Hanan Argov, a Rishon LeTsiyon resident, was recently informed by the Jewish community in Austria that he is the rightful owner of a 145 million year old artifact that once belongs to his members of his family who died in the Holocaust.
The story dates back to June 1938, went Irma Bundy sold four fossils to the Vienna Museum of Natural History: Two shells and two ammonites from the Cretaceous period , an era that started 145 million years before our time and ended 66 million years before our time.
Irma had received these as a gift from her relative Fritz Ilner, who worked as an engineer near the town of Kastamonu, Turkey.
The Bundy and Ilner families lived during the most atrocious times of the Holocaust, and few survived. In early 1933, Fritz and his wife escaped from Austria to France, and gave their valuable belongings to Irma, including these artifacts.
Following Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria, Jews could no longer stay there, thus Irma decided to sell the the shells and ammonites to the Museum of Natural History Vienna.
Both Irma Bunday and Flitz Ilner eventually died in Auschwitz. Like many other possessions of Jews killed during the Holocaust, their belongings remained in Europe after the war.
Today, the Austrian government has taken the initiative to return all these objects to the descendants of their original owners.
Fritz and Irma's relatives living in Israel, recently received an email from the museum telling them the story of their ancestors. The letter emphasized that while no deed can vindicate the injustices committed in the past or relieve the pain their Jewish family members suffered, these remains could help to honor the memories of Irma and Fritz.
Hanan Argov, the now rightful owner of the artifacts, is the grandson of Ruth, who was Iram's daughter. He said that he believed he was being pranked when he first read the email.
"We received a message from someone named Matthias who said he had fossils belonging to our parents, that are currently in the Museum of Natural History Vienna," Argov said. "Because according to the law it is clear that it belongs to our family, he wanted to know what we want to do with them," he said.
"When we received the mail, the first thing that came to mind was what whether this is a prank. But after the phone call with the Austrian embassy we understood there was something real here. We were looking for a place that could hold the fossils, and they are now in the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History in Tel Aviv," he said.
"Irma's husband, grandpa Shmuel, would tell us stories about his experiences in the Holocaust. Its touching that suddenly we are connecting with our family's past," he said.