A watch taken by a Nazi soldier during WWII, lost in a cornfield and then hidden in a clock on a farm in Belgium has been restored to the grandchildren of its maker after nearly 80 years. It is still functional.
Alfred Overstrijd, a Jewish man from the Dutch city of Rotterdam, crafted the pocket watch in 1910. It was made as a present for his brother, Louis. On the back of the watch, there is an inscription with Overstrijd’s name, the location and the time it was manufactured.
According to Rob Snijders, a Dutch historian who specialises in Jewish history, when Louis Overstrijd was captured by the Nazis in 1942, a soldier most likely seized the watch. The reunion with his grandfather’s watch was uplifting for Richard van Ameijden, but it was also a painful wakeup to continuing atrocities. ‘When I look at the watch, it touches me partly because there’s a war now as well’, van Ameijden said, referring to Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine.
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The exact route the watch took from Rotterdam to Belgium is unknown, but Snijders has recreated it. People in Belgium and the Netherlands were obliged to house Nazi soldiers throughout the war. Three troops were sheltered by a Belgian farmer called Gustave Janssens, who forced them to use a cornfield next door as a bathroom.
According to Snijders, the watch most likely dropped from the pocket of one of the troops in the field. Janssens must have assumed the soldier had stolen the watch when he discovered it. The farmer kept it instead of returning it.
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