As a consequence of this extremely successful research and return project, the ITS launched the #StolenMemory campaign in January 2017. In the form of a poster exhibition, it details the origins of the effects, about cases in which the search for family members was successful and the personal objects were returned to the families, but also about the objects and personal fates of the victims in cases where the ITS is still looking for the rightful owners.
The #StolenMemory exhibition opened on January 25 as part of the UNESCO festivities accompanying the memorial services on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Paris. Jeanita and Martine van Dam, the granddaughters of Holocaust survivor Nathan van Dam, were present. The exhibition was on display on the fence surrounding the UNESCO building on 125 Avenue de Suffren.
Forty-three large-scale posters, including thirty-five on specific individuals, tell the fates of the victims and the encounters with fifteen families to which effects have been returned. 20 posters show objects and recount the fragmentary information that has come down to us in the ITS archive about the persecution and fates of their former owners.
The exhibition will next be presented at venues in England, Luxembourg and Poland with the hope of returning as many effects as possible to the families and calling public attention to these special ITS holdings. For further information on the project, and on borrowing the exhibition, please go to: www.StolenMemory.de.
Between November 2016 - when the project began - and April 2018, 135 effects have already been returned to the families of the victims.
Family of Zygmunt Boboli with his watch