Dutch brooch

from the Sobibór collection

Most of the objects presented in the permanent exhibition at the Museum and Memorial in Sobibór are personal items belonging to the victims of the Holocaust. In the first transports, at the turn of April and May 1942, Jews from occupied Poland, mainly from the Lublin region, were brought to the German death camp in Sobibór. In the following months, Jews from the Netherlands, Slovakia, France, the Reich, the annexed Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia – created after the breakup of Czechoslovakia – were also deported there. In September 1943, the Germans sent several transports to Sobibór from the ghetto in Minsk, Belarus

A group of elegantly dressed people with suitcases and backpacks in front of a train carriage — Dutch Jews being loaded onto a train

Jews arriving from abroad, who were usually informed of their “displacement to the east,” took with them basic necessities that could be useful for living in a new place: dishes, cutlery, medicines, hygiene utensils, work tools. Many people were unable to pack their belongings – they were taken straight from the street in the so-called raids on Jews. Their only possessions were the contents of their pockets and handbags: wallets, combs, mirrors, lipsticks, glasses, lighters and jewellery they wore.

Apart from the main goal of operation “Reinhardt” – namely, the mass extermination of Jewish children, women, and men, the plunder of their property was also of great importance. For the organisers of the genocide, not only money or precious ores and stones had material value, but also everything that could still be reused or sold. Trains used to transport Jews to their deaths were dispatched from Sobibór loaded with sorted clothes, shoes and suitcases. The tiniest items were sent to warehouses in Lublin, and then to the Reich.

A damaged document in German dated April 16, 1943, prepared in Sobibór. — A railway bill of lading listing items taken from Sobibór to the Operation Reinhardt warehouse on Chopina Street in Lublin on April 16, 1943. Among the stolen items were cutlery, eyeglasses, combs, razors, and even old rubber bands and thread.

The objects belonging to the murdered that can be seen at the exhibition were found during archaeological research conducted on the grounds of the former German death camp. The few pieces of jewellery that have survived to this day were probably lost by their owners after leaving the train or overlooked during the segregation of property. One such item is a brass brooch with an embossed genre scene depicting a group of people. Quite schematic realisation and the lack of characteristic details made it difficult to identify the scene at first, except that it certainly alluded to 17th century Netherlandish painting. Finding a second brooch, similar in form, only half-preserved but with a more familiar scene, helped identify the representation. After conservation works, a fragment of it was recognised as a depiction of the painting “The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburgh” (better known as “The Night Watch” or “The March out of the Riflemen”) by Rembrandt, in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The same material, similar shape, size and manner of making both brooches suggest that they were created in the same workshop. Following this lead, it was possible to establish that the first brooch reflects the painting “The Feast of Saint Nicholas” by Dutch artist Jan Steen, dated 1665–1668, also from the collection of the Rijksmuseum. The central figure turned out to be a girl, gifted by St. Nicholas with a statue of St. John the Baptist and a bucket full of sweets. She is surrounded by her parents, a maid and two brothers, one of whom (on the left side of the scene) stands tearful as he did not receive a gift. The depiction on the brooch was reduced from ten to six characters and has a simplified interior in the background. The lack of elaborate details suggests that both brooches were stamped from a die and perhaps they are souvenirs of a visit to the Dutch national museum in Amsterdam.

Elliptical metal brooch with six double scrolls in the cover, with a multi-figure scene from the painting The Feast of St. Nicholas in the center.

While Rembrandt's painting is undoubtedly iconic and recognisable all over the world, the works of Jan Steen, despite his being a very talented artist, were not so popular on the European art market. However, he undoubtedly went down in the history of Netherlandish painting as an excellent observer and commentator of bourgeois life, often showing in a satirical and mocking way genre scenes at homes or on the streets. The representations of his paintings were reproduced on various types of vessels: spoons, caskets and boxes, which may attest not only to the popularity of this artist, but also to the educational and moralising aspect of his work. Perhaps such a message was to be carried by the discovered brooch, attached to the clothes of one of over 34,000 Dutch victims brought to the German death camp in Sobibór.

Brooch; "The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburgh", Rembrandt van Rĳn