Zelda was practically dancing with impatience. In a few moments, the owner of a painting once stolen by the Nazis would be walking through the conference room door. What would she look like? Or sound like? Zelda closed her eyes, imagining the claimant to be tall and elegantly dressed with a slight European accent, probably the sort who winters on the Costa Brava or the French Riviera. All she knew for certain was that Rita Brouwer was flying in from Columbia, Missouri via Chicago and London; a grueling flight itinerary to be sure.
Her jangling knee bumped against the conference table, waking the laptop humming in the middle of it. She couldn’t help but smile when she glanced at the screen and saw the Stolen Objects database already open. Thanks to her own naivety – as Huub Konijn had so kindly put it – they had their first claimant. After all of the curator’s ranting and raving about what an unimportant piece it was, she couldn’t help but feel justified the ‘worthless’ Wederstein got recognized first.
Zelda looked over at the painting, now resting on an easel in the corner of the conference room. She was entranced every time she looked at it, the way the woman looked so directly – almost defiantly – at the painter. Yet there was the slightest curve to her lips and a sparkle in her eye, as if she knew something the viewer didn’t. Even the way it was painted was mysterious. The artist used a minimalistic approach, an almost abstract way of painting, yet the girl’s delicate features and the irises’ purple blossoms were so clearly defined, it was as if he’d copied the image from a photograph. The broad strokes of color and sturdy lines defining the shapes seemed to dance off the canvas. That’s why she’d placed it at the beginning of her animation; so when the database loaded, the user would be as captivated as she was. Of course Girl with Vase was no longer featured on the homepage. As soon as humanly possible, Huub’s team had replaced her animation with a larger version rotating through works made by internationally-known artists.
Despite the curator’s dressing down last week, Bernice Dijkstra had asked Zelda to come back and take notes during their meeting with the museum’s first claimant. Huub was not pleased, but Bernice was insistent. It was standard practice to have someone take notes during such meetings and as practically everyone working for the museum was on vacation for the rest of the summer, they had no other choice, she argued. When Bernice asked if she would be interested in helping them out once more, Zelda’s heart began to sing. She didn’t even mind she was there to take notes or that Huub was glaring at her; she was just thrilled to still be inside the museum and technically part of the project team. And to have the honor of meeting the first claimant, naturally.
Excitement crept into the project manager’s voice as she explained how Zelda should write down everything that was said by all parties, verbatim if possible. Bernice’s twinkling eyes and trembling voice reminded her how important this meeting was going to be.
A knock on the door brought silence to the conference room. One of the museum’s receptionists popped her head inside. “Mevrouw Dijkstra? Rita Brouwer has arrived.”
“Fantastic, show her in please.” As the project manager rose to greet their mystery claimant, Zelda let her eyelids flutter shut as she visualized the refined owner sauntering into the room. She opened her eyes to see a pudgy, badly dressed woman in her late seventies shaking Bernice’s hand.
“Howdy folks, it sure is nice to be here today.” It sounded like John Wayne’s sister had entered the room. Rita Brouwer stopped inside the doorway and looked around through her coke-bottle glasses, whistling softly once she spotted the painting in the far corner. Zelda could tell from the older woman’s expression that she recognized Girl with Vase immediately.
Despite her girth, Rita was across the conference room in a heartbeat, stroking the surface of the Wederstein painting as if caressing a lost love. Zelda thought she heard the woman whisper, “Well I’ll be, it is irises,” but couldn’t be sure.
“What are you doing?” Huub rushed over and slapped her hand away. “Step away from that painting; we do not know if it is truly yours yet.”
Rita turned to face the curator, hands on her hips. Before she had a chance to chew him out for being so rude, Bernice jumped in between them.
“Huub,” she scoffed, while gesturing towards the chair next to her own. “Mrs. Brouwer, please have a seat. Would you care for some tea or coffee?”
“I want to sit here, where I can see my painting. I did just fly twenty-three hours to enjoy that privilege, you know.” The older woman plopped herself down at the head of the table, in the chair closest to the Wederstein painting. As she settled in, Rita hid a gaping sigh with the back of her hand. “I apologize in advance for yawning the whole time, it’s the jetlag. Not that meeting you all is a bore!” Huub winced as Rita guffawed. Zelda was waiting for her to slap her knee. “I sure could use a strong cup of black coffee. That’ll keep me going a while longer.”
Bernice poured her a cup and set it down on the table before her.
“I tell you what; I never thought I’d see her again.” The old lady gazed lovingly at the painting, absorbing every detail while a grin spread across her face. “She’s a bit dustier than I recall, but I’d still recognize her anywhere.”
The project manager smiled politely, while the curator’s frown seemed to deepen. Huub’s apparent discomfort with her uncouth behavior made Zelda warm to the old lady immediately.
Bernice cleared her throat, signaling the official start of the meeting. “Thank you for making such a long journey to be with us today. I must say, your telephone call took us by surprise. We were still putting the final touches on the website and collection database when you phoned. How did you happen to see it so quickly?”
“Oh, that’s easy. I volunteer at my local library two days a week. Good for the body and mind, staying active like that. During my lunch break I was flipping through one of the new art magazines that had just come in and saw your advertisement for an exhibition of stolen artwork. It got me thinking about my daddy, so I asked one of the girls who work there to help me look up the Internet link listed in your ad. Boy, I just about fainted when that website loaded and I saw daddy’s painting right there on the homepage!” Rita chuckled. “Those girls at the library were worried I was going to have a stroke or something worse! One of them even drove me home once I got to feeling better, bless her.”
“Now you’ve seen the painting in person, do you still believe it to be your father’s?”
“I know it’s his, no question about it.” Rita responded immediately.
“But how can you be so sure? It was seventy years ago, perhaps…” Huub started to ask.
“You really think I wouldn’t recognize my own sister anymore? I may be old, but I’m not senile.”
“Sorry?”
Rita pointed to the young woman in the painting. “That’s a portrait of my oldest sister Iris, painted just before she turned eighteen.”
Huub and Bernice exchanged glances. “Do you know the name of this piece?” the project manager nudged gently.
“Irises.”
“Excuse me?”
“Irises.” Rita over-enunciated it. “That’s the painting’s title. Well, technically Irissen.” Rita pronounced the Dutch word carefully. “Excuse my pronunciation, once we moved to America my mama stopped speaking Dutch with us; she wanted us to become real Americans, not stay foreigners.”
Bernice looked puzzled for only a split second before a warm smile settled on her face once again. “Okay, this is a good start. In our database this piece is known as Girl with Vase, not Irises.”
Rita stared at the project manager for a split second before her snorts of laughter filled the room. “No self-respecting artist would give such a dumb name to such a colorful painting. No, it’s called Irises, because of my sister’s name and the flowers. I should know, I heard the artist say it himself when he gave it to my daddy.”
Huub’s eyebrows shot up as Bernice’s jaw dropped slightly. Zelda could hardly believe they’d found someone who knew both the artist and its original owner. Surely this would make Rita’s claim a cinch.
“The artist, Lex Wederstein, he was Iris’s first steady boyfriend. They met when she was sixteen years old. That would have been in 1938. If the war hadn’t broken out they would have married, but that’s neither here nor there. He was a really talented artist. There might still be some of his paintings stored at the Rijksacademie, that’s the art school where he studied. Although that Nazi general ransacked Lex’s studio and probably destroyed any artwork he found. And there should be two pieces in the Stedelijk Museum’s collection – one with a hole in the middle where that Nazi’s boot went through it! Though I wouldn’t be surprised if that general ripped those two paintings to shreds, right then and there.” Rita doubled over in laughter, lost in her memories.
Zelda was making notes as rapidly as she could, even though she felt as if she was hearing only part of the conversation. When she glanced up at the project manager, she saw Bernice was clearly intrigued by what Rita Brouwer had to say. The curator, on the other hand, was resting his chin on his folded hands, listening as if he was hearing a fairy tale for the first time. She could hardly believe how rude he was being.
Why is he so skeptical? she asked herself. As Huub had repeatedly said before Rita arrived, this is an insignificant painting with no real monetary value. Why would this little old lady lie about being the owner of it? Sure, he’d also said some people wanted to find their family’s missing treasures so badly that they claimed a piece and convinced themselves it was the long-lost artwork of a long-dead relative. But Zelda could not believe Rita was making any of this up. Based on the older woman’s emotional response alone, she wanted to throw the canvas in her arms and tell her to keep it.
“Before we talk more about the artist, perhaps you can tell us what you remember about this particular painting. When did Mr. Wederstein paint this portrait? Was it commissioned by your father? What is your father’s full name?” Bernice asked, once Rita’s laughter subsided.
“Philip Verbeet was his name. Lex gave it to him at Iris’s eighteenth birthday party on February 4, 1940, three months before the war started. It was as much a present as a way of paying him back for some frames daddy had made him. He owned a frame shop on the Stadhouderskade, only a few doors down from our house. It was also real close to the art academy where Lex studied. That’s how he met Iris; she used to help out in the shop on Saturdays.”
“That was generous of your father, to accept this painting in lieu of payment,” Huub interjected.
“Daddy wasn’t really giving Lex special treatment,” Rita quickly replied, oblivious to the curator’s sarcasm. “He traded paintings for supplies with lots of young artists, that’s how he built up his collection. Daddy would have loved to have earned a living as a landscape painter, but he didn’t have the talent for it. Not that he didn’t keep trying, mind you. He’d stink up his shop with his oils when things were a bit slow.” Rita smiled at the memories, wriggling her nose as if she smelled her father’s paints and turpentine once again.
“What collection?” Huub asked.
Rita grinned wickedly, tapping her temple twice before plopping her large purse on the table. “I thought you all would want to see this,” she said, while wrestling a large and very old book out of her bag. Its spine had cracked open and the black cover was curling up at the edges. Still, it held together as Rita carefully opened it.
“My mama was always crazy about photo albums; right up to her death she was constantly gluing them together. This one has pictures of our last days in Amsterdam, when our daddy was still alive. Most of his artwork hung in our house, at least until we ran out of wall space and he had to store some of it in his frame shop. He’d switch his paintings around every few months so we could enjoy them all.”
She tapped the first photograph on the page with a stubby finger as Huub and Bernice moved to either side of her and peered over her shoulder. “This is our street, the Frans Halsstraat. And that’s our house. The bottom two floors and garden were ours.”
From across the table, Zelda could see what they were looking at, albeit upside down. The photo showed a long row of terraced houses running the length of the street. Rita was pointing at a door in the middle of the block. Her old family home was actually an apartment consisting of the lower half of a narrow four-story building. It was a simple-looking brick structure, distinguishable from its neighbors only by a wide metal beam decorated with five rosettes, which stretched across the façade. Their front door was on the street level; next to it was a short flight of stairs leading up to their neighbor’s home.
Rita gently turned the page. “Here we are,” she chuckled. A large photograph of five girls in identical dresses filled the right-hand page. They were seated on a long couch in what appeared to be the living room. Hanging on the wall behind them were several paintings encased in ornate gilded frames.
“That’s my sister Iris there. She was the oldest,” Rita explained, pointing to the girl on the far left of the couch. Zelda was captivated. With her long black hair, almond eyes and wide lips, Iris could have easily been a model. “Next to her is Fleur, Viola, Rose and that’s little ’ole me there on the end. My first name, Margriet, means Daisy. My father loved his garden so much he named us all after flowers.” Rita laughed at her younger self, an adorable little girl dressed in a navy blue dress with a sailor’s cap resting on a bed of ringlets. Zelda could hardly believe that she’d become the pudgy woman with thinning hair and thick glasses now sitting before her.
“Let’s see here,” Rita bent down so her glasses were almost touching the paper. “The handwriting’s pretty faded but it looks like mama wrote ‘February 1940’ next to this picture. I would have been eight years old. Look at us girls! Not a care in the world.” Rita’s voice was tinged with sadness. “How things changed a few months later when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands.” She pointed to a painting in the photograph hanging above Fleur’s head. “There’s Irises.”
Zelda squinted to make out the composition from her chair. As her eyes focused on the small rectangle, she could see this was clearly the same piece of artwork now resting on an easel across from her.
“My father took most of these pictures.” She flipped slowly through the album, revealing more family photos of the children and parents playing and posing in their modest two-bedroom apartment. Rita’s mother was tiny in every sense of the word. A delicate lily, Zelda thought, wondering if Rita’s father called her that. Judging from the few photographs of Philip Verbeet they’d seen so far, Rita took more after him than her mother. He was a stocky, barrel-chested man with a large moustache and bowler hat. His smile was infectious and Zelda could feel her lips turning up at the edges just by looking at him.
Most of the pictures had been taken inside the family’s home. The rooms were simply furnished and quite sparse considering five children and two adults lived in such a small space. But the walls made up for it. Every square inch was covered in paintings, sketches, watercolors and etchings, most fitted with broad, intricately-carved frames.
“This is the photograph Lex took, the same one he used to make the portrait. Iris was seventeen at the time. He was madly in love with her, you know.” And she with him, Zelda thought. Iris’s coy smile and laughing eyes were aimed towards the camera, at her lover behind it. After seeing this picture, she could easily believe Lex had a future as an artist. The resemblance between the photograph and painted portrait was almost uncanny.
Rita’s audience watched attentively as she slowly flipped through the album, pointing out a sketch here or a painting there. Huub Konijn appeared slightly puzzled, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Zelda couldn’t place his emotions or interest level until Rita turned the page again, revealing close-ups of the living room walls. A large canvas hanging above the dining table caught her eye. She recognized the artist, or at least thought she did, but couldn’t think of the name. She’d visited so many museums and learned about so many painters and sculptors during her six months of art history classes that all of their names were jumbled together in her head.
Before she could finish scouring her brain for the answer, the curator let out a sharp gasp. “Is that a Toorop?” he asked, pointing at the same painting Zelda was trying to place.
“Yup, my daddy had a few of her pieces. I was never really a fan of her work, all those dark colors and grim faces. I’m more partial to Jan Sluijters. The pieces he gave my daddy were so colorful; I used to beg him to let me hang them in our bedroom instead of there.” She pointed to a photograph of their stairwell, in which three large canvases hung above the handrail.
“Charley Toorop? Jan Sluijters? Is that a Karel Appel? Where did your father get these pieces? How could he afford them?” Huub asked, obviously flabbergasted to see works by several of Holland’s most famous modern painters hanging in the Verbeet’s modest dwelling.
Rita laughed loudly, slapping her knee. “Oh, the look on your face! Don’t you worry; he didn’t steal them or anything like that. Even the Appel’s and Sluijters’ of this world had to start at the bottom. Not all of the painters my daddy bartered with got famous; I’d bet even you wouldn’t recognize most of the artists in his collection.”
“Is that a Carel Willink?” Zelda wasn’t sure if Huub had heard a word Rita said, he was so engrossed in the photographs before him. “I don’t recognize this piece. It must have been painted by a student trying to imitate his style,” the curator said.
“No, that was definitely painted by Carel Willink. My mama admired his work so much she gave him pots of her homemade jam whenever he came by the shop. He lived around the corner from us, on the Ruysdaelkade.”
“I studied his oeuvre extensively last year while working on a retrospective of his work and I do not recognize this painting. And none of Willink’s canvases are listed as missing or stolen.” Huub’s determination wavered as he studied the photograph again. “Though it does look quite similar to some of his earlier works.”
“That’s because it is one of his earlier works. Look, here’s another one of his, and Sluijters’, two more Appel’s and daddy’s only Corneille.”
Huub’s expression softened slightly as he looked over at Rita with a glimmer of respect. “These paintings would help document the early changes in style and technique of some of the Netherlands’ most important painters.” As he bowed to inspect the pictures once more, skepticism crept back into his voice. “If they were really painted by the artists you say they were, that is.”
Before Rita could respond, the curator pushed on. “Tell me, Mrs. Brouwer, why hadn’t your mother submitted a claim with the Dutch government years ago? All of these important artists, surely your family must have been interested in finding out what happened to your father’s collection? If these paintings are indeed by Appel, Sluijters and the rest, well, they would be worth a lot of money,” Huub said, gauging her reaction as he spoke of the paintings’ potential value. “You say young artists studying at the Rijksacademie frequented your shop; many famous Dutch artists taught there, including Jan Sluijters. Perhaps these pieces were made by students who were copying their teachers’ styles?”
Zelda wondered if Huub was testing Rita, or just being a total prick. Before she could find out, Bernice jumped in to save the conversation. “Tell me, Mrs. Brouwer, how is it you still have this photo album?”
“My mama squeezed it into our suitcases before we went to the farm.”
“Before you went to which farm?” Bernice asked. She was clearly not having trouble understanding Rita’s southern drawl, but was running out of patience with the old lady’s long-winded explanations.
“We had to leave Amsterdam because of what happened to Lex at the Stedelijk Museum. So my mama and us girls spent the last three years of the war on my aunt’s farm in Venlo.”
“What exactly happened at the Stedelijk Museum?” Huub asked.
“In May 1942, Lex got asked to be part of a group exposition at the museum, the most important place for working artists to show their work back then. After Hitler’s troops invaded Poland in 1939 he had the good sense to start using his mother’s maiden name – Welsh – as his own. He even re-signed most of his old canvases so he could get them displayed in galleries. It made Lex so mad he couldn’t use his real name, but he understood it was too big a risk. I guess that’s why he signed Irises with ‘Wederstein.’ That portrait was never meant to be sold.”
“Do you mean to say Lex Wederstein pretended not to be Jewish?” Huub asked, clearly dumbfounded.
“The Nazis considered him Jewish. He considered himself to be Episcopalian, like his mama. But his daddy was a full-blooded Jew and that meant Lex was too, according to the Nazi regime. Even though Lex wasn’t even Jewish according to the Jewish religion! It’s one of those matriarchal religions; if your mama’s not Jewish then you’re not either.” Rita paused for a moment to collect her thoughts, giving Zelda a chance to catch up. Taking notes was much more difficult than she thought it was going to be.
“When Lex’s daddy got fired from his job in 1940 because of his religious persuasion, he was worried he would get shipped off to one of them work camps in Germany. He wanted to take the whole family into hiding and wait out the war. Back then no one could have known Amsterdam would be occupied for so many years; most people figured it would all be over in a few months. But Lex refused to go with them. He was finally starting to get exhibitions in galleries; there was even a review in an important art magazine about his first solo show, saying he was an artist to watch. My sister Iris was real proud of that. Being able to make his living as an artist had always been his dream and he’d be damned if the Nazis would take that away from him, too.”
“That seems particularly brave, or incredibly stupid,” Huub interjected.
“It wouldn’t have surprised you if you’d known him,” Rita maintained. “It helped that Lex didn’t look Jewish. He was tall, blond and blue-eyed – just like his mother. That’s probably why he got away with it for so long, hiding out in plain sight. He was a beautiful boy, so full of life. He survived two years, living the way he wanted, out in the open, right under their noses. If only he could of controlled that temper of his…” her voice faltered. She gazed at the painting of her sister before adding softly, “He never stood a chance.”
Zelda used the momentary silence to gauge the museum professionals’ reactions. Bernice showed no obvious sign of being moved by the older lady’s narrative. Two chairs down, Huub stared out the window at the courtyard below, seemingly lost in thought. Had he even been listening to Rita? she wondered. Before she could catch his eye, Bernice spoke up. “What happened to Lex Wederstein, Mrs. Brouwer?”
“Lex betrayed himself at the exhibition,” Rita said, a deep sigh escaping her lips. Her eyes clouded over and she fell silent again.
“Would you like more coffee, Mrs. Brouwer? Or perhaps to go back to your hotel? We can always meet again, once you’ve gotten better adjusted to being in a different time zone,” Bernice asked, concern evident in her voice.
Rita looked up at the three people sitting around the table as if she was seeing them for the first time. The old lady had clearly transported her thoughts back to the 1940s. She shook her head slightly and was in the present again. “No, thank you. I’m fine. It’s just, well, I haven’t really talked about any of this for a very, very long time. Frankly, I feel like I’m describing someone else’s life to you all.”
She slapped her palms on the table before breaking into a forced laugh. “Listen to me dithering on! Where was I? Oh yes, the exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum. Hours before the opening, Lex got word his family had been arrested by the Gestapo. They’d been hiding in a neighbor’s attic, a few doors down from where they lived. Lex and his brothers used to play with their children and his mother was always going over to their house to help make jam, bake pies or chit-chat over coffee. Lex’s parents had every reason to trust them. Unfortunately, in those days the Nazis were offering good money for information on the whereabouts of any Jewish persons still in the city, and for those hiding them, as well. Can you imagine that? Paying people to snitch on their neighbors and friends? But there was no work, and people were starving and freezing to death because they couldn’t afford to buy food, clothes or oil for heating – when there was any to be had. Those were very desperate times. Apparently the friends hiding Lex’s family got worried that they were going to get arrested, so they turned his family in to the police themselves. To beat their neighbors to the punch, so to speak.” Rita shook her head in disgust.
“Lex came to our house as soon as he found out. I was only ten years old at the time, but I remember how angry he was. Nothing Iris or my daddy said or did seemed to console him. A while after he arrived, he stormed out without even saying goodbye. Iris wanted to go after him, but daddy wouldn’t let her. Lex needed some time to cool off, he’d be back when he was good and ready, he said. Of course we didn’t know where Lex would go or what he might do. None of us thought he’d go to the opening, not in the state he was in. After he left, Iris was inconsolable. It was as if she knew she’d never see Lex again.”
Rita wiped away a tear. Zelda blinked away one herself, imagining the overwhelming sense of helplessness and accompanying rage Lex certainly must have felt. His entire family arrested and deported, despite having done everything they could to hide their existence from the Nazis, even living like mice in a dark attic for two long years.
“The next day some of Lex’s friends came to our frame shop. He had gone to the opening after all. They said at first Lex appeared normal; laughing and carrying on like nothing was wrong. It was only after he started to get drunk that they noticed something was eating at him. He made sarcastic remarks about a group of SS officers in the gallery and even tried goose-stepping across the hall. Before his friends could get him out of the museum, Lex saw a SS general admiring one of his paintings. He ran over and shook the man’s hand before screaming at the top of his lungs that he was the artist – and a Jew. Apparently everyone thought he was joking at first, but Lex kept insisting he was Jewish, even screaming his real name over and over again: ‘Wederstein, Wederstein, Wederstein!’ When that general finally realized Lex wasn’t joking, he ripped the painting from the wall and put his boot through it. Lex flipped out. He jumped on the general’s back and tried to choke him.”
“Lex was immediately arrested for attacking an officer, not wearing his star, sneaking into the museum, and participating in the exhibition under false pretenses. That night there was a raid on his street and everyone was arrested, even the supposed friends who’d ratted his parents out to the Gestapo. A few days later, Lex, his entire family and several of his neighbors were shipped off to Auschwitz. None of them came back.” Rita sounded so bitter. “He didn’t just commit suicide the night of the opening. He murdered almost everyone he’d ever known and, in a way, my daddy. He was such a naïve boy.”
“What happened to Lex’s family and neighbors is atrocious, but I still do not understand why his actions forced your family to leave Amsterdam?” Huub asked, his arms folded firmly across his chest.
Is he made of ice? Zelda wondered. How could Huub react so indifferently to such a heart-wrenching story?
Rita sat up straighter in her chair before answering, her tone defiant. “My daddy heard that the general had torn Lex’s studio apart and found photos of him and Iris together. He’d been asking around the art academy, trying to find out who the girl in the photograph was. My daddy knew most of the artists and teachers at the Rijksacademie and trusted them but, like I said before, the Nazis were paying for information and money was hard to come by. It was probably only a matter of time before someone talked. Even though that general didn’t have a legitimate reason to arrest Iris or harass our family, my daddy was so shaken by what he’d done to Lex he shipped us off to stay with my mother’s sister the very next day. June 14, 1942 to be exact. We could stay on her farm in Venlo until the war was over. We would all be safer there, my father thought.”
“If it was so dangerous, why did your father not go to Venlo with you?” Huub asked.
“He stayed behind to sell what possessions he could, and store the rest with friends who were determined to stay. It wasn’t our furniture or clothes he was worried about, but his art collection and the tools and supplies in his frame shop. He couldn’t bear to leave it all behind for the Germans to take. The Gestapo wasn’t even looking for him – only Iris – so he had nothing to worry about, he said.”
Rita paused to take a long sip of coffee before resuming her story. “After we got to the farm, we hardly noticed there was a war going on. My aunt had five boys a few years younger than us girls, so we had a hoot chasing them around. There was plenty of meat, eggs and vegetables, even with so many mouths to feed. It was almost idyllic, except for the fact that my daddy never arrived.”
“What do you mean?” Bernice asked.
Rita gazed at her sister’s portrait. In a soft voice, almost a whisper, she said, “A week after we got to the farm, he sent a letter saying he’d sold his equipment and supplies to a fellow frame maker and that he’d paid the rent on our house for another five years. Hopefully we’d all be home by then, he wrote,” she smiled at the memory, before her forehead creased up.
“Mama always found that strange because she said they’d decided to leave Amsterdam for good and immigrate to America as soon as it was safe to cross the Atlantic.”
“So, he wrote to your mother that he’d sold his art collection to a fellow frame maker, yet you are here submitting a claim on it?” Huub asked, incredulity apparent in his voice.
“No, only his frame making tools and the inventory in his shop. At the end of the letter he wrote that he’d found the perfect place to store his art collection and his paintings would be safe there until this bloody war ended. I don’t know if he left them with that frame maker or someone else. But he did not sell them to anyone, I’m sure of it!”
“And where did he go after he stored his most precious possessions with these unknown friends?”
“I don’t know. He ended his letter by saying he hoped to be leaving Amsterdam in a few days and he couldn’t wait to see us.” She wiped away another tear before adding in a resigned tone, “That was the last time we ever heard from my daddy again.”