Nazi family has Nazi-looted art – descendant breaks silence

Confession in the Netherlands

SS family withholds picture from Göring’s art heist

The Nazi-looted painting “Portrait of a Young Girl” is owned by a granddaughter of SS man Hendrik Seyffardt. The whole family knows it. Now someone breaks the silence.

The confession was made anonymously. “I feel deep shame about my family’s past and am beside myself about the years of silence,” the Amsterdam newspaper “Telegraaf” quoted a descendant of the Dutch Nazi collaborator Hendrik Seyffardt as saying.

The reason for the outrage: A granddaughter of the SS general had the painting “Portrait of a Young Girl” by the painter Toon Kelder hanging in her apartment for decades. “It’s Nazi-looted art by Goudstikker. Not for sale. Don’t tell anyone,” was the SS granddaughter’s internal motto. Now a descendant is pushing for the painting to be returned.

The painting comes from the famous Goudstikker collection. The Dutch art connoisseur Jacques Goudstikker had built a collection of 1,113 paintings.

When the German Wehrmacht attacked the Netherlands in 1940, Goudstikker, as a Jew, fled abroad with his family. But on the crossing with the “Bodegraven” to England, Goudstikker fell and had a fatal accident. He had listed his collection, the “Collectie Goudstikker” with paintings by Rembrandt, Salomon van Ruysdael and Jan van der Heyden, in a black ring binder. His wife Dési Goudstikker took the book. The collection is well documented.

The art treasure ended up in the clutches of Hitler’s confidant Hermann Göring in July 1940. From there, the “Portrait of a Young Girl” came into the possession of the Dutch collaborator Hendrik Seyffardt.

Seyffardt, the scion of a Dutch military family, enlisted in the Nazis after the German attack on the Netherlands in 1940. Among other things, the general commanded a Dutch volunteer force that took part alongside the Waffen-SS in the German campaign of annihilation in the East. In 1943 he was shot in the doorway of his home in The Hague by Dutch resistance fighters. This was followed by the “Silbertanne” operation, in which dozens of resistance fighters in the Netherlands fell victim.

However, the descendants of the Seyffardt family remained in possession of the stolen picture. “It’s true that I discovered that the stolen painting is in the possession of my family and that they refuse to return it. That’s why I’m now making this public,” said the Seyffardt scion in the “Telegeraaf”.