'They can be here for remembrance': Silver stolen from victims of Holocaust now in London
CTV
It has been a long journey, but two silver items looted from a Jewish family that was killed in the Holocaust, are now in London, Ont.
It has been a long journey, but two silver items looted from a Jewish family that was killed in the Holocaust, are now in London, Ont.
“They belong to the Ackermann family, they were coerced into giving up objects that were rightfully theirs, and now they are going to be held in Museum London, in the city where they made their home,” said Eric Robinson, program director of the Jewish Community Centre.
Robinson said they recently learned that the pieces of silver were being held since 1940 by a Museum in Germany.
Dr. Matthias Weniger is the curator of the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, Germany and works toward restitution of Nazi silver that had been stored in their museums since the Holocaust.
“We wanted to return the pieces to the family if we can, and if there is no direct descendants, then what accords to the will of the family since it was a Jewish Community Foundation, and therefor we brought the objects here, and now they can be here for remembrance,” said Weniger.
The silver belonged to Mina and Adolf Ackermann, but the couple was forced to give them up to a pawn shop. The family would later be killed during the Holocaust, with only their son, Theodore, surviving and eventually settling in London, Ont. with his wife Ellen in 1974.
