Nearly 80 years later, a watch stolen by a Nazi soldier during World War II, lost in a cornfield and was later hidden inside another farmhouse clock in Belgium, it has been returned to the grandchildren of its maker.

Y still works.

“I think it’s so beautiful and remarkable that it’s all put together,” said Richard van Ameijden, grandson of the watchmaker. “It was completely unexpected.”

The pocket watch was made in the 1910’s Alfred Overstrijd, a Jew from the Dutch city of Rotterdam who was an apprentice watchmaker. She made it as a gift for her brother Louis on his 18th birthday. The inscription on the back of the watch includes Overstrijd’s name and the place and time it was made, as well as the fact for his brother.

In 1942, Louis Overstrijd was detained by the Nazis, where a soldier likely took his watch from him or took it from his home, according to Rob Snijders, a Dutch historian who specializes in Jewish history. The two Overstrijd brothers were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp and did not survive the Holocaust.

For van Ameijden, retrieving his grandfather’s clock is inspiring, but it’s also a full -blown understanding of the atrocities that still persist.

“When I look at the clock, I’m slightly moved because now there’s also war,” van Ameijden said, referring to Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine. “I can imagine that children and adults sleeping in the subway stations of a bombed-out Mariupol are clinging to their belongings. I think of that when I see this clock.”

The bathroom in the cornfield

not clearly known how are the hands of the clock from Louis Overstrijd to Rotterdam to a corn field in the Flemish part of Belgium, but Snijders rebuilt the voyage.

During the war, residents of Belgium and the Netherlands were forced home by Nazi soldiers. A Belgian farmer named Gustave Janssens housed three soldiers and, unhappy with the situation, he insisted on turning the adjacent corn into a bathroom. The watch probably fell from the pocket of one of the soldiers there, Snijders said.

When Janssens found the watch, he probably noticed the Dutch name on the back and thought the soldier had stolen it, Snijders explained. Instead of returning it the farmer hid it within a clock in his house.

And there it remained in the next 80 years.

That rural Belgian establishment was sold recently and members of the Janssens family went through the goods, said Pieter Janssens, the owner’s grandson. coincidentally saidthe family found the pocket watch made in 1910 with inscription on the back.

He then emailed Snijders to try to track down the original owner of the watch.

These types of requests can be difficult, Snijders says. “It’s a very complicated thing; usually it does not workhe said. “It can take years.”

Finding remnants of Jewish history in Rotterdam is difficult. In May 1940, Germany bombed the city, ramped up downtown, killing 1,150 people and destroying 24,000 homes. In the Netherlands as a whole, approximately 75% of the Jewish population died in the Holocaust.

However, Snijders posted details of the watch’s history on social media hoping to be lucky.

Within 24 hours, Snijders received the news that watchmaker Alfred Overstrijd had given birth to a daughter who survived the war and had three children living in the Netherlands. (Louis Overstrijd, the owner of the watch, has never had children.)

Snijders later found van Ameijden, one of the watchmaker’s three grandchildren, sa LinkedIn. He arranged a meeting between the descendants of the farmer and the watchmaker, at which point the watch was officially returned. “There were tears, I saw them”, revealed Snijders, who attended a two -hour meeting this month in Rotterdam, previously reported by Radio Rijnmond, a Dutch radio station.

Van Ameijden said he and his sisters would partake in owning the watch and that they regret that their mother was not alive to see their father’s lineage, with whom he had been close.

Van Ameijden said he and his sisters knew little about their grandfather’s fate and that They do not know the existence of the clock. “My parents suffered a huge trauma in the war,” van Ameijden said. “We know bits and pieces of information, but it’s not a topic of conversation.”

Janssens said his family knew the watch existed but he had almost forgotten about it, and he was glad it was returned.we are the legitimate owners, as his grandfather wanted. “It’s a story not to be missed,” he said.

c.2022 The New York Times Company

Translation: Elisa Carnelli

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