Up until a year ago, the basket, made of rattan and varnished wood, was just used as a rubbish bin for discarded pieces of paper. It looked good in the office of Bremen’s top finance official and no one thought to wonder where it had come from. Then it turned out that the bin had probably been stolen from Jews and others as they fled persecution from the National Socialists. Decades later this is not 100% certain, says Gundula Rentrop, who, as a museum educator, researched the history of Bremen’s finance department until her retirement. Her suspicion that the bin had been stolen was enough and…