Arolsen Archives returns wartime wallet to daughter in French village

The Arolsen Archives, a German organization that researches and returns items stolen from Holocaust victims, hand-delivered the leather wallet of Jean Iribarne to his daughter, Marie Hélène Sagaspe, in the village of Camou-Cihigue, France. Iribarne died in 1945 after being arrested a year earlier for guiding Jews fleeing the Nazis across the French border into Spain.

A volunteer, Georges Sougné, located the wallet, and Floriane Azoulay, then the archive’s director, traveled to Camou-Cihigue to return it in March at the town hall. Inside were a photograph of Sagaspe’s mother, a receipt and a stamp; Sagaspe held the wallet to her face and cried, and she now keeps it in her purse.

After the reunion, she and her daughter retraced Iribarne’s path, visiting Compiègne, Neuengamme and the Hannover-Stöcken site where he died. The story highlights that restitution efforts often focus on high‑value art, but family keepsakes can carry profound emotional weight, a point made by Agnes Peresztegi, an international restitution lawyer.

The article describes other cases: the Mautner heirs found sheet music and dress patterns at the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art and ultimately donated the collection back after provenance research by Claudia Spring; the Glattstein family believes a shofar from Edelény, Hungary, is in the hands of a local historian’s family and has so far received no response from the town.

Key Topics

Culture, Arolsen Archives, Camou-cihigue, Jean Iribarne, Marie Hélène Sagaspe, Neuengamme