Instead of being grateful, the beneficiaries were often aggrieved at what they received. In late September 1943, reports were reaching Berlin from Münster and Frankfurt on the Oder, about how ‘disappointed the population was with the used furniture reaching them from the occupied territories, especially the Jewish furniture’. Either the pieces came from large villas and would not fit into small flats, or they were infested with vermin, smashed in transit, or simply too old and shabby to be suitable for Germans: it seemed that the Jews had either been too rich or too poor.
