Portrait of a Lady

Then let's talk about your story.

“About 155 years of experience and the experience of our customers.”

Commertsbank, the bank and their side. In our last episode, we heard from a gentleman from the Netherlands named Paul Post. In his retirement, Paul became a researcher and a self-taught investigator. He used his father's journals to uncover information about a man named Friedrich Kotkin, who served as a sort of Nazi finance guru.

Kotkin reported to the Nazi leader Hitler's second-in-command, Herman Gering.

And together, Gering and Kotkin stole a myriad of precious items, including diamonds and art. After the war, Herman Gering was convicted at Nuremberg before killing himself and his jail cell with a smuggled cyanide capsule. Friedrich Kotkin, however, escaped. At the end of the previous episode, Paul had traced Kotkin's movements to marital plot to Argentina, where they discovered a piece of art that the Nazi had looted and smuggled into the country.

And with that piece of art, Paul Post's family story intersected with the story of another family. And today's episode, we're going to hear from that family.

I'm Lloyd Lockridge, and this is family lore.

“So could you tell me your name and where you're from?”

Yes, my name is Charlotte Vonser, and I was born in the UK and currently live in Connecticut in the US. My family came over to the US on the QE2, my sister, my parents, and two dogs, and the car. All on the QE2, I know my parents were happy and ready to start life in the US. And we have been in Greenwich, Connecticut since 1975. For Charlene Vonser, growing up in Connecticut was a pretty idyllic experience.

She remembers learning at a rider bike on Todd Lane, her parents running alongside her as she wobbled forward with nervous excitement. In the winter, Charlene's mother, Marib Vonser, a retired figure skater, taught her to ice skate. So when we joined the skating club, it was kind of a big deal for everyone to see my mom skate around. And then, you know, my sister and I took lessons there, and I continued because I liked it. She liked it, and she was very good at it.

As she got older, she began competing in a very high level, the highest in fact. Charlene and Nancy Carrigan trained under the same coach. In 1993, Charlene won the gold medal at the British Championships. In 1994, she competed at the Olympics in Norway. But unlike her friend, Nancy Carrigan, Charlene didn't represent the United States.

Ultimately, she decided to represent England, her place of birth. And those probably weren't her only two options, because Charlene's background is somewhat complex. She was born in England to a father who was born in Amsterdam, but raised in America, and a mother who was born in raised in West Germany, which no longer exists. Apparently, my first language was German, but when my sister and I entered school in the US, we didn't understand anything, because we were speaking German, and my mom said no more German in the house, only English.

Despite losing the German, Charlene was always aware of her European roots.

As a young girl, she and her sister would go to Holland to visit their paternal grandmother, Daisy. I loved my grandmother, Daisy, very much. My sister and I visited her in the summers, often. And there in Holland, Charlene would pick up bits and pieces about what her grandmother's life was like growing up. Her mother was a very famous soprano in Vienna, and Daisy grew up in Vienna, amongst a very affluent inner circle.

“People like Freud, climped, climped, in fact, drew a portrait of her, and I think she learned her first, you know, breaststroke from him.”

Yeah, they were socializing among a very elite class. Tell me, as a grandmother, what was she like? She was extremely generous, gracious, nurturing, loving, warm and cozy. You know, she was that sort of warm and fuzzy grandmother, but a little bit fancier.

And occasionally, Charlene's grandmother would talk about life in the 1930s, when she was still married to Charlene's grandfather, a man named Jacques Gaudsticker.

In a sense, Jacques was one of the reasons Daisy had moved back to Holland in the first place.

“I think she just felt perhaps closer to Jacques, who was her true love.”

But she spoke about Jacques and how wonderful he was, and how much he would have loved us. She always said that. And she also told me that he loved food, and he would sort of satisfy his cravings by reading cookbooks. So he was like, way out of his time. Nowadays, everyone sits around watching the cooking channel, or reels, or whatever. And what else did you tell you about him?

That he was romantic and gave her lots of beautiful little gifts and jewelry and was very loving. I don't know why, but I didn't think to ask more in-depth questions. Maybe because we were just enjoying each other's company. And in the present, so I don't know why I didn't, and I do regret not asking more. But clearly, she didn't want to tell me or talk about it otherwise she would have.

But still, Daisy would take Charlene and her sister down memory lane. And we would jump in her car and drive by Nine Road, a castle, and Ostemer, which was their actual home that they lived in. And Herringocht 458, which was my grandfather's place of business, his art gallery. And she would tell us that these properties were once hers.

And I guess as a kid, I never understood then why they weren't still hers.

“And I do clearly remember, she would look at me and my sister.”

She called us like her sweet. She would say, "My sweet, things were different before the war." And that's really all I got from her on that. As a child, Charlene didn't quite understand why her grandmother was reserved and talking about the love of her life, shock, and she didn't pry. She had a loving relationship with Daisy, and that's all that really mattered to both of them. In 1996, when Charlene was in her 20s, Daisy passed away, and Charlene went to Europe to pay her respects.

While she was there, she obtained her grandmother's diary.

And in the pages of that diary, Charlene encountered for the first time, a full picture of her grandmother's life.

Especially the aspects of her life she didn't want to talk about. Charlene's grandfather, Jacques Gaudsticker, did not merely run an art gallery. He was a prolific art collector, dealer, and efficient auto, with arguably the most respected business in Amsterdam. Charlene now had an intimate account of what happened to that business and what happened to Jacques. Everything started to come together.

I understood why she didn't want to talk about things. I started to understand the magnitude of the situation, and I just became really angry.

“What if everything you learned in history class was only half the story?”

I'm Dr. Greeney bought Host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets mysterious. Vanish civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. On Hidden History, I treat these moments like open case files. Not miss, not superstition, just incomplete explanations, waiting for closer look.

Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts. So prior to obtaining her grandmother's diary, there were details Charlene knew about her grandmother's background. She knew that her grandmother Daisy wasn't Holland when World War II broke out. She knew, of course, that because Daisy and Jacques were Jewish, they had to flee when the Nazis invaded. But the details were shrouded in mystery.

Then, after Daisy passed away, and Charlene came into possession of the diary, the shrouds lifted. And Charlene got her first hand account of their lives. I think they were, again, part of the upper class, and I truly believe that they didn't think the war would really affect them.

Simon Goodman wrote a great book called The Orfias Clock.

And it was quite evident in that book that a lot of the upper class Jews were even socializing before the war with people that ended up being Nazis. But it was just not even recognized.

“So I think they kept waiting and waiting because they really didn't think anything was going to happen.”

Then, on the morning of May 10, 1940, Dutch citizens woke up to the roar of German bombers flying overhead toward the North Sea. As the planes passed, the residents of Amsterdam would have assumed that the Luftwaffe was headed to England. But soon after passing by, the planes began to bank, turning 180 degrees, headed straight for the Netherlands. The Germans began dropping bombs and paratroopers all across the country. I can't say exactly when, but I have some translations of Daisy's diary.

And she talks about how the atmosphere is changing. And she is feeling unsafe, but Jacques doesn't want to leave. She doesn't want to leave everything that he's built with his business and his life there. But I guess at a certain point, they had no choice. What was their round of escape?

They took my grandfather's car.

“I think it was like a Lincoln Zephyr or something like that.”

They had to leave it on the side of the road. There was too much traffic.

And they ultimately made it on the last ship out.

Daisy and Jacques fled on May 14, 1940. Four days after the surprise invasion, and one day before the Netherlands signed a capitulation agreement with Hitler, leaving the nation under full Nazi control. They left with only a few personal belongings, including a little black book, which contained the inventory for all of Jacques's art. Jacques kept the book in his jacket pocket.

And strapped to Daisy's chest with Charlene's father, Ado, who was only about a year old. Everything else, their beautiful home, the gallery, the furniture, the art, it was all left behind. There was a lot, a lot of beautiful things that were left behind. I mean, my grandmother packed like a little beach bag and threw some jewelry in there and some diapers for my father, and they left.

“With regard to these possessions, especially the art that was left behind, what becomes of it?”

What happens next to the art collection in particular? Herman Göring had sort of scouted out all of the top art collections, I think, prior to the war.

So he knew exactly where his first stops would be.

So Herman Göring and Alloy's Meadle basically took over and stole all of the artwork. Meadle stayed and ran the gallery with Jacques's, you know, entire infrastructure in place because he was very well respected. The Nazis took over the gallery. They sold some pieces and looted others. The marvelous business Jacques Ran was completely desecrated by Hitler's second-end command, Herman Göring, and a man named Alloy's Meadle.

Meadle was actually married to a Jewish woman, and a couple had initially moved from Munich to Amsterdam for fear of rising anti-Semitism in Germany. But as the Nazis invaded, Meadle was able to carry favor with Göring, and his Jewish wife was designated an honorary Aryan. And Alloy's Meadle not only commendedier Jacques's gallery, he moved into the Goud Sticker home, where he once hosted a gala to celebrate Hitler's birthday. But despite their best attempts, the Nazis did not erase all traces of Jacques Goud Sticker.

Because on the back of each painting, there was a literal Goud Sticker stamp of approval. It was a little red wax seal, which guaranteed the authenticity of each individual work. And knowing the value of a Goud Sticker impromotor, the Nazis left the stamps alone. I didn't understand at the time why all the labels on the backs of the paintings weren't peeled off. You would think that would make sense that way no one could recognize where they once belonged.

But my grandfather had stickers and a red wax seal that he put on the back of each of the paintings. And they left those in place because it proved the value of the pieces since he was so well respected in the art field.

And one evening, a couple of nights after they were on there, my grandfather went up on the deck for some air. And the lights were turned off because the boats were being torpedoed all around. And my grandfather fell into a hold and fractured his skull. And my grandmother was down below with my father and asked the crew members to find her husband.

And ultimately, one of the crew members also fell into the hold on top of my grandfather.

It did not die because he was cushioned by Jacques's body and then my grandmother had to continue on the journey without her husband. The ship arrived in Falmouth, England, but Daisy was not able to get off. This was because her passport was issued by Austria, where she was born and she was considered an alien enemy. So Jacques's body was taken off the ship and Daisy was not allowed to accompany him. She was able to plan the funeral, though, in Falmouth.

“I think that's the southwestern coast, a beautiful, beautiful place.”

She was not allowed off the boat. And she made sure that he had a good spot overlooking the water. And that they play his favorite song, which was Cole Porter's night and day at the funeral. And she was lucky because at that time, most people were just thrown overboard if they died. Man, that is just, you know, I'm just trying to imagine what your grandmother must have been thinking.

I mean, weeks earlier, you know, like what's great.

Yeah, life was amazing a few weeks earlier.

It's hard to fathom such a swift and devastating turn of events. It was spring and Amsterdam. I imagine the tulips were in full bloom, the cafes were exploding onto the sidewalk,

“and packs of cyclists poured through the streets like synchronized schools of fish.”

Daisy and Jacques were in love. They had a beautiful home, a thriving art business, a vibrant social life, and a newborn baby. And over the course of just four days, they have to leave it all behind. And then after escaping by the skin of their teeth, Jacques, a loving husband and father, dies in a freak accident. And Daisy can't even be there to lay him to rest. The last time she sees him, he's being carried off a ship, alone in a foreign land.

And with little money and even fewer options, Daisy set sail to the Americas. She continues on. She lands in Canada and spends some time there before making her way to meet her. And that's where they stayed for quite a while.

In 1945, the war finally ended, first in the European theater as the allies converged on Berlin.

Herman Goring, the Nazi leader who stole much of the Gouts to her collection, surrendered in Bavaria. Upon his capture, he was carrying suitcases filled with stolen items and works of art. Without much delay, Daisy started the process of reclaiming her possessions. The allies had already begun returning stolen items across Europe. But in Holland, things were not so simple.

The allies returned a lot of the art that they found in Germany and other places to the country of origin. And those countries, Holland, in our case, was supposed to return everything to the rightful owners. And they did not do that. And do we know why?

“I believe they felt that the transaction was voluntary and not involuntary.”

And they, I think, were more interested in their post-war collections and kept things for themselves. So following the war, the Dutch government made the case that much of the Gouts to her collection was legally sold and no longer owned by his estate. And because Goutsticker was deceased, they probably anticipated little resistance to that position. I mean, my grandmother was a young single at this point Jewish woman. I think they just didn't think that she would fight.

They took the opportunity to portray this as a voluntary sale, which was obviously a coerced sale. And because Glock was no longer alive, they thought nobody would come back to reclaim it. Exactly. And how much time an effort does she put into dealing with the Dutch government recovering the art?

And she signed an agreement, but in the agreement, she specifically states that she does not agree with how things were handled and that she does not give up her rights to the guring portion of the collection.

The guring portion being the portion of the collection that was alluded by her and guring.

Yes, the larger and more valuable portion of the collection.

“Okay, so after signing that document, does she continue to try to track down the guring portion or does that just prove too difficult?”

She ran out of money. She couldn't, you know, she was wealthy before the war, but not after and she ran out of money. She couldn't spend all of her money trying to get her possessions back. As you're learning this as an adult, you're learning about these incredibly tragic events.

Your grandmother having this rich life, and I don't mean just money.

I mean, this very vibrant life that falls apart very rapidly, resulting in her having to flee with the love of her life, who dies on the voyage and she has to go off on her own. I'm wondering, as you're learning all of that, how did it change the way you thought about your grandmother?

“I think that I really learned what a tough cookie she was, like what a strong independent woman she was and how sad she must have been.”

I know she was depressed a lot. I know that from my dad and I mean, how could you not be? At the time of Daisy's death in 1996, Charlene didn't know the half of this story. And her father, who probably knew more than her, died only six months after his mother Daisy after a long battle with leukemia. We were going about our lives, and a year after my father passed away, we received a call from a Dutch journalist named Peter Den Hollander.

And in so many words, he said, "Do you realize you have a claim against the Dutch government?" And we looked at each other, and my sister was there too, and we were not quite sure what he was talking about. So before we knew it, he was in Connecticut, he came over to our home, and we had a long discussion, and then he said, "Oh, do you have any of the paintings in your home?" And we did, we had one small painting, and he said, "Can you please show it to me?" And it was upstairs in my mom's bedroom, and we went up, and he took the painting off the wall and turned it around and showed us the back.

Which we had never done, we didn't even think to look at the back of a painting.

And there was the red wax seal and the stickers that my grandfather used to identify his paintings. And Peter then explained to us that there were many, many more of these that were in the possession of the Dutch government that shouldn't be, and that we had a claim to them.

“But how would Charlotte and her mother know which pieces of art to look for?”

Yes, there was the red wax seal, but what if those have been removed? And what about the more scattered and elusive portion that was looted by hermen goring? Finding them would be hard enough even if they knew exactly what they were looking for. Well, to deal with that challenge, they were left with an item, almost like a treasure map. It was something that Daisy had been holding onto since the day Jacques died until the day she died.

Back in 1940, after Jacques died tragically on the boat, he and Daisy had boarded to escape the Nazis. Daisy had to identify his body. And as she said her last goodbye to Jacques, she reached into his pocket and removed something from his jacket. When Jacques's body was recovered, Daisy had the wear with all to take his little black book out of his jacket pocket, which inventory the entire collection. The entire collection.

Jacques had recorded everything in this little black book. And Daisy had held onto it for all those years. Maybe as a keepsake, a kind of totem that connected her to the love of her life. Or maybe because somewhere deep down, she knew that someone might someday pick up the torch.

Information in general was not as accessible as it is today. And if you wanted something, you often had to go out and get it. When they were approached by the Dutch journalist Peter Dan Hollander, he invited Charlotte to accompany him to the Washington archive to speak to an elderly archivist who knew a lot about wartime theft. And he pulled out after quite some time. Came out with a large cart of files that somewhere, I mean, they must have been unclassified at the time, but they had the stamps on them originally that they were classified.

And Peter and I started to go through them. And yeah, that's where I saw some of the correspondence and the dealings that had gone on.

“And I think that is when I officially knew things were not taken care of properly after the war and that my family was not treated properly.”

I felt a little bit like an investigator and Peter who wasn't investigative journalist, we got to a point where we said we can't keep doing this. Let's take what we have and let's move on. You know, let's go home, let's come up with a plan on next steps. And what plan did you come up with? So we went, my mom and I went back to Holland and we interviewed some attorneys and one of them laughed at us and said you will never get anything back that the Dutch government possesses now, like don't waste your time.

But then we did find some attorneys that were great. On the same time, upon hearing that Charlene and her mother were up to something, the Dutch government proactively reached out to the volunteers.

“I think we met at the Dutch consulate. They told us not to bring our attorney.”

They flew all the way to New York to discourage us from pursuing our claim and told us not to bring an attorney, but brought their attorney. It was just very odd. And I think at that moment, we kind of realized they were scared. And it almost really fueled the fire.

But their first recovery did not come from the Dutch government.

It was May of 2001, and Christie's was auctioning a piece of art by the flimish painter, Jan Wellen's to coke. The Vonseire's team crossed reference the painting saw that it was on their list and swooped in. Sure enough, there was a gap in the provenance. And on the back of the painting, a red wax sticker. After 60 years, the painting was returned to its rightful owner. The descendants of Jacques Gautstecker. The title of the painting was the temptation of St. Anthony. That St. Anthony is in the patron saint of lost items.

That first painting coming back sort of set the stage.

It sort of made everything become a reality. And at least for me, I thought, "Okay, this really is happening. We really are going to do this." And if it's one piece at a time or a group of paintings from the Dutch government, whatever, we're going to keep going and we're going to fight for this.

“Right. So you've got some wind in your sails after this, right? And what's the pace going forward? Are you recovering things all the time? Is it slow and steady?”

No. It's slow and frustrating. Yeah. Very slow and frustrating. And I know my mother, at least, along the way, sometimes felt like we should throw the towel in. But we didn't. And I think she's happy that we didn't. And she's been pretty strong along the way. And it worked out. And it's still working. From 2001 to 2006, the paintings trickled in. It was frustrating as Charlene puts it. But in 2007, after almost 10 years of legal maneuvering, the Dutch government returned to the Gaudstecker collection to the Vaughan sails.

202 paintings worth millions. So I want to know what it was like to hang one of those paintings in your home. It felt like we had restored a little bit of my grandfather's legacy. We had corrected an historical injustice.

It felt amazing to hold something in my hands that my grandfather once held and once loved. Yeah, it just, it was a very good feeling.

But to that rule, there was one very special exception. And it starts with our guest in the last episode, Paul Post.

If you didn't have a chance to listen, Paul is a Dutch retiree who spent the last decade or so investigating a case of missing diamonds. The diamonds were stolen by Nazis, from the Diamond Bores and Amsterdam. In Paul's father, who worked at the Diamond Bores, had left behind a diary and documents with various leads.

“It begins, I believe, with a gentleman Paul Post who had found a diary in his father's attic.”

And very quickly, the diary led Paul to a mysterious Nazi officer named Friedrich Kutkin, who was an advisor to Herman Goring. Paul believes that Kutkin made off with a significant sum of diamonds, which he used to make safe passage to Argentina, where he lived out the rest of his days. He saw this name in his father's diary and started to research and he found that there were sales between him and Meadle. To refresh your memory, Meadle was the man who took over the Goutsticker collection and moved into the Goutsticker home, among other bombinations.

In his research on the diamonds, Paul stumbled upon information that showed Meadle had sold a Goutsticker-owned piece to Friedrich Kutkin. This is Paul Post.

“I found a database in Holland of the dealing with stolen art in war, and I went into that database, and I looked for the name Kutkin, and I found to it.”

One of the hits was Portrait of a Lady by the Italian Baroque painter, Jacques-Mautcherouti. Paul knew that Friedrich Kutkin had a daughter who lived in Marto Plata, a beach town south of Buenos Aires. So with the help of a Dutch journalist, he asked an Argentinian journalist to go down to Marto Plata, and see if Patricia Kutkin would be willing to answer any questions about the missing art.

Well, it was tricky because, well, you can ring on the bell, but they never opened for questions to a journalist.

Patricia Kutkin never answered the door. And pretty soon, she wouldn't be expected to answer the door, because apparently Patricia was hoping to move. There was a four-sale sign in the front yard. So out of idle curiosity, the journalist went on the listing and started perusing pictures of the home. They went to the website for the estate agency, and they saw all the pictures of the interior of the house and on one of the pictures.

They saw the painting hanging. In a photo of the living room, hanging above a green velvet couch. In the home of Friedrich Kutkin's daughter was the missing portrait of a lady painting. An Italian painting stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam has been spotted on the website of an estate agent selling a house in Argentina more than 80 years after it was taken. An online photo shows...

It's a good story.

It is just amazing that this painting was found in the manner that it was found.

Some experts did a formal report and have also confirmed that it is the painting that once belonged to my grandfather and was stolen by the Nazis.

“I guess I want to ask, does this portrait of a lady case feel like just another case, just another retrieval or does this one feel different?”

This one feels a little bit different for me because the painting has been in the hands of a Nazi's daughter for all of these years. A lot of the other paintings that we've recovered along the way, people perhaps bought in good faith and didn't know, not everyone, but some of them, and this one, again, I don't know how much this woman knew about her father and his past, but she is the daughter of a Nazi and he stole possessions and... and I'm sure, I mean he was a Nazi, he indirectly murdered a lot of people, so it just feels a little bit closer to history, rather than the pieces that have changed hands over the years.

This one hasn't really changed hands. As of March 20th, 2026, the painting is still in the custody of Argentinean officials.

To date, Charlene and her mother have recovered about 350 works of art, roughly a third of Jacques Gaudstecker's collection.

It's not a bad start. Thank you for listening to Family Lore.

“If you have stories you'd like to share about your family, please email me at [email protected].”

That's [email protected].

FamilyLore is an Odyssey original podcast. It is written and narrated by me, Lloyd Lockridge.

“Our executive producers are Leah Riesdennis and I.”

Our lead producer and sound editor is Zach Clark.

Our story editor is Katie Mingle. Additional sound editing mixing and mastering by Chris Bezel and production support by Sean Cherry.

“Special thanks to more occurin, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hillary Schuff and Laura Burman.”

Thanks again for listening to Family Lore. And if you have time, we'd love for you to rate and review the show. It is not hard to destroy a college. Last season, the podcast Campus Files brought you stories of fraternity drug rings, stolen body parts, Campus Colts and more.

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