Nazi memorabilia taken by thieves inmuseum heists
It was 2 a.m. on a Tuesday when the raid began at the Eye witness War Museum in the town of Beek, the Netherlands.
First, a group of thieves teased open the museum’s front gate.
“Youcansee itonour cameras,” saidWimSeelen, the museum’s director.
But then, they disappeared.
Anhour later, the burglars returned in several estate cars. In a scene reminiscent of a heistmovie, they spread out tires across the highway that runs past the museum to create a roadblock and parked a fake police car beside it, so it lookedofficial.
Over the next five minutes, the group — maybe 12 people in total, Seelen said — battered down themuseum’s front door, broke display cabinets and tookwhat they’ d come for: nine mannequins wearing rare Nazi uniforms. The outfits included one worn by Hitler’s personal chef and another by a high-ranking member of the SS.
The robbers took other items ofWorldWar II memorabilia, Seelen said, with the haul worth about $1.5 million in total.
“Itwas done with military precision,” he added.
The museum’s alarms went off, but the police — held up by the roadblock — arrived too late to catch anyone.
“Of course, I’m terrified it will happen again,” Seelen said.
The Aug. 4 raid in Beek was only the most dramatic in a string of recent robberies fromWorldWar IImuseums in Europe, and the burglaries are spreading panic among similar institutions.
Since March, four museums in the Netherlands and Denmark have been broken into, and memorabilia, including Nazi uniforms, has been stolen. The most recent raid took place Nov. 3, when robbersbroke througha windowat theGermanMuseum North Schleswig, in southern Denmark, and made off with three mannequins in Nazi outfits.
Administrators from all four of the burglarized institutions said they believedthe thieves were acting on the orders of collectors looking to get their hands on rare Nazi memorabilia. But they were uncertainwhether the robberies were carried out by the same group or were simply part of a worrying trend.
Officers of the Dutch and Danish police said in telephone interviews that they had no suspects in any of the robberies but were looking for patterns.
Richard Bronswijk of the Dutch police’s art crime unit said his team had two theories: thatwealthy collectors in Russia or Eastern Europe had ordered the robberies, or that they were undertaken by supporters of the
far right. The second theory was less likely, he added, “as those guys don’t havemuch money and like to buy replicas.”
The raid at the Eyewitness WarMuseumwas incredibly professional, he said.
“They were really like ‘Ocean’sTwelve,’ ” he added, referring to the Hollywood heist movie.
The Netherlands and Denmark, which were both occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, have numerous small, private and statefunded museums devoted to the history of that conflict. Many have glass display cases filled with memorabilia includingweapons, and dioramas depicting scenes from the war, with mannequins in original uniforms. There are around 100 in the Netherlands alone, Seelen estimated.
Many Dutch museums have taken rare items off display or improved their security systems in response to the recent robberies. The Arnhem War Museum has installed anti-tank barriers at its entrance, “so people can’t comewith a big truck,” said Marina Moens, one of its owners.