Inside the Paris Department Store where Nazis Shopped for Stolen Jewish Belongings

MessyNessy

When Paris was liberated from the Nazi occupation in 1944, an album of 85 photographs was found in a shop that had been used by German soldiers assigned to the “Furniture Operation” (Möbel Aktion), the official name for pillaging apartments that had been inhabited by Jews. The snapshots reveal a surreal display of furniture and everyday household goods as if it were an Ikea supermarket, merchandised to catch the shopper’s eye. Except in this case, the “shopper” was the Nazi, the “sales assistants” were Jewish prisoners and the “product” on sale had been looted from their Parisian homes.

Most of these photographs were taken inside a Parisian department store called Lévitan, opened by a Jewishman called Wolf Levitan in the 1930s to specialise in furniture. Located at 85-87 Rue Faubourg Saint Martin in the 10th arrondissement, the building was confiscated from its former owner by the Nazis. Below is a photo of how the store looked before the Nazis moved in.

Everything had been left behind, even down to the cash registers. But not only did Lévitan become a place for Nazi worthies to browse stolen Jewish household goods, picking out things for themselves before being sent off to Germany, the former furniture store also became one of the several Nazi forced labour camps inside occupied Paris, known as the Lévitan camp…

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Article proposed by: Natalia Zajdel