Dutch systems specialist Paul Post had glimpsed the notebooks that contained his father’s Nazi-era diaries before, but when he rediscovered them in an attic 15 years ago, the recent retiree finally had time to examine them closely.
Post, 74, had no idea that they would ultimately lead to Argentina, where in September the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi official was charged with concealing an 18th-century painting looted during the Holocaust.
In his diaries, Post’s father described working in the Netherlands’ diamond bureau when it was taken over by the Nazis. As Post began researching the events, one name jumped out: the Nazi official Friedrich Kadgien.
Kadgien oversaw the Nazi looting of diamonds and gold from occupied countries. Post began to follow Kadgien’s wanderings after the war, hoping to solve the mystery of the diamonds that historians say are still missing.
He learned by chance that Kadgien was believed to have also possessed looted art. The hunt led him and Dutch journalists to the peaceful residential neighbourhood home of Patricia Kadgien, 60, in the seaside town of Mar del Plata in Buenos Aires province, where Portrait of a Lady had been hanging prominently in her living room.
