde wasn’t the only artwork in the Koch family’s collection.
22:17
It also included other valuable paintings such as a Jawlensky,
22:23
a Klee, a Rohlfs.
22:26
Today, they are certain that all of these artworks were looted.
22:31
Beate Schreiber from the historical research institute
22:34
Facts & Files is trying to reconstruct the clues
22:36
from numerous paintings from the Kochs' estate.
22:39
But the Kiel gallery claims that it no longer has any documents
22:42
that could shed light on the matter.
22:46
From my experience with art dealer archives,
22:49
I can't imagine that they threw away all their documents in 1980,
22:53
and they don’t have them anymore.
22:54
Every art dealer knows that documentation
22:57
is the be-all and end-all of their business,
23:00
so you always know what you had, who you got it from,
23:03
and who you sold it to.
23:10
Why aren’t they telling the truth?
23:15
Why are they trying to mislead us?
23:19
This suggests that the people involved knew
23:22
that there was something wrong with how the painting
23:23
had been acquired.
23:31
To this day, most of the possessions belonging
23:33
to the expelled Jewish community are missing.
23:36
Millions of objects
23:38
everything that was dear to them, that they had hoped to take
23:41
with them to begin their new lives were sold off
23:43
at auctions where anyone could get their hands on them.
23:48
It’s a Sysiphean task.
23:50
Kleibl is working her way through mountains
23:52
of files to find the names of injured parties.
23:58
After a little over a year of working on this list,
24:02
I've reached the letter N.
24:08
So far, that’s approximately 1700 names of victims from Hamburg.
24:19
If I hold them together like this,
24:21
you can see I have completed just over half of the list.
24:27
So my guess would be there’s about 2700 names in total.
24:33
The looted property and the names of the victims will be
24:36
published in a database
24:38
only then can the owners and their heirs assert their claims.
24:44
Where has the Kochs' art collection gone?
24:50
Their grandson will keep searching as long as he can.
25:00
I said to myself, if our generation doesn't do this anymore,
25:05
if I don't at least try to get to the bottom of this, nothing will happen.
25:12
This chapter of history will be buried forever
25:16
and will vanish into oblivion.
25:23
A belated search for justice
25:26
Kathrin Kleibl won’t give up trying
25:28
to right the wrongs of the Nazi art heist.